Yes, another Arena complaint

[Mark Greg Sputnik]

It has been said a couple of times, and I agree, the arena mode is frustratingly slow. If I have to follow a certain meta only so I can progress at a normal speed then something is not right.
You get injured way too much too quickly because in the early ranks where you don't even have access to good protective gear, opponents will slash and crush you and turn your sweet yellow health bar into deep red if you slip up even just once.
And then you have to either switch out your character or do fistfights, and both of those options turn the games already slow speed down to a CRAWL.
On top of that, even if you're lucky enough to find a physician, early on you won't even be able to make enough to pay the guy and still have money for anything else.
The games mechanics are already tricky enough to get used to, let alone good at, which isn't a bad thing mind you, I love the combat, but to combine it with such a grindy mindset is just like wearing weights instead of a life vest while going down a rapid. If I have to win 10+ matches to even reach the first rank? That is when the game goes from hard but enjoyable to just frustrating.

[Bare Mettle]

I'm sorry but I really just can't take this seriously. If you're any good at the game you can get a fighter to master in half an hour now. Trainers give a massive bonus to experience gains and teach you skills even if you don't fight, match prizes are massively increased, shops rotate faster, physicians significantly increase healing. You can choose to do many matches at any skill or equipment rank you want, so even if you're not geared for a certain rank you can still set the tier lower and get all the XP and money benefits of playing at that rank.

Arena was never grindy, but now it's absurd to call it that. If you're still not very good at the combat you might have to take it a bit slower, but that just means rotating fighters a bit more and still making good progress overall, just spread out across different fighters. You have quite a few options now either way, you just need to smart about using what the game makes available to you.

[applixia]

Yeah, I agree with pretty much all of this.

The combat is really fun when you get a few levels, but it feels like it takes way, way too much time to get to that point.

Grinding pugilism matches or training Inepts with the same few pieces of basic gear while your 'main team' heals up just gets boring. Really boring, considering it can take literal weeks (in game) for a character to heal to a safe level after an injury, and that's WITH a physician.

It usually just leads to me getting burnt out and bored, since it feels more like I'm fighting my own patience than the enemies.

[Bare Mettle]

Originally posted by salem:

Yeah, I agree with pretty much all of this.

The combat is really fun when you get a few levels, but it feels like it takes way, way too much time to get to that point.

Grinding pugilism matches or training Inepts with the same few pieces of basic gear while your 'main team' heals up just gets boring. Really boring, considering it can take literal weeks (in game) for a character to heal to a safe level after an injury, and that's WITH a physician.

It usually just leads to me getting burnt out and bored, since it feels more like I'm fighting my own patience than the enemies.

None of this makes sense. What inepts? You can get to aspirant in about 5 minutes, and that doubles prize money and XP gains already. Why do pugilism if you don't like it? Even if your character is severely injured with a physician it takes 4, maybe 5 days if they're virtually dead, to heal.

[applixia]

Originally posted by Bare Mettle:

...masters in half an hour...
...aspirant in five minutes...

Genuinely asking: can you explain how you do this? Even doing Skirmishes and Doubles, it rarely takes less than 5 matches to level up a character even once. Trainers do help some, but it depends on if you actually get one early.

[Mark Greg Sputnik]

Originally posted by Bare Mettle:

I'm sorry but I really just can't take this seriously. If you're any good at the game you can get a fighter to master in half an hour now. Trainers give a massive bonus to experience gains and teach you skills even if you don't fight, match prizes are massively increased, shops rotate faster, physicians significantly increase healing. You can choose to do many matches at any skill or equipment rank you want, so even if you're not geared for a certain rank you can still set the tier lower and get all the XP and money benefits of playing at that rank.

Arena was never grindy, but now it's absurd to call it that. If you're still not very good at the combat you might have to take it a bit slower, but that just means rotating fighters a bit more and still making good progress overall, just spread out across different fighters. You have quite a few options now either way, you just need to smart about using what the game makes available to you.

I'm not sure if we play different versions of the game since I only played again after downloading the latest update? But even after winning around 7 duels, 5 fistfights (to heal lol) and 2 challenges I have not gotten out of Inept. And at that point I spent at least 30 minutes in the game. And I don't seem to be the only person with this problem, I don't claim to be the best at the game but even as a beginner I should be able to make some decent progress if I manage to win some matches.
I restarted the arena career twice because I thought it might've been a bug then but it's still the same.

[Steve Freng]

Originally posted by Bare Mettle:

I'm sorry but I really just can't take this seriously. If you're any good at the game you can get a fighter to master in half an hour now.

Is this part of the new update? because I was playing the other week and theres NOT A CHANCE IN HELL you are getting to master in less than 2 hours

[Bare Mettle]

Originally posted by Mark Greg Sputnik:

I'm not sure if we play different versions of the game since I only played again after downloading the latest update? But even after winning around 7 duels, 5 fistfights (to heal lol) and 2 challenges I have not gotten out of Inept. And at that point I spent at least 30 minutes in the game. And I don't seem to be the only person with this problem, I don't claim to be the best at the game but even as a beginner I should be able to make some decent progress if I manage to win some matches.
I restarted the arena career twice because I thought it might've been a bug then but it's still the same.

Duels and challengers give the least experience, except for pugilism which gives very little. They are super quick though. Generally the more difficult or complex the match type the more the experience (higher multiplier per opponent). If you do any other match type you will get xp faster, though it's based on what you do too, so if you just sit back and wait for people to kill each other in a fray you'll get very little.

Even so, assuming you have a trainer, 3 duels is enough to get your first skill (when you end the day). Your second skill takes only slightly longer than this (think it should be 4 off hand). As soon as you hit aspirant rank XP gains from matches and even prize money doubles.

[Roryn]

Originally posted by Mark Greg Sputnik:

I'm not sure if we play different versions of the game since I only played again after downloading the latest update? But even after winning around 7 duels, 5 fistfights (to heal lol) and 2 challenges I have not gotten out of Inept. And at that point I spent at least 30 minutes in the game. And I don't seem to be the only person with this problem, I don't claim to be the best at the game but even as a beginner I should be able to make some decent progress if I manage to win some matches.
I restarted the arena career twice because I thought it might've been a bug then but it's still the same.

Are you actually selecting new skills to train on your fighters? And if it's a bug, you should be able to check your skill progress on the management screen. That'll show you exactly how far you are until the next rank. It takes exactly 1 inept elimination to train the first skill, and then you're already halfway to aspirant, so it definitely shouldn't be as hard as you're saying.

[Mark Greg Sputnik]

Originally posted by Bare Mettle:

Originally posted by Mark Greg Sputnik:

I'm not sure if we play different versions of the game since I only played again after downloading the latest update? But even after winning around 7 duels, 5 fistfights (to heal lol) and 2 challenges I have not gotten out of Inept. And at that point I spent at least 30 minutes in the game. And I don't seem to be the only person with this problem, I don't claim to be the best at the game but even as a beginner I should be able to make some decent progress if I manage to win some matches.
I restarted the arena career twice because I thought it might've been a bug then but it's still the same.

Duels and challengers give the least experience, except for pugilism which gives very little. They are super quick though. Generally the more difficult or complex the match type the more the experience (higher multiplier per opponent). If you do any other match type you will get xp faster, though it's based on what you do too, so if you just sit back and wait for people to kill each other in a fray you'll get very little.

Even so, assuming you have a trainer, 3 duels is enough to get your first skill (when you end the day). Your second skill takes only slightly longer than this (think it should be 4 off hand). As soon as you hit aspirant rank XP gains from matches and even prize money doubles.

I'll definitely try to do more different match types. I don't even start with enough money to hire a trainer off the bat. Maybe I've just gotten unlucky but all of them were 3+ gold. On top of that, even after getting a new skill I don't rank up in my tier. Is that a bug or are they supposed to level separately, and if so, what determines your rank level up and what determines your skill level up.

[Mark Greg Sputnik]

Originally posted by Roryn:

Originally posted by Mark Greg Sputnik:

I'm not sure if we play different versions of the game since I only played again after downloading the latest update? But even after winning around 7 duels, 5 fistfights (to heal lol) and 2 challenges I have not gotten out of Inept. And at that point I spent at least 30 minutes in the game. And I don't seem to be the only person with this problem, I don't claim to be the best at the game but even as a beginner I should be able to make some decent progress if I manage to win some matches.
I restarted the arena career twice because I thought it might've been a bug then but it's still the same.

Are you actually selecting new skills to train on your fighters? And if it's a bug, you should be able to check your skill progress on the management screen. That'll show you exactly how far you are until the next rank. It takes exactly 1 inept elimination to train the first skill, and then you're already halfway to aspirant, so it definitely shouldn't be as hard as you're saying.

After 19 won and 14 lost matches (mostly duels, frays and pugilisms), this is what it looks like https://imgur.com/undefined

[Roryn]

Originally posted by Mark Greg Sputnik:

After 19 won and 14 lost matches (mostly duels, frays and pugilisms), this is what it looks like https://imgur.com/undefined

Link isn't working

[Mark Greg Sputnik]

Originally posted by Roryn:

Originally posted by Mark Greg Sputnik:

After 19 won and 14 lost matches (mostly duels, frays and pugilisms), this is what it looks like https://imgur.com/undefined

Link isn't working

My bad https://imgur.com/a/9RzDRmk

[angrytrex]

There's indeed a bit of a disconnect from reality here.

The first trainer I saw available cost several gold to hire which is not permissive enough to level your first few characters to their first skill.

I'm finding it is a slog because what's happening is that you are getting 3 fights per day vs 1 fight per day, so you're not really recovering health as quickly as before where some came back each fight. There's a fast way to deal with this if you don't care about stats which is joining an inept puglism match and just forfeiting / end day.

I've seen several inept matches where I've had less money after winning them then i have prior to entering them. This seems wrong, and it seems like it may be calculating some maintenance costs in between matches. Money really doesn't become a thing until around late Novice / Adept from my findings so far.

It's not nearly as grindy as it is before, but it's important to note that the AI has become proficient in actually landing hits now so you'll get way more critical red hits from overheads than prior to the patch, which leads to way more dealth and downtime.

My suggestion would be either allow stacking physicians (at the expense of roster slots), allow the physician to focus on specific characters, or allow a bonus to healing based on how many people in your roster are full health at the end of the day if you have a physician. It would also be nice to be able to end day without actually fighting in any matches, whereas now you must choose at least 1

[fuzzytoastpops]

Don't use a single guy, you'll just spend half the in-game days waiting for him to recover. Start with 3 separate fighters and rotate them whenever one gets too badly injured. Keep them all fighting relatively evenly and do as many Elimination/Reserve type matches as you can.

[Magic A. I.]

> I'm sorry but I really just can't take this seriously.
> None of this makes sense.

So players lie now? Yeah, they must be trolling or crazy for thinking the game isn't perfect. Surely the lack of fun in grinding is totally due to their lack of skill. What are they even thinking getting into a game not knowing how to play it like a pro and speedrun arena in 30 minutes? I mean, wow - the nerve of these Steam noobs, right? They get an update every year and still dare to complain about something.

/sarcasm

To the OP I can say this: yes, the arena is slow, but it's still good to kill a few minutes here and there. Fight a match or two, quit, do something else, tomorrow the game will still be there and you can fight two matches more. It's not a kind of game to spend your entire day in, but it is okay to play it on occasion.