I understand, that regular arena has reduced drops, because it is meant mainly for ladder.
But why arena echos have to be the same? In my opinion, it is already the most boring type of echo:
Character is not actively moving anywhere, just waiting or reacting. There are shrines, but their effects aren’t noticeable, so I don’t collect them.
Takes more time to complete, than other echo types. And that time cannot be shortened, investing into movement speed or damage doesn’t make a lot of difference.
It is difficult, with ranged monsters coming from everywhere, especially for melee builds.
Often there are long delays between waves, when you sit for 5 seconds doing nothing. Sometimes monsters are slow or get stuck. Small monster minimap icons or a compass above head would be welcomed.
Rune prisons never spawn. I sometimes see eternal caches, but it looks more like a bug, it certainly appears less often, than during other echoes. Arena layout is generally not good for spawning additional content.
And that’s all on top of absence of drops, just small piles of gold everywhere.
So, any plans on improving that? At least make items drops same as elsewhere. Or provide any other rewards. I will be glad if you completely rework or remove arena echos or give a possibility to “block” it.
I also think there should be better distinction between echo types and their rewards (customizable echo filter? please?). It’s easy to get lost and hard to find desirable rewards. Arena echos are not visually distinguishable at all, you must click on an echo to read the layout name, so it’s hard to avoid them in a huge web. Small background image doesn’t say anything about the echo type.
IMO, arena echoes should just be removed. They are the most tedious and uninteresting echo type, but any changes big enough to make them stop being a slog would just make them too fast and trivial.
Just for a different point of view, I will add to the thread that Arena echoes are by far my favourite kind. That’s not to say they could not be improved, many of the OP’s points are valid, but I find non-Arena echoes far more boring. They are totally trivial and have no challenge whatsoever (until very VERY high corruption), and that just makes them a chore to me.
If anything, I’d like Arena echoes to be a bit longer.
I don’t completely agree on the time point. Some of the non-Arena maps are terrible and make the player go all over and around them, especially if they have multiple patrolling targets. These can sometimes take longer than an Arena and can have lengthy sections where you are back-tracking through already cleared areas.
There is no actual delay between waves, it is simply because you chose to stand still and fight, so it take enemies a few seconds to get to you from their spawn point. I move around all the time in Arenas (which you would be doing through necessity if corruption was very high), which considerably speeds things up.
It’s all a matter of opinion, but to me it depends on the build you’re using. Some builds do better in arena echoes than others.
When I’m playing wraiths, arena echoes are very annoying because it’s hard to keep the abomination alive.
When I’m playing retal FG or hammerdin it’s fine.
My only issue with arena echoes (and, to a lesser extent, also spire echoes) is that once you start you can’t really stop. If you have to go to the door, for example, you can’t really pause it, or find a safe space like on other echoes. You have to portal out and start over.
Funnily enough that is what I am playing right now. I found you just need to place the Abom as far from the arena spawn points as you can and he will be left alone. Easier on some arenas than others of course.
Yes, I also do that. In fact, my MO in these echoes is basically: run to shrines (if I feel like it, since most are useless), find some corner and make my stand. However, until I get to that spot, I know that my abomination will die and I have to make a new one.
And when you roll a 15+ wave slog of an Arena map, you have to clean up everything. You can’t speed it up by skipping past anything that isn’t worth killing. There’s no option to sacrifice extra stability for completion speed, and there’s no possibility for you to speed it up. You just have to sit there twiddling.
If I’m inevitably going to have an echo take above average time, I choose running through a map - even if there’s backtracking - over running in circles, always. Running in circles killing waves of mobs slowly coming after you is boring as shit.
And then when you get awful Arenas like the docks tileset, you get to play Scooby Doo Mystery Machine, derping all over the place searching for the dummies who got stuck or took some weird circuitous route to you because of where you are compared to their spawn point.
I feel like you’re seriously overstating this. I’ve experimented a lot with chilling in the middle vs running around hunting mobs down, trying to find the least annoying way to do these echoes, and I’ve never noticed a difference. It always feels slow and sucks.
Some people like arena and some don’t. For those who like it, there is an arena already, so maybe that’s where it should stay.
For me arenas in monos are not interesting. I dislike arena in LE for many reasons, which i will keep off this thread, i like arena in GD. Maybe one day LE will keep up in this department.
If I could TP out of an Echo that’s an Arena and have it reroll into a different kind of Echo the next time I enter it like all other Echo types do with their objectives, that would be good enough for me.
I’ve always assumed there’s some technical hurdle/limitation to that though, given that they’re the only ones that are separated out in the Echo web.
What I find more boring is this pattern: walk a bit, kill pack, walk a bit, kill pack, walk a bit, kill pack, echo conquered (didn’t even realise I was anywhere near the target and it is already dead). And at lower corruption what is even more boring: traversal skill to end target ignoring everything, echo complete. Ugh.
At least the action is constant in an arena, and the challenge is higher than the equivalent non-arena echo at same corruption. Non-arena echoes are especially boring because it is more or less impossible to die in them.
And I have never once seen a mob get stuck or lost anywhere in an arena.
All this put together makes arena echoes FEEL much quicker to me than normal echoes. I just find them more fun, more challenging, more action overall, and (feels) over quicker.
I mean, you do have the choice to not do that though, if you want to. Someone like me doesn’t get the choice in the opposite direction in an Arena. With Arena echoes, you are 100% at the mercy of the number of waves. You could have a turbo zoom zoom build or be a fat waddling elephant, it makes no difference. You can’t have a murder AOE blow up the screen build, because everything is coming from different angles and you will rarely hit it all, even if you post up in a corner because they spawn in different locations and have different move speeds. There’s no variability or room for different play and decisions. That’s why they suck.
If you want to get it over with faster, there is nothing you can do to make that happen. You have to just sit there waiting for every wave to spawn so you can kill it, and you have to kill everything, always. You don’t have the option of skipping beefy or obnoxious mobs. You don’t have the option to run a high mobility build and rush the objective. You have one option - sit in place or run in circles and 100% clear absolutely everything. Gag me.
Hell, leave them in, but give me an option to disable them, so they don’t show up anymore. I despise the arena, and everything it stands for. Hated it when it was the only ‘end game’ option in LE, and hate it just as much to this day.
I try always to evade them. They take so much time for 0 rewards unless Echo reward is something i want/need but even then i try to look other options.
