So, Arena is a fun diversion but it currently holds little value when compared to monoliths. Here are some ideas I have now that y’all are flush with cash:
Give us a boss rush! It’s fun and great practice.
Integrate team-based play and in-game achievements into Arena. I know that team-based or guild-based play isn’t high on your radar, but Arena seems like the perfect place to compromise. Two-to-four person teams could sign up for seasonal leaderboards, and it would add a bit of social interaction to the game beyond people begging for mono runs. You could add seasonal modifiers, as well. Maybe gift cosmetics (capes or auras) or titles for us tryhards.
Roguelike progression would fit perfectly into Arena. Certain ARPGs do this well, where you have strategically pick and choose boosts and nerfs for better risk-reward scenarios. Arena has a bare-bones version of this but making it tied to seasonal progression and rewards would be a better carrot. Being able to save seasonal progress would make Arena a fun alternative to endlessly running monoliths. Going back to my suggestion for seasonal teams, it would fit well for solo or group play. It also gives people a choice on how to progress; some people may want to do wave-based progression over running the campaign over and over. I am not saying make it an alternative to monos, but making it integral to the overall seasonal experience would be useful.
Make Arena an option for alternative progression. People already have dungeon shortcuts, but I feel like after a player completes the seasonal run of new content they should be able to level alts quickly in the Arena. This is also linked to suggestion #3.
Unique rewards and achievements. This is an easy one. People love tooting their own horn.
Tower-defense. There are already some woven echoes that have tower-defense mechanics. Give us some of that variety in Arena. Even better, give us woven modifiers for arena to better integrate it into faction progression.
Link it to some type of game mechanic that carries over to progression-oriented seasonal play. I mentioned this in another post, but rather than offer swiftness on items, maybe tie it to Arena progression. This goes back to making Arena more integrated with the rest of the game.
I dislike Arena very much and I hope they don’t make it a worthwhile game mode and keep it just a leaderboard thing. Arenas to me are the most braindead and boring stuff in LE.
So, people complain about “not enough to do” but want EHG to scrap an already-built system instead of improving it. The constructive thing would be to make Arena less brain-dead (because as it stands, it is exactly that).
I only disagree with #7. You shouldn’t have any progression locked behind arena. Because otherwise you are forcing players to play arenas even if they hate it (like me). Which will only lead to burn out and players leaving.
Exclusive uniques are fine. If you want them you can work for them, or you can buy them in MG.
Having some progression mechanic that will make you stronger if you do arena and weaker if you don’t isn’t fine.
I agree that locking progression behind Arena is bad. In terms of an idea like granting levels of Swiftness, you could also tie it to completing tiers in the Dungeons. That gives people a choice on how to get perks. I don’t see Arena as an exclusive or full alternative, but it’s good to have progression options. Like BK, we could “have it our way.” I’d love to see some variety in the types of progression we can choose, but the true end-game should be a unified experience. For example, end-game starts with empowered monos. Completing a jacked-up boss-rush would satisfy the level and gear requirements to unlock empowered. That’s when the Harbinger hunt begins and when Arena progression ends.
From my personal view they could remove arena and be done with it. They have dungeons, arena and monos and every game mode is underwhelming compared to other games. We’ll most likely never see a Grim Dawn style arena that was far better. We’ll nost likely never see mapping on a PoE level and dungeons… heck I would be so happy when those were gone as well instead of adding items to skip them because they heared ppl saying them those dungeons are a crappy slog.
So I want them to get quality stuff done but so far I can’t see it. So for my personal taste Arena could vanish. If they make improvements on the worst content people complain about for years they do a bad job when there is so much room for improvements on their base endgame systems. Again this is my oppinion on the topic so no hard feeling. I would be happy for Arena players if they waste time and effort on it to make a minority of players happy.
