That’s why I finished with:
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So I actually like Arena’s in monos (though I don’t like doing actual Arena climbs.) Normally, I stay out of this argument because I don’t really care if they keep them or remove them. But the new cycle has kinda tipped in me one direction.
I have yet to see a Nemesis spawn in an Arena mono.
If that’s just my luck, then fine, I’m back to being neutral but if they can’t spawn in them then I think they need to be removed. If Nemesis are going to be a key touchstone endgame activity then we can have RNG of them likely spawning AND monos that have a straight up 0% chance because they’re arenas. That’s just stacking the RNG and while I know that’s in a lot of places, it shouldn’t be with this.
If I’m not mistaken, I never got Nemesis, nor Mages, nor Caches in arenas.
So I always thought they were coded to no have map mechanics or something… Then I saw a guy yesterday in other thread about arena, saying “I just got a Mage in arena like 30min ago… bug?”, which made me believe even more it was the case.
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I’ve seen Mages in them before. Don’t recall Caches though. But I don’t consider them a major hunt/endgame item. I’d say Mages and Nemesis do kinda fall in that realm though.
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Caches definitely used to appear in Arenas. I tried hopping in and out of one over and over once to see if it was worth it to quickly, repeatedly spawn caches (it wasn’t).
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Yeah, well, maybe the spawn rates are just way lower in arenas then, and since I avoid most of them, it should really be rarer for me see any Mages or Caches there.
That’s because they can’t spawn in Arena.
Arena is featureless by design as it needs everything to be killed in it and has no ‘space’ for other content. It would be fairly odd to have anything in there besides the shrines.
That should in general be a bug.
Yeah, as much as I know they removed all extra features from there, or they’re at least ridiculously rare.
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thank god, i’m not a conspiracist!
Then I’m all for removing them from monos.
If I accidentally load into arena echo, I instantly TP out and go somewhere else, even if it has a good reward. I’ve made a long post about arena echos long ago, nothing has changed since:
- boring small area
- takes more time, but gives less loot and stability
- cycle content does not spawn
- often too fast, higher risk of death, monsters run at light speed and shoot from everywhere
- often too slow, monsters slowly crawl from an unknown corner of the layout
Last two points do not contradict each other, it depends on the type of monsters. Big void boys walk slow like a turtle. A group of snakes with tornadoes and “nearby allies take less damage” aura - almost impossible to complete. I avoid monos with snakes completely
I’m also rerolling spire quests, because half of my deaths are to spires while I engage with nemesis
Overall some balancing to be done, but arena echos can’t be balanced, they need a complete rework
That’s my subjective feedback
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I’ve seen a post of someone saying they found a cache and another saying they spawned a mage.
Generally speaking, I think arena echoes should never spawn either or nemesis. Otherwise people will just find an arena echo and hop in and out repeatedly to spawn them, because you can immediately see it, since the map is small.
I’m sort of neutral about them as well. They’re sometimes annoying but they mostly don’t bother me, nor are they that frequent, in my experience.
I’ll just wait for the mono revamp in 1.3 before I cast my ballot.
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That’s a fair point, but, again, if they can’t spawn, they should be removed. I think as endgame - the monolith part - gets ‘broader’, as it were, we do not want to dilute the RNG so much that it’s as frustrating as some of the early rng on top of rng on top of rng.
While I agree with you in general, the reason why I said I’ll reserve my opinion until 1.3 is because Mike has said before that one of the things he’d like for monos was something to change the echoes (kinda like PoE map modifiers).
So if they bring that in for 1.3 and you have the choice to reroll arenas to something else, then I’d say they should stay. They’re already not that many and if you have a way to change them, then let them stay for those who want it, or for when you need an xp boost.
If they don’t bring that for 1.3, or if they bring it but you still can’t change arenas to something else, then yes, I’d say remove them.
I would say change the spawn-rate to ‘0’ for now and bring em back in 1.3
Because why should an issue persist for basically 10 or so months more when it can be handled?
I don’t think this is a major change in the code, and if… I would be rather baffled as the distribution has to come from somewhere and hence either removing the line triggering it at all or the value which decides the weight put to ‘0’ should solve it.
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Nah, if they add 2 nemesis to arena it will be the most desirable echo 
I had not heard this about 1.3 but if true. Sure, because people can then make a choice to reoll them into something else. That’d be perfectly viable as well. And that’s why I’d held off for so long on weighing in about this topic. But this new introduction of the Egg (which I think is awesome by the way) pushed it more towards, let’s say, SOMETHING has to be done about areana monos because now they really DO provide no real benefit to the mono progression.
I actually like them for the XP buff and on completion you get the FULL stability reward bar. Maybe they could lean into that, especially if they’re going to change them. Like maybe Areanas could still have nothing else spawn in them but they offer double the xp. So now you decide, do I want the XP or do I reroll becuase I’m more interested in farming uniques. etc. Lots of ways it could go.
And before everyone jumps in on that example, it’s just an example. No part of it was meant to be THIS IS HOW THEY MUST DO IT OR ITS TERRIBLE. I don’t know all the stats behind how much xp they give or how it’s faster to just speed run monos blah blah blah. Of course they’d have to take all of that into consideration. I just play the game for fun. I leave those details to the experts.
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They could even go further and instead of arenas giving less stability overall (even if you do always max it) they could give more stability instead. Especially because XP loses a lot of value after level 100, serving only to farm favour at that point.
So no rewards but higher XP and stability. If you want to farm the boss/shade, you’d actually welcome these in your outwards path. If not, at least you still get something out of it or you could just avoid them like now.
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To be fair has gotten far less useful as well with the envy glyphs available as now there’s a more reliable and collectible way of swiftly fighting timeline bosses.
Still useful… but not all too good anymore in comparison.
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Glyphs are rare, though. So if you can spam something that has no cost for a decent gain, you’d go for it.
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Yeah, absolutely fair.
Just meant it as a point to highlight that the overall perceived value has even gotten lower with the implementation as there’s alternatives now.
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