Ludia Forums

6 suggestions to fix Arena to be less sad

Jurassic World™ Alive Suggestions
#1

In 2.3, we have seen how bad arena can be and how Ludia has chosen the wants of the few to outweigh the needs of the many. Here are 6 suggestions which implemented in tandem with each other and Ludia’s current arena coding could actually Make Arena Fun Again (MAFA)

  1. Fix the trophies allocation algorithm.

Perhaps the biggest change needed and the hardest to implement from a coding and programming point of view. I think having a 30 trophy gain win and 30 trophy loss was a decent stop gap while Ludia fixed the trophy win/loss algorithm but I think they need to work harder and faster on it.

The best way to make it dynamic and rewarding is to make ranges for wins and losses and more importantly always add trophies into system over the season. This was what we had before. You beat someone stronger you got more trophies than if you beat someone weaker. So you were rewarded for getting a win against the Apex Predators by having 40 trophies and costing them 40. Often the algorithm added a few trophies like the winner got 37 trophies. while the loser lost 29 trophies. This over a season and over 100s of thousands of matches meant the system had more trophies at the end than at the start so more players got better rewards.

The reason for changing was the algorithm was flawed and made certain matches give the wrong trophy reward/penalty for the actual trophy differential. This has to be fixed and soon. If nothing use the flawed one or the semi-fixed one (you guys are actually trying to work it right ?wink)

If the top players prefer such a system so they actually have a challenge then why not make it. I prefer to have a win range of 30 to 50 trophies and a loss range of 20 to 40 trophies. This will make the top players disappear from the pack faster but they already out of sight anyway and at least beating them helps us hit higher scores the few times we beat them. Everyone benefits since now the top players cannot keep feeding off those barely in Shores without their few losses slowing them down. Also other players have incentive to beat the top players since that gives huge rewards in terms of trophies.

Let AI give 10 trophies per win so players can actually farm some trophies while saving time and anger.

  1. Improve the rewards for all the arenas

This might be a surprise to those who have yet to reach beyond Aviary, once you hit Aviary the contents of the arena incubators is the same for the next 3 arenas. So if you want to farm incs for Marsupial Lion and Maiasaura, you get the same amount of DNA and coins in Aviary as you do in Nublar Shores.

This is the first reason for droppers. Why bother to go up to Shores and stay there when you get the same reward inc in Aviary? Its really a bad idea.

My proposal is a 50% improvement in reward inc per arena progression. So as seen below:

Aviary: 100%
Library 150%
Depot 225%
Shores 337.5
Fusion Lab 506.25%
Lord Lythrorax Lair 759.375%

Taking Aviary as baseline the progression will be such that those in the top arena get 7.5x the yield (DNA and coins) compared to those in Aviary.

Yes it is unfair but at least it reduces the excuse to drop. Also it encourages players to push upwards for actual better rewards and maybe grind more incs so Ludia gets a few more bucks.

The Rare and Epic incs also should be tweaked to be better than normal incs so they are worth grinding for.

This does not discourage spending by the top players since they will be spending in a.different way (speed opening incs) if not buying real money offers. So the effect on revenue is small compared to that of players quitting over arena related issues (e.g. droppers).

  1. Add 2 new arenas.

If you read Point 2, you would have seen Fusion Lab and Lord Lythrorax’s Lair. Those are my suggested 2 new arenas.

Fusion Lab will be for those between 7000 trophies to 7999 trophies. AI will be mainly lvl 30 creatures with 15 to 25 boosts in random placements in stats. Mostly meta uniques. AI difficulty will be hard

Lord Lythrorax Lair will be for those above 8000 trophies. AI will be lvl 30 creatures with strategic max boosting. Creatures will be the Apex tiers, April Fools’ creatures (Lord Ly, Billy Goat etc…) and the top meta creatures. AI deducts 10 trophies for losses to add to the difficulty. This will show if Ludia understands its own game and how they see the endgame from a player perspective.

  1. Improve the reset tiers

With the addition of 2 more arenas, we can add more tiers for reset.

Starting from Library.
5000 to 5499 resets to 4999
5500 to 5999 resets to 5499
6000 to 6499 resets to 5999
6500 to 6999 resets to 6499
7000 to 7999 resets to 6999
8000 above resets to 7499

Yes, this will ensure the top players always get the top prizes but it also allows players to slowly progress over months to the next.tier. Progress and improvement bring more motivation to continue and improve engagement.

  1. Add anti-dropper measures

With the resets, we need to reduce droppers so my idea is to put anti-dropper gates on arena. Once you pass the border between 2 arenas for the first time you cannot drop more than 2 arenas from the border.
Example:

You unlocked Shores. So you are locked out of Library and below. You now can only drop to the bottom of Gyro Depot and can continue to lose trophies but you cannot be matched with most players in Library.

  1. Improve matchmaking

Matchmaking has being a little too huge in Shores and that has to be dealt with. The first thing is to limit matchmaking to be within the arena itself. Since the top 2 arenas have huge ranges and few.players the matchmaking can be more aggressive. This will prevent players from facing players in lower arenas and bullying them.

These suggestions as a whole is a lot of work but if done together will help make arena less discouraging and stop all this dropping nonsense and give the top players something to entertain themselves that isn’t 60xx players.

ro :cow::fog:

The Thyla rended cause yes btw. that curious cat went yeye.
Also, it did enough raw damage to be a cow. MOO! MOO MOO I’M IN THE :milky_way:!! and I got da go to da wa wa in the da da!
YAYAYA

40 Likes
[update] 500+ players boycotting PvP
THOR have destroyed the arena!
#2

Still typing out the suggestions so be patient. Fat fingers hit post before I was ready.

#3

Okay done.

#4

Suggestion number 1 is huge.
It was one of the ways to somewhat balance out volume battling vs. casual battling.
Why they have yet to fix it I really don’t know. Worked great since beta then one patch they somehow broke it and never fixed it.

1 Like
#5

And I think reworking boosts is better than anything else. Nothing is as bad as them

7 Likes
#6

With a lot of these changes implemented we could slowly begin to see the arena without boost disparity. Boosts are only really an issue when someone has significantly more then someone else. Plus I don’t see a boost rework happening and if it does it will be like boosts 2.0 where the power to boosts is more or less the same but the cost is significantly higher.

I agree 1. Is crucial… it made sense to make the changes to trophies when they did… having top players always lose more trophies then they could win and have to wait forever to get a real opponent. But they should have made adjustments to trophy win and loss before they changed match making.

The only thing listed here I’m concerned about is the new arenas. Only 5% of the games population has made it to Library. Stretching out 5% of the population between extra arenas could make match making worse. And while it might help the logjams… like sorna-avairy where most of the playerbase is… it will likely just move them up an arena or two. I think I’d rather see the other changes listed here go into affect… then see about adding a new arena.

#7

You should be PAID or privately sent some type of acknowledgment from Ludia for this.

This makes sense and is an extremely detailed suggestion of what you mentioned before.

Even giving them creative ideas (Lord Lythro lair, special bosses etc)

Great work! I hope this post doesn’t get lost in time

2 Likes
#8

I think if Ludia wants an easy change. Fix the reset tiers like suggested. That will slow down the back current of players falling back due to losses. Also giving some trophies for beating AI as well as placing barriers to droppers will allow players to move up.

5% of the playerbase in 1 arena is enough to have a match found in 5 seconds. We need to space out the volume battlers from the balanced players trying to get their daily incubators.

3 Likes
#10

There should be some sort of time limit on suggestion 5.
A lot of people rage quit and come back months later.
Would suck to decided to give the game another try and find it impossible to drop to where you need to be.
Maybe reset arena locks every … random number here. 2 months?

#11

Maybe every reset if you do not battle you get reset back 1 tier for 3 seasons. That should give players a chance to find their feet. I dunno about that special case. Maybe they have to request to Ludia for the door to be unlocked.

#12

The sad thing is that Ludia will never acknowledge this. They say they are ‘listening to our feedback’ and ‘are working to improve our gameplay experience’, but yet only a select few issues have been resolved. Indo Gen 2 and Procera plague? Lasted for 4-5 patches(which is around half a YEAR). Matchmaking? Speedties? Ha. Don’t even need to think about those. Remember the HW event survey last year? There was Irritator in it, which 99.99% of the player base votes for, and somehow Suchotator won. Ludia always tries to give you a sense that us, the players, have a choice, when everything is just decided by their employees. It’s a false sense of democracy. In the end, everything is decided by Ludia, not us

7 Likes
#13

This can’t be argued against

1 Like
#14

I like all of the suggestions. I’d also like to add, we should be auto given an AI battle if the opponent doesnt respond after a match is found. I’ve gotten that screen and match time out way too many times.

6 Likes
#15

The high end of the arena teams seem to get stuck due to boost differences and “interesting” matchmaking choices, but it seems like most teams can get to 4500 trophies before the arena slog really starts. How about revamping arena to have two ladders, boosted and non-busted (hmm…is that really a typo) similar to the monthly tournaments. Odd arenas have no boosts with all dinos set to level 26, but there are restrictions on which dinos can be used. Even arenas function as is, boosts applied, dino levels vary by team strength. On the battle screen where you see the name of the arena you are in, the button to show arena rewards, and your score that becomes a pair of buttons, the left is the odd arenas that when pressed allows you to select the odd arena to battle in next time. The right is the even arena based on team level and shows the rewards the same as now. A second battle button or a checkbox indicating the active arena ladder choice is added

Arena 1 - common only, +2/-1
Arena 2 - Up to 1000 trophies, +30/-30
Arena 3 - up to rare only, +4/-2
Arena 4 - Up to 3000 trophies, +30/-30
Arena 5 - up to epic only, +6/-3
Arena 6 - Up to 4500 trophies, +30/-30
Arena 7 - Up to legendary only, +8/-4
Arena 8 - Up to 5500 trophies, +30/-30
Arena 9 - Open, +10/-5
Arena 10 - Open, trophies +50/-50, sliding scale based on calculated team strength

#16

As much as your idea is interesting, we do not want too complex an arena system. A dual arena system might be fun but it also adds to the flab of the app and will make it even worse to play.

Bugs are gonna make it very unplayable.

#17

I guess auto AI for failed match up is a must. Same rules. 10 trophies for a win 0 trophies lost for a loss except in Lord Lair.

#18

Agreed that Ludia has really never prioritized code quality, so yes we should not assume any suggestions can be implemented cleanly. However, in 2+ years Ludia has also never shown any ability to create fair matches consistently in the arena which was made even harder with the introduction of boosts. My main argument to split is that given Ludia’s track record, they will never fix matchmaking so an alternative system is needed. Aside from some UI design confusion possible with alternate arenas, other than a new scoring mechanism, which admittedly Ludia will likely be challenged in implementing, Arena 9 is basically just friendly battles with scoring, so they have to make that work cleanly anyway right? The odd numbered arenas are all level playing fields that have to mimic tournament conditions limiting each to a subset of the games critters plus a different scoring system. However the odd arenas are by definition level playing fields, so any player can face any other in that arena, there are no matchmaking issues and experimenting with your team is actively encouraged since you’re not limited by team level nor boosts. It should be vastly simpler to get a match whenever you want it. For those players that enjoy the arena and the revenue opportunities for Ludia that come from boosts, I’m not changing the existing arena beside compressing it from 10 to 5 levels. For all those frustrated by the current arena and the DBI chase, I think the alternate would by a welcome addition. Players would still want to acquire boosts for strike towers or raids. I also agree that matches should never time out in the arena, if a PvP is not available it should default to AI and never time out.

#19

I hope they will do something ASAP. The amount of players quitting is huge and when the top players run out of people to battle … they’ll quit as well. Or at least stop spending as there’s nothing much left to battle…

2 Likes
#20

Its very complicated and in this already horribly buggy and code inefficient game, more code to limit types, levels and what not is gonna make the game really laggy if not unplayable.

I feel Ludia has to simplify the code and make the algorithm do as little as possible.

Imagine snow already made the game unplayable for many using older devices, what more 2 parallel arenas with a lot of rules. Ludia will mess up the arenas and might not ever fix it.

#21

Not sure Ludia ever will fix anything. They are catering to a small minority with 2.3. I believe my post here is just a dog howling at the moon. Hope they will listen but given how bad things have gotten, its best to assume nothing will change.

2 Likes