anyone else abit underwhelmed by arena of the gods?

[BeefyBearded]

Yea, title and all. Its not really super compelling honestly, the upgrades feel very minor and the gameplay dosent feature much other than its skirmish but sorta different, no real special tasks or missions. Just feels abit...blah? Boring?

[Green Raven]

Yeah, I feel the same way. None of the world twists or powers really change the way a match is played...

There's a story in there, somewhere, about Chronos teaming up with Loki, but they dont quite tell it.

[Little Racoon]

You should try extreme difficulty- that will force you to choose blessings wisely until you find the way to beat AI opponents

[Orb]

It's nice to have I think. Would be better if it was roguelike-like to increase replayability. I do like the challenge on extreme like the person above said makes it more tactical

[santi91mol]

I thought the gamemode would be more... interesting; its just skirmish mode. I used to play custom maps on the old Age of Myth that had different gamemodes. Just like Gladiator Worlds, Children of Memories or even Heroes of Trillion!
Even in extreme difficulty you can win if you are experienced :(

[BeefyBearded]

Originally posted by santi91mol:

I thought the gamemode would be more... interesting; its just skirmish mode. I used to play custom maps on the old Age of Myth that had different gamemodes. Just like Gladiator Worlds, Children of Memories or even Heroes of Trillion!
Even in extreme difficulty you can win if you are experienced :(

was hoping for something roguelike and we got skirmish with mutators and the AI and maps are specific, sadly anything above even hard and the AI in this game gets abit unfun to me, rip with the update for me sadly.

[Default]

For solo, even as is, the mode is still better than just doing a straight up skirmish match.

This should be turned into a roguelike though and the difficulty needs to be tweaked upwards. There is a lot of potential here. Either that or I presume they may keep adding more to it which would be nice.

[Yuriqa]

First it was interesting but then I realize it was morelike skirmish matches with little bit extra challenge.

Was hoping real roguelike stuff where things change..

[Valkez]

While I don't dislike it, I too have to admit that I hoped for something more akin to SC2's coop - and more assets for the editor.

I'm still hopeful that they make it better. There are, after all, more legends in the game that were not seen in the Arena at this time, and it also gives the idea of being just the first chapter of more to come.

[Duke H. Vytantis]

They tried to pull of Northgard's Conquest mode and failed.

Because in that game you (and your ally) lock into your gods/clan from the start.
And you pick up a new reward (in a choice of three) after every victory.
Then you keep those rewards and the more challenges you complete , the stronger you will be towards the end mission.
In itself it even has unique map mechanics and victory conditions.
This makes every game something you plan a little.

In AOTG it's not advanced like that and it's just some random map with a bonus phft.

[Jahola]

Personally, I'm really enjoying it. I think the whole point was to put out 2 pages of Arena of the Gods to gather player feedback and update it from there

Play them through solo on extreme and see if it's still underwhelming lol

[viktorhallo]

i think its decent. not amazing by any means. but good for being free. and fun + challenging to play at extreme.

[Aainiikkusu]

I find AotG uninspired but I don't mind it being there. I just never thought we needed skirmishes with random modifiers sprinkled in.

[Assume I have 400 Ping]

Overall I think its lack lustre, sadly.

Pros:
- Can unlock everything.
- It is generally a fun twist (heh) and a fun gamemode!

Cons:
- Needs to be online. (Why?)
- No power scaling beyond 3 traits.
- Poor replayability (Assuming it ends once you reach the end)
- Not a roguelite, no consequences to losing / choosing a path

I'm assuming it's episodic? I've not beaten it yet.
But once I do, I'm assuming that's me done. Which is a shame.

Was hoping it'd be more procedural and repayable.
But I also disagree saying it's just a skirmish. Playstyles are very different and more exciting. Still good; just not what could have been but I hope they keep building onto it to flesh it out into it's own thing. More legends to choose from, more legend customisation with better scaling, customised guards / starting traits, this could legitimately be something really cool with more time to flesh it out and there's some quick wins they can get by removing online requirements. Not sure why that's in there?

[Elixir of Will]

I think (like others seem to have basically been saying as well) that it's an interesting idea for a mode, but the execution is lacking.

The idea of having a new campaign (or even just new scenarios) with some roguelite-esque augments (blessings) and world twists (larger modifiers) is really cool. A lot of what they came up with is also cool. I love the idea of the Thoth one where god powers have double effect or the AOE hero damage one.

The problems for me so far mostly come down to the following:

1. There aren't enough different blessings. I quickly settled on a set of three that I think are probably the best, or at least are strong enough for me to get through everything. I don't really feel like I'm missing out by not switching it up. And part of that is related to problem #2.
   
2. The blessings don't expose nearly enough information. Why is it that we only get a vague description of what each blessing does, rather than specifics? Unless there's something I'm missing or not understanding, it seems very difficult to get an accurate perspective as to what I'm actually getting. For example, the first one we get is the AOE hero damage one. Cool. But what is the difference between that one, the "fine" version, and the "heroic" version? I have no idea. Or the one that reduces god power cooldowns, for example. How much? No idea.
   
3. The actual "campaign part" (cutscenes, story, etc) feels very poorly done. The pacing of the dialogue feels off, like it proceeds way too slowly. And many of the lines are really uninspired. To me it doesn't feel anywhere remotely close to the original campaigns, which were cheesy but still engaging. I don't necessarily think this mode NEEDS a story, but they chose to put it in so here we are. I quickly started skipping the cutscenes which is a shame.
   
4. Only one legend. Why couldn't we get some choice as to what legend we want? Why does it always have to be Kastor?
   
5. Too many repeat maps. Why are there columns of "gateways" that are all the same map? There was one mission that was a deathmatch (possibly by mistake?) which was actually really fun and spiced things up quite a bit. But I've only seen one like that so far in like 20~ missions.
   
6. Co-op feels unbalanced. Why is it that many of the missions have you with an AI partner (presumably that also stays if you have a co-op partner?) but then many of them don't? You can still co-op the missions that don't have an AI partner. It just makes for a weird situation where either we have to win these 1v3 missions on our own, without even an AI partner, but you played co-op it'd be way easier. Personally I find the 1v3s annoying. And even the ones that are like a 1v2v1 are annoying because all the AIs mostly just gang up on you anyway. Which I know some people like but to me is really unfun.
   
7. Why can't we have co-op lobbies to find other players, rather than only being able to invite fvriends?

[BeefyBearded]

Originally posted by Elixir of Will:

I think (like others seem to have basically been saying as well) that it's an interesting idea for a mode, but the execution is lacking.

The idea of having a new campaign (or even just new scenarios) with some roguelite-esque augments (blessings) and world twists (larger modifiers) is really cool. A lot of what they came up with is also cool. I love the idea of the Thoth one where god powers have double effect or the AOE hero damage one.

The problems for me so far mostly come down to the following:

1. There aren't enough different blessings. I quickly settled on a set of three that I think are probably the best, or at least are strong enough for me to get through everything. I don't really feel like I'm missing out by not switching it up. And part of that is related to problem #2.
   
2. The blessings don't expose nearly enough information. Why is it that we only get a vague description of what each blessing does, rather than specifics? Unless there's something I'm missing or not understanding, it seems very difficult to get an accurate perspective as to what I'm actually getting. For example, the first one we get is the AOE hero damage one. Cool. But what is the difference between that one, the "fine" version, and the "heroic" version? I have no idea. Or the one that reduces god power cooldowns, for example. How much? No idea.
   
3. The actual "campaign part" (cutscenes, story, etc) feels very poorly done. The pacing of the dialogue feels off, like it proceeds way too slowly. And many of the lines are really uninspired. To me it doesn't feel anywhere remotely close to the original campaigns, which were cheesy but still engaging. I don't necessarily think this mode NEEDS a story, but they chose to put it in so here we are. I quickly started skipping the cutscenes which is a shame.
   
4. Only one legend. Why couldn't we get some choice as to what legend we want? Why does it always have to be Kastor?
   
5. Too many repeat maps. Why are there columns of "gateways" that are all the same map? There was one mission that was a deathmatch (possibly by mistake?) which was actually really fun and spiced things up quite a bit. But I've only seen one like that so far in like 20~ missions.
   
6. Co-op feels unbalanced. Why is it that many of the missions have you with an AI partner (presumably that also stays if you have a co-op partner?) but then many of them don't? You can still co-op the missions that don't have an AI partner. It just makes for a weird situation where either we have to win these 1v3 missions on our own, without even an AI partner, but you played co-op it'd be way easier. Personally I find the 1v3s annoying. And even the ones that are like a 1v2v1 are annoying because all the AIs mostly just gang up on you anyway. Which I know some people like but to me is really unfun.
   
7. Why can't we have co-op lobbies to find other players, rather than only being able to invite fvriends?

you basically summed up everything that i feel about the mode, and also my biggest issue of all being the mode is about as wide as a pond and as deep as a puddle. I dont need anything insanely complex or well thought out, just maybe a little bit deeper/more thought out than whats here now. It has awesome bones but it remains to be seen if anything will be done with it.