Current State of Arena

[Katjes]

Over the last months arena has become a wasteland , players only do it for the Dc and even so it takes long to find opponents.

In my opinion and maybe others will not share it , i think reason is players have no real incentive to pvp. Some will say hm skills are a good reason but the Duelist bundle provides most of the necessary items needed for those skills.

This game and its developers seem to be proud of its pvp yet they do nothing to populate it's Arena.

Why not add better rewards for arena? More cosmetics and items that would incentivise the entire population to join?

Add better rewards for wining a match and not for Afk'ing like it happened in last event.

Stop encouraging players to just afk give them a good reason to fight for that win.

Like i said this is just my opinion, maybe others will have different suggestions, feel free to share them but please lets stay respectful and avoid flaming.

Thank you.

 

 

[Kyrrua]

Everytime we gave solutions, everytime nobody heard us.

I'm part of those who created countless topic about how to improve arena, like make every hm skill available from start in arena, put some cosmetics or outfits or weapon skins that u can buy with beans and every months or so it rotates and you got new ones. (it would boost arena for sure but they want people to pay for this, not to farm them for free so it will never never never never happen).

 

I admire your try from the bottom of my heart, but this topic is again and again and again useless and will never be taken into account.

At best a mod will post saying the famous "tell us how you feel about it, we appreciate your feedbacks".

But nothing will never happen, I can bet 100$ on it right now.

Have a nice day tho.

[Grimoir]

4 hours ago, Katjes said:

Over the last months arena has become a wasteland , players only do it for the Dc and even so it takes long to find opponents.

In my opinion and maybe others will not share it , i think reason is players have no real incentive to pvp. Some will say hm skills are a good reason but the Duelist bundle provides most of the necessary items needed for those skills.

This game and its developers seem to be proud of its pvp yet they do nothing to populate it's Arena.

Why not add better rewards for arena? More cosmetics and items that would incentivise the entire population to join?

Add better rewards for wining a match and not for Afk'ing like it happened in last event.

Stop encouraging players to just afk give them a good reason to fight for that win.

Like i said this is just my opinion, maybe others will have different suggestions, feel free to share them but please lets stay respectful and avoid flaming.

Thank you.

 

 

Thats why arena is semi dead in the first place, because they added more rewarding wins and more punishing losses / afking. People only do arena to rank high for the leader boards, once they get the rank they want they stop doing it till season ends. nothing you do will motivate ploayers, not even cosmetics. Accept it and move on. Its another broken system like factions in open world.

[Dad]

Fars I can tell half the people only care about their little rank in arena as if it means something. You hit gold, yay, you hit play ok cool. You win a million dollars for it? No? Then why are you telling us this?

 kr days we've been playing in spar all this time. You can't learn without helping each other on this and that class.

 

Each time I go in for my 24/7 pvp it's always some immature idiot with sex names yelling out loud about being the better man or w/e. So I can see why it's a dead place.

 

Not only that but it has always been annoying dealing with players who play by using all their skills then fleeing away for CD. That really needs a huge fix. Been annoying me since kr pvp days.

[Displeased]

Before you even attempt to understand why people aren't joining arena, you must understand why they're avoiding it. Sure, you can encourage players to join by creating better incentives; better rewards or maybe, just maybe, if arena were actually fun? But giving reasons to join usually doesn't do enough to offset the main reason that makes casual players avoid arena almost as badly as they avoid 6v6: Humiliation. Correct me if I'm wrong, but for the average video gamer, the number one reason a player stops playing (along with boredom) is if they've been humiliated bad enough, whether repeatedly or a lot at once. If I am correct on that assumption, then it would take a disproportionate participation (notice I didn't say winning) reward just to offset that big "never-again" attitude casual and/or mediocre players have towards pvp in general. And even then, they will still afk if they're allowed to.

[AriShadow2]

Arena is okay.

[Zagaroth]

3 hours ago, Dad said:

 some immature idiot with sex names yelling out loud about being the better man or w/e. So I can see why it's a dead place.

true, i dont understand what they thinking when give sex name to their char, maybe just want  to attract attention

 

btw more n more ppl move to 6v6 now and another reason is less ppl play bns compare to 2 month ago

[Dad]

4 hours ago, Displeased said:

Before you even attempt to understand why people aren't joining arena, you must understand why they're avoiding it. Sure, you can encourage players to join by creating better incentives; better rewards or maybe, just maybe, if arena were actually fun? But giving reasons to join usually doesn't do enough to offset the main reason that makes casual players avoid arena almost as badly as they avoid 6v6: Humiliation. Correct me if I'm wrong, but for the average video gamer, the number one reason a player stops playing (along with boredom) is if they've been humiliated bad enough, whether repeatedly or a lot at once. If I am correct on that assumption, then it would take a disproportionate participation (notice I didn't say winning) reward just to offset that big "never-again" attitude casual and/or mediocre players have towards pvp in general. And even then, they will still afk if they're allowed to.

Humiliation? You can't be serious. It's not like we're playing in a tournament then I can understand that but no, we're on our pc daily with no one around to laugh at you and even if it was and they did so what it's a game! You know, just like real life stuff happens. Are people this sensitive these day??

[Thicc Stoccpot]

Wall of text, but please bear with me.

 

I'm a casual, average, not very good at competitive mode, playing at high ping (300+ ms since I play from South East Asia - and I started way before BnS Thailand and Vietnam came to be), and here's my reasons for not doing Arena often (or ever):

 

- Ping too high: Nothing I can do to fix this, since ping comes from the distance between where I live and the server. And I think a lot of players in this game have high ping as well - maybe not as high as mine but not low either. 300ms of ping means you can't tech chase very well, if at all. The duration for cc is usually one or 2 seconds, by the time my inputs get past the delay, my opponents are already up and going. I can never do 100-0 combo like Jaesung does in his youtube tutorials. Koreans originally made this game to be played at Korea, where they have next to zero delay and can time their combos to the precise number of hits... Unlike here, I'm lucky if I can do 2 helixes in 1 air combo when i play Warlock (and  Jaesung does 5 helixes in his tutorial). Or Blademaster dragon tongue - this thing is the most ping reliant of the entire game. I can only do 4 DTs per tab, so yeah you can understand that my 100-0 ability is severely damaged. So, it's significantly harder for you to land a cc, and you can't punish your opponents very well, which means you are naturally at a competitive disadvantage. In I a PVP match, I don't just fight my opponents, I also have to fight the game itself. Sometimes I play, I notice if I had lower ping, even just a little bit lower, I would win against this guy - he isn't even that good. Yes, I'm not very good either, but I can win. However, nope, ping cockblocks me so I get killed instead, which leads to my 2nd point:

 

- Frustration/Humiliation/Pressure/Saltiness: Frustration/Saltiness, yes - it's a thing. Try PVP at 300ms, just try and you get what I mean. Losing not through the faults of my own, losing when I could have won, you bet I'm gonna be frustrated and you bet I'm gonna be salty about it.  Humiliation, now this, I think mostly comes from the players themselves with trash-talks from other players being the icing on the cake. If this game has a larger pvp population then trash talk would be indeed a real thing (like in LoL), but the population is quite small here. I hardly get trash talked when I'm in arena, in fact, most people in tags during the last pvp event were very supportive even, which I liked very much. Comes back to humiliation, now, when I lose too much (which has happened, surprises surprises), I start to feel bad. The feeling I think mostly comes from myself. Try losing 5-6 or maybe 10 matches in a row and you get what I mean. Especially when you lose due to ping reasons. I'm perfectly fine losing when my opponents are better than me (look at the way they tech chase, I can tell), but I don't take losing as well when this clumsy guy wins simply because he has better ping. I can only tolerate so many losses... I know I'm not a very good at PvP and I've adjusted my mindset to prepare for a high number of losses, but yeah, even I canendure that many losses. I used to be arena - active. But one day I was like: :Nah, this is hopeless, I'm tired of this now, and bored too." I PVP mostly for fun, not for win, but I'd like some wins too. Sure I've had wins, but the saltiness and frustration I've had to go through to get the wins... I've decided that it's not worth it anymore. Last point, pressure, as you know, PvP is intense and I've found myself experiencing adrenaline rush times and times again. I like that. But then some players don't take pressure or adrenaline rush very well.

 

- Different expectations: People seek different things when they come to the game. Some like intense, competitive aspects. Some just want to chill and relax. There are players that don't like the pressure from competitive mode, as I've mentioned above. Shutting off their brains for a few hours (no offense here) and running dungeons with friends, for many (myself included) is relaxing. So they don't touch arena. Can't blame them I guess.

 

- Not rewarding enough: Incentives. This is indeed a big thing. Now, I think the game isn't doing well at all at introducing new players or players that haven't pvp before to the arena (AKA fresh blood). The game just sorta fails to do that. If you wanna try PvP, you gotta go through this "initiation" phase where you get your asses kicked by players that are more experienced than you. You get kicked around as you learn the ropes, and one day you'll find yourself being good enough to kick back. When you are good enough to retaliate & win - your "initiation" phase is over. Now, as you can see, "initiation" phase undoubtedly comprises of a lot of losing, with how long the phase itself lasts depends on the player's ability. For players who like PVP, certainly they can tolerate the losses in the phase well, and some even find motivation to do better via losing. For these guys, even with poor rewards and poor introduction to pvp from the game, they'll still fight simply because they enjoy it. But then how many players like this are there? Not many I think. The game needs to do better at introducing and enticing the PVE players to do PVP, and yes, the PVE players are where the majority of the population at. So how do you introduce/lure the average PVE population into doing PVP? By giving them PVE rewards of course (upgrade materials, cosmetics...) So far, I think the game doesn't reward or introduces the casual average PVE players enough for them to get past the "initiation" phase. Just soulstones? Not good enough... And the price of HMskills are mostly so steep that most PVP players would just dismiss it immediately and 'd rather pay gold for - even with how steep some of the skills are. 600 gold for an ember, or about 110k zen beans - aka about 150 wins? You bet they'd rather grind hard PVE rather than doing PVP for that. The possiblity of getting good at arena - and comes with it the enjoyment (since the better you are at something, the more you'd enjoy it) is within each and every PVE player, But sadly, the reward from arena and the introduction are so poor to "lure" them in, which discourages them to find out for themselves how fun PVP can be and how good at PVP they can be.

 

Edit: I forgot to add that the low PVP population - meaning the lack of inexperienced players isn't helping either. There are also a few things like  zero rating decay, the alts abuse for rewards, etc... But then as a casual player, I don't think the average PVE guys care much about those things, but they sure give a bad impression on the forums tho.

 

If you can bear with me till this point, I salute you for reading through this wall of text and thank you for reading. :)

[Displeased]

4 hours ago, Dad said:

Humiliation? You can't be serious. It's not like we're playing in a tournament then I can understand that but no, we're on our pc daily with no one around to laugh at you and even if it was and they did so what it's a game! You know, just like real life stuff happens. Are people this sensitive these day??

Another word for it would be shame. Believe it or not, some people feel bad when they lose a pvp match against another human being, regardless of who else is or isn't in the room with them. It's similar to the feeling of frustration one may feel when dying to a raid boss, except there comes with it the implicit realization that somewhere out there, another person is better than you. At least that's what I'm guessing an average, casual player thinks when they avoid arena. Those that don't mind losing a lot before getting good are the ones that actually pvp at least semi-regularly. But to answer your rhetorical question; yes, I suppose a lot of casual players are that sensitive nowadays. 

 

Edit: Thicc Stoccpot illustrated my point well and I didn't even read his post until after I finished replying.

[KzE]

• reward for winning is garbage
• reward for loosing is even more
• HM skill accessibility suxx
• class balance non-existent

[Laosduude]

Ping affects your gameplay greatly, kills most peoples moods.

Rewards are trash, people rather deal with 6v6 to get shit like moonstones because gold is of huge value to upgrade all your gear.

Class balance in arena specific setting is pretty trash. Just look at Jaesungs video from the past discussing with other world tournament eSport BnS pvpers in KR about class balance.

[Suna]

Soulstones are worthless and they even killed pet upgrading method via pvp. Before it was free upgrade the pet if you collect braveries yourself, but now it cost moonstones and elysian orbs and cost more craft than buy from marketplace.

[SJ]

I think someone pointed out the reason. The rewards are based on the ranking, which discharages the majority of players from playing PVP. Besides ranking, other rewards should be added to total wins, e.g. 100 wins in 1v1 or 100 wins in 3v3. Even if you end up with silver in the end of the season. You can get good rewards.

 

For me, to win 100 times is almost equal to playing 300 matches, people will find PVP interesting after large participation.

 

Finally, 3V3 now has nobody queuing around 1600 rank,  30 mins, 40 mins wait, nobody, especially between 11pm - 11am. This is urgent, forget about the new content.

 

 

[ombremq]

Arena is filled by a group of people using X alts, i don't know about you but, often now i struggle against a silver that can perfectly tech chase and then the next match i fight a potatoe...i even now fight top ranked people in tag, because they spend their time deranking to farm low ranked people...so now i just rank for season reward and never try again, i let those kids have fun with their dead arena.

[SJ]

3 minutes ago, ombremq said:

Arena is filled by a group of people using X alts, i don't know about you but, often now i struggle against a silver that can perfectly tech chase and then the next match i fight a potatoe...i even now fight top ranked people in tag, because they spend their time deranking to farm low ranked people...so now i just rank for season reward and never try again, i let those kids have fun with their dead arena.

they are now deranking due to zero game at high rank. They want to play, they have to derank. All you listed are true, and is because of the very low total number of people in the arena

[Dad]

I hate deranking, forcing myself to afk just so I can play more matches? I guess i'll add that to my, another reason why I have so many accounts I pvp on.

[Kyrrua]

I myself must admit one of the "main" reason for leaving arena was the poor optimization and the ping.

Because I don't have an awesome pc I freeze often in arena. (To the point it takes me sometimes 10sec for my game to show my opponent, so for me he is invisible and always have the preemptive cuz I don't see him at all). But I'm not really sure its only because of my computer, in the world I don't have that freeze problem.

Because lot of lags in arena. (dunno how it is today)

Because the ping: When I try something at mushin or else it feels like I have 0 ms, everything is smooth. When I enter the arena I have the lag and my ping is horrible which makes me fail a lot of things. As a FM sometimes I have to keep my button pressed during 1sec between each combos or nothing happens, the server don't have the time to get the response and I can't rmb/lmb impact properly compared to the pve where its just a pleasure. or when I stun the guy and do the switch stance combo the guy is already out of stun before I can complete it. When I do my combos in mushin tower I don't miss a single one.

 

So yeah this frustration of all those problems I shouldn't have in a proper arena alongside with no rewards etc made me quit the game. Even as a only pvp players who just want to appreciate the amazing martial art pvp and do sane games all days just for the joy and the feeling of it.

By comparison I don't have a SINGLE fckin problem in the WoW arena. Be it ping or freeze/slows.

 

But I guess NCWEST & NCSOFT are not concerned of this thing, we are the one forced to create topics but we never have a real answer. No humane and direct answer, always the automated politeness of "tell us how you feel about it,thanks for the feedback".

I mean, if there was a real problem to solve ncsoft would have created a topic themselves asking for opinions or advices, they would reply to those important topics, they would send letters to the community every months, they would ask what is needed to improve.

 So yeah, we are in the wrong, if Ncsoft is doing nothing to improve that I guess that's because the game must be perfect as it is for them ?

As long as people trove and money flows there's nothing to improve.

Everything is probably fine.

[newbiez]

high ping in arena=punching bag to those low ping....when im lose the first round very quickly before i can even react because of high ping...usually i just stand for the 2nd round but those guy toying with me more...they just atk me slowly and wait for me more a lil and continue to atk me after that and when i stop moving they will atk me slowly again or just walk and dancing around me...that make my mood down for a bit tho xD...that why im prefer going to 6vs6 for my hm skills even tho always get 1 shot by those whales...atleast its ended fast and less annoying...unlike arena