Abolish Arena

Games Other Halo
#1

Arena as a playlist has failed, however its rank does not have to. Simply apply Arena ranking to a couple of playlist where it makes sense, MLG, SWAT, Squad maybe and use the Arena slot for something that might attract more than a couple hundred players, perhaps a ranked dedicated slayer pro playlist.

Current Arena players for the most part would most likely be able to find a playlist that would suit them better than the settings in Arena, which it appears they only tolarate so that they can get ranked. Rank and its aquisition is one of the driving forces that propels players from casual to competitive, take advantage of it 343.

Edit: Is there anyway to lift the no guest parameters from the current ranking system? I understand this would cause problems, but one of the problems would most likely not be too few people trying to get rank. Im just wondering if it is possible.

#2

Gears of War 3 has ranked versions for every Versus playlist. They’re mostly empty.

#3

> Gears of War 3 has ranked versions for every Versus playlist. They’re mostly empty.

I dont want seperate versions, I want Arena ranking applied to as many current playlist as it can be, optimally, ever single one.

People like achievements and comparison of those achievements between other players, Arena ranking could allow for in game comparison. Comparison that will be lacking when some of the satalite Halo stat tracking sites lose the ability in the coming months.

#4

Arena playlist is garbage. Almost all the arena kids who haven’t quit Reach moved to MLG.

Arena ranking system is garbage and will kill any other playlist it’s introduced to.

Get rid of both.

#5

The concept of The Arena fails mainly due to your rank being reset. No one likes that and is a major factor of it’s low population. Then you have things like the two’s trick (you can’t find anyone if you are a high level Onyx player and sometimes even if you are lower division), iron boosting, jetpack exploits, Reflection etc and it’s not hard to wonder why The Arena is so unpopular. Really, it’s a total bore to play and even select on the menu :confused:

I loved how Bungie added W/L to it, it was incredibly unwise to have the broken rating system a deciding factor on your own division placement. It encouraged FFA behavior in a team game (shooting your team mate enough where would be one shot and die so they’re rating would be lowered for example). Which leads me to question if those in charge of Reach’s MP had any clue what the hell they were doing and instead just thrown in a bunch of new but untested ideas that people would love automatically because it’s cool. Obviously the results are much different then what Bungie intended.

I would suggest the following: Remove Jetpacks, get rid of the idea that your rank resets after a certain amount of time, add jackpots or increase cR bonuses to encourage players to participate in the Arena(this has a more pronounced affect on population levels then you might think), retweak the maps into Arena versions (similar to Arena Zealot) that have better spawns (Reflection comes to mind), weapon placements and others additions to make the mediocre Reach maps into something that’s tolerable. Replace Asylum with Overkill’s Sanctum which is vastly superior map and it looks better to boot (despite the grey).

#6

> The concept of The Arena fails mainly due to your rank being reset. No one likes that and is a major factor of it’s low population. Then you have things like the two’s trick (you can’t find anyone if you are a high level Onyx player and sometimes even if you are lower division), iron boosting, jetpack exploits, Reflection etc and it’s not hard to wonder why The Arena is so unpopular. Really, it’s a total bore to play and even select on the menu :confused:
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> I loved how Bungie added W/L to it, it was incredibly unwise to have the broken rating system a deciding factor on your own division placement. It encouraged FFA behavior in a team game (shooting your team mate enough where would be one shot and die so they’re rating would be lowered for example). Which leads me to question if those in charge of Reach’s MP had any clue what the hell they were doing and instead just thrown in a bunch of new but untested ideas that people would love automatically because it’s cool. Obviously the results are much different then what Bungie intended.
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> I would suggest the following: Remove Jetpacks, get rid of the idea that your rank resets after a certain amount of time, add jackpots or increase cR bonuses to encourage players to participate in the Arena(this has a more pronounced affect on population levels then you might think), retweak the maps into Arena versions (similar to Arena Zealot) that have better spawns (Reflection comes to mind), weapon placements and others additions to make the mediocre Reach maps into something that’s tolerable. Replace Asylum with Overkill’s Sanctum which is vastly superior map and it looks better to boot (despite the grey).

With Arena reset you can kind of see their thought process at doing so. If you wanted to reach the top rank you would only do it once, if they reset it every month you would feel inclined to reack the top rank every month. Many people create new gamer profiles just to replay the game and get better stats and leave out all the mistakes they had in their previous profile. Professional sports have seasons too.

CoD has what, 15 prestige levels? So reseting your stats appears to be favoured by a majority of people. Although there’s indications of doing so. Maybe changing Arena to somehow acknowledge previous Arena accomplishments.

#7

> > The concept of The Arena fails mainly due to your rank being reset. No one likes that and is a major factor of it’s low population. Then you have things like the two’s trick (you can’t find anyone if you are a high level Onyx player and sometimes even if you are lower division), iron boosting, jetpack exploits, Reflection etc and it’s not hard to wonder why The Arena is so unpopular. Really, it’s a total bore to play and even select on the menu :confused:
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> > I loved how Bungie added W/L to it, it was incredibly unwise to have the broken rating system a deciding factor on your own division placement. It encouraged FFA behavior in a team game (shooting your team mate enough where would be one shot and die so they’re rating would be lowered for example). Which leads me to question if those in charge of Reach’s MP had any clue what the hell they were doing and instead just thrown in a bunch of new but untested ideas that people would love automatically because it’s cool. Obviously the results are much different then what Bungie intended.
> >
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> > I would suggest the following: Remove Jetpacks, get rid of the idea that your rank resets after a certain amount of time, add jackpots or increase cR bonuses to encourage players to participate in the Arena(this has a more pronounced affect on population levels then you might think), retweak the maps into Arena versions (similar to Arena Zealot) that have better spawns (Reflection comes to mind), weapon placements and others additions to make the mediocre Reach maps into something that’s tolerable. Replace Asylum with Overkill’s Sanctum which is vastly superior map and it looks better to boot (despite the grey).
>
> With Arena reset you can kind of see their thought process at doing so. If you wanted to reach the top rank you would only do it once, if they reset it every month you would feel inclined to reack the top rank every month. Many people create new gamer profiles just to replay the game and get better stats and leave out all the mistakes they had in their previous profile. Professional sports have seasons too.
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> CoD has what, 15 prestige levels? So reseting your stats appeasr to be favoured by a majority of people. Although there’s indications of doing so. Maybe changing Arena to somehow acknowledge previous Arena accomplishments.

You would still have to maintain that high rank through playing, you simply don’t keep it as others would rank up as well. If you keep playing and winning, you’ll increase or if you at the top, stay where you are.

The thing is while you make a good point that professional sports have seasons, it just doesn’t translate well online as you can see with it’s low population. COD ranks have nothing to do with skill (though if you play well you rank up faster), you can be a terri bad 12th prestige and do it again but the thing main difference is the draw. Sure you reset EVERYTHING but the motivation to get all back is there such as the guns, attachments, challenges etc.

For The Arena, it’s just for an Emblem. No Armor Unlocks, no achievements or any indication that you did very well in the Arena. I like that idea of having it shown on your gamer card of what you got last season though it should show up in all playlists, not just Arena. There shouldn’t be any reason why it’s hidden other then scaring off players but come on, if you dominate matches, they’ll quit anyways.

#8

> The concept of The Arena fails mainly due to your rank being reset.

I just wanna hit on this and I know I don’t play a lot of Arena, and have never been put into a division. BUT, in the nature of competition the ranks resetting make some sense if you wanna relate it traditional sports in that at any given moment, depending on how other teams do your standings can change in the rankings. (For example how the Packers had a near perfect season and were eventually knocked out of the post season, despite being last years Super Bowl champs.) That example explains at least in part decreasing percentages as you don’t play.

In terms of it totally resetting it kinda fits with that too, personally I think it’d be a better incentive in terms of possibly boosting population and the competitive nature is if there was more incentive once seasons ended in terms of credits, and possibly that once divisions were made for next season there was a small list of people that made it into that division and percentage from last season (Providing recognition of those individuals skills [which obviously can’t be done now but could be used in future games if the arena system is kept]).

All in all those, in the vein that The Arena was supposed to emulate the idea of a sport/esport the ranks resetting and percentage decreases make sense, however their reception isn’t taken so well when there isn’t exactly a reward for having done well when the next season rolls around.

#9

The Arena concept just didn’t work well in Reach due to the inability to gauge opponents accurately, inconsistent ratings and not being immediately visible to opponents. Not to mention the lackluster settings and maps.

On top of that, regardless of whether Team Slayer gets the TU, there are three general slayer playlists: Arena, Squad Slayer and Team Slayer. That kind of redundancy is unnecessary. Regardless of TU updating, simply merge TS and Arena under the Team Slayer name, while making Squad 5v5 social and making a separate vanilla 5v5 playlist with slayer/objective.

Since 1-50 won’t be implemented in Reach, the Arena ranking system should be implemented in other key competitive playlists (Snipers, SWAT, MLG, Double Team, debating an FFA playlist). However, I hope 343 implements a true ranking system in Halo 4 so this doesn’t repeat.

Regardless, competitive 4v4 needs real tweaking in order to hit that middle ground: better than casual games, yet not as hyper-competitive as MLG.

#10

> > The concept of The Arena fails mainly due to your rank being reset.
>
> I just wanna hit on this and I know I don’t play a lot of Arena, and have never been put into a division. BUT, in the nature of competition the ranks resetting make some sense if you wanna relate it traditional sports in that at any given moment, depending on how other teams do your standings can change in the rankings. (For example how the Packers had a near perfect season and were eventually knocked out of the post season, despite being last years Super Bowl champs.) That example explains at least in part decreasing percentages as you don’t play.
>
> In terms of it totally resetting it kinda fits with that too, personally I think it’d be a better incentive in terms of possibly boosting population and the competitive nature is if there was more incentive once seasons ended in terms of credits, and possibly that once divisions were made for next season there was a small list of people that made it into that division and percentage from last season (Providing recognition of those individuals skills [which obviously can’t be done now but could be used in future games if the arena system is kept]).
>
> All in all those, in the vein that The Arena was supposed to emulate the idea of a sport/esport the ranks resetting and percentage decreases make sense, however their reception isn’t taken so well when there isn’t exactly a reward for having done well when the next season rolls around.

Exactly, without the any draws or rewards beyond bragging rights and sense of accomplishment, many players will lose interest and won’t bother ranking up Arena even if they were not bothered by rank resetting. Of course, that’s but one reason why Arena fails. It’s not so much the settings (it’s TU thank god) but the maps as well since they range from okay to flat out terrible but all could use improvements.

I do want to add that during Bungie’s reign over the MM systems, they did add super jackpots to Arena and it’s population skyrocket to heavens themselves. It was 21k plus during those days and while many players weren’t good, this did prove without a doubt that credits (a point i made in an eariler post) motivated players to play. Afterwards, it just dropped down.

Honestly, i would not see Arena return in it’s current form though an improved 1-50 would be nice since everyone is familiar with it and that doesn’t reset.

#11

> Arena playlist is garbage.

The concept is good, somehow it did not translate into the population it needs to be viable.

> Almost all the arena kids who haven’t quit Reach moved to MLG.

Thats most likely because they prefer pickup powers, but I bet they would still like rank assigned to their level of play, just not if it comes at the cost of playing a playtype with settings that dislike. Bring the rank to the settings, not the settings to the rank, there are too many preferences to lock down a singular setting to please everyone.

> Arena ranking system is garbage and will kill any other playlist it’s introduced to.

The biggest complaint I here is the reset, but playing 4 games a day does not seem like much, if you actually played a game you like. The playtypes are out there and players are playing far more than 4 games a day of them, now all they need is rank to fully reward their dedication.

> Get rid of both.

That would be a waste of a ranking system, the only one we got =/ lets try and make it work.

#12

It still would have been nice if Bungie had thought about the whole ranking system more carefully with how the population would have reacted…let alone, if they even had the higher budget to be able to consider improving the ranking system in general. It is a shame that we cannot go back and fix the mistakes, but it is something that we will learn in the future to not repeat such tragedic mistakes.

#13

> The concept of The Arena fails mainly due to your rank being reset. No one likes that and is a major factor of it’s low population.

This is true- Halo 3 you could boost once and it’d be there forever. Reach’s system is more accurate; and nobody likes be told they stink. It says a lot about your standard player.

#14

> > The concept of The Arena fails mainly due to your rank being reset. No one likes that and is a major factor of it’s low population.
>
> This is true- Halo 3 you could boost once and it’d be there forever. Reach’s system is more accurate; and nobody likes be told they stink. It says a lot about your standard player.

Yes… Everyone’s ego in Halo 3 was boosted by how ‘easy’ it was to get a 50. Thus, everyone’s fragile ego was shattered when they couldn’t hit 1% percent in any season which in my opinion is beyond a 50 in Halo 3 standards.

I think hitting any sort of single digits qualifies you as a ‘50’ but that’s just my opinion.

Arena probably just needs to be ‘re-branded’ and ‘re-defined’ for the time being until Halo 4 to appeases those of us who’d prefer to play a semi-competitive ranked reach.

#15

> [Arena probably just needs to be ‘re-branded’ and ‘re-defined’ for the time being until Halo 4 to appeases those of us who’d prefer to play a semi-competitive ranked reach.

Arena in my personal opinion is a community type playlist. Same as rumble pit and team objective. These are the only games that need a rank.

#16

> Arena as a playlist has failed, however its rank does not have to. Simply apply Arena ranking accross the playlist, even the niche ones and use the Arena slot for something that might attract more than a couple hundred players.
>
> Current Arena players for the most part would most likely be able to find a playlist that would suit them better than the settings in Arena, which it appears they only tolarate so that they can get ranked.
>
> Rank and its aquisition is one of the driving forces that propels players from casual to competitive, take advantage of it 343.

I agree with you, OP, as far as applying Arena rankings to all playlists. However, 343i has stated this would take a massive update and probably won’t be done with the limited manpower still working on Reach. Hopefully more ranked playlists return in Halo 4.

#17

> I agree with you, OP, as far as applying Arena rankings to all playlists. However, 343i has stated this would take a massive update and probably won’t be done with the limited manpower still working on Reach. Hopefully more ranked playlists return in Halo 4.

I don’t fully agree with Arena rankings everywhere because it would encourage more players to boost for the top rank. Halo will then be Boost-Reach. The 5 or so playlists I do agree for the use of a rank is. BTB, Arena, Rumble Pit, Team Objective, and MLG. Maybe it will work on Squad slayer, but that’s Team Slayer with one extra player on each team.

#18

> The concept of The Arena fails mainly due to your rank being reset. No one likes that and is a major factor of it’s low population. Then you have things like the two’s trick (you can’t find anyone if you are a high level Onyx player and sometimes even if you are lower division), iron boosting, jetpack exploits, Reflection etc and it’s not hard to wonder why The Arena is so unpopular. Really, it’s a total bore to play and even select on the menu :confused:

People play more than 4 games of their favorite playlist effortlessly, the problem is they dont want to bother going to Arena to play four games of that. Bring the rank to them and magicly it will be easy to maintain your rank, because you like the game you play. If the population was bigger, than better matches could be had. After watching Arena for some time, I can only assume that the pathetic population is seriously hindering any sort of competitive play, as there is nobody there =/

> I loved how Bungie added W/L to it, it was incredibly unwise to have the broken rating system a deciding factor on your own division placement. It encouraged FFA behavior in a team game (shooting your team mate enough where would be one shot and die so they’re rating would be lowered for example). Which leads me to question if those in charge of Reach’s MP had any clue what the hell they were doing and instead just thrown in a bunch of new but untested ideas that people would love automatically because it’s cool. Obviously the results are much different then what Bungie intended.

This speaks to the players, even 1-50 can be manipulated, nothing is going to be perfect and there is no system that will not be manipulated by someone.

> I would suggest the following: Remove Jetpacks, get rid of the idea that your rank resets after a certain amount of time, add jackpots or increase cR bonuses to encourage players to participate in the Arena(this has a more pronounced affect on population levels then you might think), retweak the maps into Arena versions (similar to Arena Zealot) that have better spawns (Reflection comes to mind), weapon placements and others additions to make the mediocre Reach maps into something that’s tolerable. Replace Asylum with Overkill’s Sanctum which is vastly superior map and it looks better to boot (despite the grey).

How about this, thats exactly what the do with Arena and if you want the name Arena, its yours, but I and others would like to play a ranked game of Reach. Not a small portion of Reach’s player’s ideal of the perfectly balanced gameplay with few of the main gameplay mechanics. AA, I just wanted to be clear about what makes Reach Reach to me and others, alot of people completely forget about this.

#19

I’ve only played Reach so I cannot comment on how it compares to previous Halos. Here are some of my observations/opinions on the matter though. I agree that Arena is road kill, it’s sad because I used to like competing in it even though I never got above Iron.

In my opinion, there are just too many playlist options in Reach and the population is spread too thin. It seems kind of strange that zombies is one of the most popular games and it really has little to do with Reach’s core gameplay. The ranking system in Arena seemed okay to me but I have nothing to compare it to. Based on what long time players said about previous ranking systems, I think it would be nice for Arena players to be able to show off their history. Something like a way to showcase their lifetime achievements in Arena instead of just the current and previous season. A virtual trophy case.

Arena was somewhat more popular at one time but it never really developed into what it was supposed to be. Players that previously participated in Arena (such as me, I mostly play SWAT now) went off to different playlists and others went off to different games all together. I never played MLG but I assume it is ranked and geared towards tournament players. Did Arena players defect to MLG?

So the questions are; do you try to reclaim the past Arena players or try to generate interest with new players. Is there a way to get back the old players while also generating interest for new players? Should Arena get a makeover or should it be scrapped all together and replaced with a new gametype. These are all very difficult questions because, in all cases, it will cost 343 a buttload of money to fix.

Maybe keeping Arena simple would be better. It should be (IMHO) a test of skill, not what team can dominate a map with power weapons. I believe most of the complaints regarding multi-player are about power weapons and AAs anyway. If those elements are responsible for most of the discontent, why not severely limit them or take em out all together. Remember the IROC ( the race, not the car) Every car on the track was identical in every way except color. IROC was all about the drivers ability. If Arena players all had exactly the same weapons and AAs, for instance DMR and sprint only, everyone would judged on their actual skill instead of knowing how to get the rocket launcher first.

I think 343 should use what’s left of Arena in Reach to experiment, and then when 4 comes out all the fixes should be implemented. Start over from scratch. I hope Arena can be saved. it was where I used to spend 90% of my time.

#20

Everybody’s reason for disliking arena is different, but it is universally disliked.
Here are my reasons if you even care.

1- Rank reset
2- Ambiguity in ranking up i.e. in 1-50 you saw your rank change in real time. In Arena its play a bunch of games…now go to sleep and see what happens tomorrow. I absolutely loath that.
3- Settings
4- The rank has no meaning. It is hidden. It disappears after so many seasons.
That makes no sense.

So, I don’t see the point in applying a flawed ranking system to everything. At least for me, the majority of reasons I hate Arena will not be rectified.