And, potentially, not acting like a monumental bellend while describing the problems. Your post was fine, the OP’s, not quite so much.
2 Likes
A lot of these more negative reviews are coming out at a fortuitous time for other titles like D4. I can’t help but notice the outrageous language and vitriol being infused in some of these more recent posts. Words like “unfair”, “punish” and “money obviously”, are thrown out casually, all inappropriately of course. I’d hate to speculate too much, but I just think it’s interesting that people are coming out with the torches now when EHG has been nothing but thoughtful and receptive to all of the feedback we’ve given them so far. They’ve done next to nothing to warrant or encourage this type of backlash. Yet, a tiny minority of posts seem to think they have. Hopefully this is just coincidence and not some kind of bad-will campaign on the part of corporate ne’er-do-wells who have an interest in astroturfing something like this.
In any case, I’ve leveled five characters now and never used the arena, so it can’t be too much of an issue. My experience has been that just completing monolith ends you up somewhere between levels 96 and 100 and that takes a total of about 120 hours, from level 1 all the way to the end of Empowered Monolith. For an ARPG this feels like a lot, but I don’t think the arena is the issue, so much as just a lot of padding of playtime on the tail end of the game. In general, as long as the game is fun and what you’re doing is interesting, it’s not a huge problem. I would just much rather get to see my character leveled and see what it’s capable of a little sooner than that. Anywhere between 40 and 80 hours would feel better. (While I’m sure there are probably players who have figured out how to do it in that amount of time already, I’m talking about normal play, not optimal play.)
4 Likes
I’d be surprised if you could look at the D4 player numbers and notice if the entire LE playerbase jumped ship. Some people just like to shit on any game that isn’t the one they’ve attached their flag to or become emotionally invested in.
Also, the irony of using $$$ as a slight if one is into modern Blizzard games…
4 Likes
Don’t worry, just a few months and we get 1.0, where all bugs will be fixed, we get three new polished and balanced ascendancy classes, and systems like the arena will get a major overhaul to make them more enjoyable /s
1 Like
Right - If corporate greed and dodgy product quality were what people avoided in this industry. they’d play LE and nothing else at this point. What I find so disgusting about these types of accusations in this context is that they’re a type of anti-truth. Reality happens to be the exact opposite of what they’re describing here.
Welcome to the forums!! 
As for the rest…
Calm the farm… Its a game not a raving lunatic threatening your loved ones.
If you dont like it go do something else…
2 Likes
It’s too bad that the OP has some really valid points, but will be all in vain because he does not know how to talk and respect others 
One good missed opportunity for fair feedback.
Even me have downvoted, as much as I agree with some of his arguments.
Arena does need something better.
This is and old post of mine basically with the same thinking of OP:
"Endless Arena, do you all like how it is now?
I think it need some tweaks. Its literally not thrilling enough for a long ride just for the sake of seeing how far you can go, and not rewarding enough for farming the barrels every 5 waves. Not to mention its too long, the progression is extremely time-consuming, and has a precarious replay system.
Dont get me wrong, I love what the game offers. Its my first char, and I finally made it to end game content. After struggling a lot to build my bladedancer now I can farm easly 200+ corruption timelines, I can finish Arena T4.
Im the guy who love doing these kinds of endless rounds/ waves, but the way its here is boring from the start. This should be one of the main topics in end game, should be more elaborated.
There are some easy things that could be implemented:
1 - The difficult should go higher more quickly. You take forever doing hundreds of similar waves.
2 - Tweak the arena key of memory. It desperately needs a better system. My game crashed while I was doing wave 250 (my first atempt), I used one and went back to wave 120. I gave up at wave 130 and now I will start at wave 100 next time.
3 - A boss every 10 rounds, so that it becomes more challenging and more thrilling to fight the arena. This also match the need for more unique enemies / bosses in the game. So you can put them in here.
4 - A special chest every 50 rounds, with better drops, nothing to make the game unbalanced, but something rewarding."
3 Likes
OP needs a damn chill pill. No one likes such insufferable, insulting whinging. There are enough Karens and conspiracy twits foaming at the mouth out there, we don’t need them in a damned video game forum, too.
That said, Arena is boring. I’m sure they have plans for a good rework as it doesn’t feel good right now compared to monolith, and not having touched it since before Empowered Mono were implemented I can only imagine the loot isn’t as satisfying. I keep meaning to try it again at some point but I keep forgetting to bother because even Arena echoes get annoying. I think it’s mostly the layouts and how the spawners work. I don’t want to do just that for an hour+ and have little to show for it. Grim Dawn’s Forgotten Gods DLC endless dungeon is a far more engaging (and barely any more sophisticated) implementation of the same basic thing, though I’ve never tried Crucible mode despite owning it lol
2 Likes
Crucible is a great example of a functional and thrilling arena mode. I never played forgotten gods endless dungeon, and while the crucible was not endless , till 170 waves in 3 different difficult, it was very engaging too.
1 Like
I would add tiers like dungeon tiers every 100 levels. For example level 300 would be T3. Once I unlock T3 i can select it to start from there any time (like with dungeons).
The reason I’d like that it is because
- you split the amount of time to play arena for people who cannot push for several hours straight
- if you have a new build, you can faster get to its limit
3 Likes
Its a nice suggestion, could work. The way it is now I really cant see the point of people spending, 2, 3, 4 hours fighting hundreds of similar waves that offer very little reward and the worst part, the experience fail to be a trhrilling, fun or adventurous ride. I know there is the ladder system, to compete with each other is some kind of fun, there is a good sensation with it, but come one, we could have something more elaborated and more fair to our playtime.
I hope im not being boring or repetitive, but Ill take another game one more time. Some waves in Grim Dawn Crucible summoned 3 to 4 bosses in the same wave. My heart sped up trying to beat those bastards. I had to actively run looking for best positions, avoid some attacks, look for the best option to kill it first. It was a hell of a fight but very thrilling.
Its just one suggestion/example, im not that creative, they dont necessarily need to copy other game system. I know EHG have people that can come up with others suggestions, other ideas to spice up the challenge in arena.
Maybe Im going too far, I dont know if its possible to balance a fight like this, but imagine achieving Wave 300 and you have to fight Emperor or Corpses, one of the Orobyss and an Empowered version of regular bosses, lets say Empowered God Hunter Argentus. That would be a real challenge. Going even far, for these kind of content, we would need stronger mobile bosses focused more on single target damage. Some of the strongest bosses around here are just giant or static structures, or with too much area damage covering almost all the screen that would be impossible to put 2 bosses in the same space.
I mentioned this earlier, but I don’t see in what way it actually matters. This is why I suspect astroturfing, is because it’s odd to be this upset about something the OP has the option to just not play. There’s literally no reason you have to. I’m on my 5th character right now, level 86, and I still have yet to play it once.
My complaint with any mode like this is only ever with it being mandatory, like to get to really high levels in order to see extremely rare or otherwise nearly-exclusive loot. In other words, as long as I don’t have to do it to see the content in the game, I’m fine with it. If they make it more fun, great. Just don’t require me to play it to see the loot I want.
The reason being, no matter how fun or not fun a wave clear / arena mode might be, they’re time consuming. Brutally so. In the time you could complete two Echo’s in Empowered Monolith, you’re not even halfway done with an arena run. And you can’t pause to get up and answer the door or use the restroom. And even if you could pause a number of times, you’re asking the player to sit there 15, 20, 30 minutes to see one loot roll, however extravagant it might be. That’s MMO levels of bad.
Bear in mind also, there’s basically no way doing that half-hour-ish grind two or three times isn’t going to get boring, no matter how much of a blast it is the first time. There’s very little you can do to change it up and that’s a big part of why it’s not great content. Procedurally generated dungeons at least would have the advantage of not letting you know what was coming, so you could have the sensation of exploration while you’re doing this, as well as having lots of loot spread out all over so you feel like you’re getting more than one crack at getting the stuff you want.
Having said all that, if something like this could be shortened to 4 or 5 minutes and give a decent amount of loot and experience, maybe it would be enjoyable. At least when you got a key from Monolith, you’d feel like you were getting a boost, almost like a gacha system, where you can go get some extra money and experience if you’re falling behind. Otherwise it’s just going to be a key to go to the same kind of arena that already exists in Monolith. And if they were to take those out to then put them behind Arena keys, basically nobody would play them anyway. It has to be rewarding and it has to be short enough not to bore you to death if you do two or three of them. That would be my hypothetical model for fixing it.
2 Likes
I 100% agree with you on this one. Arena isn’t mandatory and is so boring to me I refuse to play it at nearly all costs. The only exception (and I even hate being forced to do this) is an Arena map in the monos that I have to do in order to get the reward node I’m farming for in the first place.
If someone like the OP likes Arenas then more power to them, but please provide feedback in a respectful manner, it will get you a much better response.
1 Like
Sorry, but I think you missed the point 
Just because you dont like it, that does not mean it can not be great for others. In fact , as I mentioned earlier, I love these kind of content. The one thing I agree is that its very time consuming, but if well designed its worth for the fun and sometimes a little reward.
We are upset because It can be so much better, it has potential to be something amazing. The OP has the option to not play the current arena, but he also has the option to fight and give feedback to receive a reworked arena that will make him thrilled.
Has any feedback around lately gives at least a impression that one would want the game to go towards it being mandatory? I think I never saw anything slightly related to that. Generally speaking I think noone want that. You mentioned something that noone has asked and deviate from topic…
Generally the feedbacks around Arena is that its “the elephant in the room”. Barely functional, most generally dont care about it in its current design and has no rewards at all (I know T4 arena bosses have some cool unique drops, but Im focusing more in endless arena).
there is no chance this happening, and its far from reasonable and far from what many want to get a better experience from arena.Thats not how a good arena/wave content works. 4-5 minutes to get good loot is nonsense. I think you spaced out hardly on this one. The concept around here is not unballancing things, its improve something that hardly anyone cares in the moment and that has potential to be so much better. You wont get something that is 3,4, 5 hours to 4-5 minutes. We are suggesting something more balanced, who knows, maybe 30 to 60 minutes for average runs, 1 to 2 hours for a longer run.
2 Likes
There’s no way to make a mode that lasts over 30 minutes and all you’re doing is fighting enemies interesting or long-lasting content. As a challenge it would kind of make sense, just like an endless battle mode to see who can last the longest. But as something that is to be repeated and stay interesting, it having to take that amount of time is just going to make ever doing it as content pointless. You would have to get so much loot and experience from it that it would be half-again better than doing something else, and the issue is that would then make it the absolute best way to grind for anything. You’d basically be making it nearly mandatory at that point, because it would be the best way to play the game and a waste of time not to use it. Again, to reiterate what the issue is here: As something to do as a competition when you’re done with everything else in the game, fine. But as something you need to do to level or get gear, definitely not fine.
I’ve thought about this a lot over the course of years, having dealt with this with other games and game modes, and the more you funnel players into concentrating on the same thing nonstop for longer and longer, the less interesting it becomes. The fact that there are a handful of people who exist to punish themselves in this way doesn’t make it something fun that other people want to have to do also. This is why games have different types of challenges and modes, because they don’t appeal to everyone. Some of them appeal to nearly nobody. And being glued to my desk for eternity begging the game to drop an item I can’t get any other way or because it’s hours faster than leveling elsewhere definitely doesn’t appeal to me. I would hope something like that wouldn’t appeal to almost anyone. People have better things to do with their time.
my friend, you are heavily biased here and I think thats where lies the “conflict”. I understand you concern about it becoming too important, or mandatory, but Im having faith in EHG that this will not happen. In fact there is a long way so that Arena mode can be at least relevant to game.
As someone who does not enjoy the mode you fail to see that it does not need to give too many loot to be fun. It definitely needs better rewards, but not to the point of being the best place to farm. The core point of the game about farming is T4 dungeons and monoliths, and I doubt it will change. But that does not exclude the chance of Arena being a reasonable source to get some rewards in future.
There is no punishment here. Not only there is a good amount of ways to make this mode interesting, but also some games have succesfully done it. There are plenty of ARPG players that like the mode, and as you said, “This is why games have different types of challenges and modes, because they don’t appeal to everyone”.
So are the people that really don’t like the Arena.
2 Likes
I can agree Arena as a pushing the boundaries concept is not in a good place. Not agree at all in your flaming towards developers and all the bad stuff afterwards.
I don’t understand why you should start in half of your progress. Doesn’t make any sense, arena with this method is just a marathon. If you’re pushing around 800 waves, means you need to push 400 waves every single attempt, and you better not F up.
You should have: first, your highest mark with that character should setup your checkpoint, so if you got into 800 waves, then 700, 800 is still prevalent to your checkpoint. Also, should be a cap on how many floors you would need to re-do. For example a much healthier way would be 75% of your progress or 200 floors, whichever is lower.
Also, I think we need a lot more spice to make things interesting, killing monsters wave after wave is incredibly dull and uninteresting. Add special effects, that affect severely how you interact with the arena: a big flame pillar always rotating from the center, so you cannot wait in a corner killing things offscreen. Some kind of mortar so you cannot stay in place killing monsters, similar to spires in echoes. Give monsters special effects: explosions, more speed, etc. A big bouncing area that make monsters immune to damage while inside it. Rotate between a bunch of different effects to make battles interesting, so you have to battle both the monsters and the environment effects.
Anyways that’s my two cents.
2 Likes
And thats really interesting 2 cents. And thats how I think things could work. Ideas floating from others, who knows, maybe we can get an interesting battle arena in future.
2 Likes