Arenas need a reworking ASAP. What are the devs thinking? ($$$ obviously)

Feedback and Suggestions
1

Even with the introduction of ranked leaderboards, barely anyone wants to stop grinding to even attempt them. Barely anyone is playing in general. Here’s the three core problems with Arenas currently:

  1. Pointless loot and stopping action every 5 levels. If you were to grind a 500 level arena, you would be pressing '‘Attempt harder challenges’ 80 times during the run. 80 pauses, are you kidding me? At worst, there should be a confirmation to continue every 25 levels. Even that is tedious. Right now it is atrociously tedious and annoys the user and also destroys immersion. They should just scrap this mechanic and simplify the situation. This was actually a mistake made by the Grim Dawn team on their arenas… just let the user go at it and give them a reward at the end that reflects the wave they got to. Don’t overcomplicate it with ‘FOMO’ and making a player feel bad if they died taking a challenge instead of receiving a reward. Again, this Dev team has had time to see the flaws in the Grim Dawn system and somehow made it worse. The whole reason you would even do an Endless Arena is to feel powerful, and poking the user every 5 seconds and changing the map every 3 minutes is unbearable.

  2. They take so damn long. I just spent 35-40 minutes getting to Arena level 250ish. That’s insane. A player gunning for a 500+ Arena shouldn’t have to invest a large portion of their day to just attempt to get a high wave. Take a hint from Diablo 3 and other games, and allow the user to start at the last checkpoint. Do the devs really think I want to sink 4 hours of gameplay into doing 2-3 leaderboard attempts? That’s pretentious and reveals that the devs do not play their own game.

  3. The Arenas are an absolute mess. You have to constantly move in a circular patten along the bottom of the screen to avoid off-screen shots that you have no way to prepare for. The map layouts are absolutely goofy as well. This is a major Last Epoch problem in general. I thought initially the enemies that can shoot from 2 screens away were just something they hadn’t fixed yet. They really don’t play their own game. There’s nothing skillful or enjoyable about kiting a mob and realizing you just dashed into 200 icicles you had no way of knowing were in flight. It turns battle into some form of roulette where the fantasy of feeling powerful is completely lost.

I have no idea what the devs were thinking with this. It’s very very clear they do not play their own game and this is just a cashgrab for middle aged programmers and coders who need to buy a wife and pay off that second mortgage. A lot of shrines don’t even work in Arenas as well, so you risk dying to get a potential reward only for it to not spawn or be active.

There are also countless other giveaways that these devs do not play their own game. For example, disabling chat is something you have to uncheck and recheck every single time you restart the game. So everytime I open this game I have to see some pathetic twitch viewer saying something edgy before I have to open menus and redisable it.

I don’t know how a company that has received such a ridiculous backing and support is able to mess up so badly, but I guess this is just the state of ‘shareholder’ gaming companies in 2023.

You honestly might as well scrap the ENTIRE arena system you have made. It is not fun, not fulfilling, provides zero progression, and the playerbase speaks by pretty much nobody even playing them. Just take a hint from Diablo and restart with one map and one layout and work from there. This is a classic case of trying to do too many things, while doing each one of them extremely poorly.

2

Someone’s mad at a game he clearly hates.

Take a deep breath and go touch some grass.

9 Likes
3

OneOfTheBestWhiners

Are you capable of posting anything that isnt fueled with rage? If there are so few people playing why are you only number 13?

3 Likes
4

Dont know why he is attacked in some way. OP is absolutely right, Arenas are even worse than those spire mechanics.

Thebloot is not only atrocious, it is non existent. The out of screen one shots are a problem in the entire game. People have said this for a long time and nithing has happened.

5

Oh, I don’t know, maybe it’s the rage behind the words, or the baseless attacks of the devs, or the stupid strawman basis of his “argument?” Take your pick.

9 Likes
6

What is ‘baseless’ when they just provided extremely concise feedback on why arena is shit, everything they wrote is exactly why I hate it apart from the fact its degenerate game play overall and you seem to get offended by the ‘dont play their own game’ comment which is arguably true, who could enjoy this setup they created. You only have to play it once to see its garbage and has been for 3 years and the only improvement was some unique NPC that attacks you

Not really, most people who hate it like me just ignore it and dont engage, others who do actually enjoy it and occasionally rage but their intent is to improve the system

Then theres people like you who offer nothing at all

7

Just use another key, not arena, but arena memory key.

8

What in the hell is “concise” by them saying;

Did you even read their post? That’s the baseless and crude stuff people are having an issue with. Arena needs to be reworked, sure. Being a straight up prick though and insulting the developers personally isn’t acceptable in any way.

It feels like you didn’t even read their post or skimmed over that part. That or you find insulting the developers and calling the entire game a cash-grab somehow acceptable.

4 Likes
9

I’m not even sure what that word even means in a gaming context. I get it when it’s used to describe states of matter, but not gameplay.

TBH, I’ve not played arena for years due to the mind-numbing slog that you have to do to get anywhere “meaningful” (ie, x waves below your highest), but to say “dont play their own game” which is arguably (& probably demonstrably) false. That & the invective from every single post of the OP’s just makes me roll my eyes.

2 Likes
10

This:

1 Like
11

Was Mike playing the secret exclusive content creator version all D4 all this time during his Friday Stream ?

2 Likes
12

This statement is enough in my opinion to disregard your entire post. You should learn to give feedback much more respectfully if you expect any actual results. If you came here just to rant and not see any changes than you definitely achieved your goal.

11 Likes
13

But he’s so edgy and cool! I needs to be like him!!!

3 Likes
14

He’s edgy all right. Kinda like a junk car hit by a train and then mashed into a square in the scrap yard. But I don’t think that’s the edgy they were going for.

It’s like these don’t exist:

15

If you got to Arena wave 400, you’d use a memory key and start on wave 200. That’s still 200 divided by 5, FOURTY times you have to pause combat and say “yes, I’d like to keep playing”.

Again, this isn’t an argument. There are even threads on reddit, the place where low-lifes WORSHIP game devs… and even they collectively agreed Arenas are stale, tedious, and not fun.

That’s the issue with this game and you can see it in the player numbers and activity. People install the game, get excited because everything feels decent, and then the ‘systems’ hit. Meaningless loot system, no fun items that change combat very much, and even when you do find one for your build it needs LP to compete with even a regular rare and then if its high level you have to be able to do Julra on T4 to mod it.

You see the same thing with most of the steam reviews for this game. Most of the positive reviews say something that includes that they are being patient with the Devs because the game has potential.

I’d say 4 years or however long this has been, has been a lot of time to show whether the devs were going to exceed or disappoint. Turns out it was all a cash grab to attempt to sell plain looking cloaks for $25 a smack.

I don’t get how you guys can have a company pull a switcheroo like this on you, and still not smell the baguette in the oven. I can’t think of any company whose game was in early development, whom had FAILED to release several of their classes they promised, and then pull out a box from behind their back ‘hehe $25 for this cloak, Sir’.

Honestly the worst cash grab since that $250 Darth Vader character game that company released (only heard about it).

Do I sound salty? Yes, I’m salty because this game legitimately HAD potential to be fun long term. Turns out to be the same formula you see with all dev companies in 2023, try to make money off whales and move onto the next product.

16

The cherry pick is strong amongst the white knighting in this forum. You have issue with one sentence, and automatically disregard everything else – which many others happen to agree with and/or have pointed out in past. Get off your goddamn morality soapbox and add some constructive rebuttal, if he is so wrong. Otherwise, stop throwing stones in your glass house.

1 Like
17

Hey, i thought it’s really sad, because the guy has some valid criticism, but instead of presenting it in a constructive way, he just wraps it in rants and insults.

It is hard to take somebody serious who is having a nervous breakdown over a video game.

6 Likes
18

Greetings Travelers,

Thanks for providing your honest feedback. We truly do appreciate it.

That said, this thread is getting a little rough. I’d like to remind everyone to be respectful to one another. Please stay on topic, and contribute to the conversation in a constructive manner.

5 Likes
19

As much as this thread is a mess, including the OP, he does have some points that I agree with.

Having meaningless loot in the middle is annoying. Having to click “continue” every 5 waves is annoying. Lack of meaningful rewards is annoying, changing the map every 3 minutes probably is annoying too. The process is boring for the most part.

I can’t really suggest any improvements other than to perhaps look at the Grim Dawn crucible reward system, and perhaps put in something like that. Remove the individual bucket rewards every 5 waves and condense it into a portal you can enter every 100 waves where all that loot is condensed there, maybe with a NPC that you talk to who asks you a few questions with multiple choices, asking you what type of loot you want; more helmets, more weapons, more idols, more exalted chance, whatever. Then enter a room with 10 chests or something and enjoy. Maybe just something to look forward to.

The ‘click continue’ every 5 waves could be changed to every 10 waves, hes right, we don’t need that popping up so often, so maybe just start with that.

Yeah I play arena, its my main focus, but still I don’t feel that interested in doing arena. I just force myself through it, because I want a leaderboard position/competition, but if I had to be honest, I don’t enjoy it all of alot. And I have other people who tell me arena is extremely boring for x and y reason, and I think to myself, hmm, hes actually right, that is mundane when you put it like that.

Some small improvements could be made for sure, but maybe it requires alot more thought and time to figure out what those improvements would be.

3 Likes
20

This is a quality rant, honestly.