If you don’t play Arena at the higher levels of gameplay (Onyx level), you won’t understand the issues with Arena as it is and as such you may not understand why it needs a fix.
Why? Because the players at lower levels of competition don’t know how to abuse the issues with Arena and so, if you are not an Onyx player and don’t think Arena needs fixing, chances are that you don’t understand the problems and exploits because no one has used them against you.
You may not see the unbalance with Sword Base because the players at lower levels don’t vote Sword Base every time if they are Red Team and get the chance because they don’t understand why there is a problem with it because there isn’t much strategy or teamwork to the gameplay. At higher levels, however, Sword Base is a hive of awfulness that needs to be nuked from orbit because any competent team who is Red Team and gets the opportunity to vote for Sword Base, WILL vote for Sword Base because of the inherent advantages it gives them off spawn.
I really can’t be bothered to detail all the issues with Sword Base so you’ll just have to trust me, but to put it simply, Red Team start closer to map control, and get given Sniper, Shotgun and Grenade Launcher whereas Blue Team get nothing but Sword and an unfavourable starting spawn.
The same can be said for Reflection. Reflection might be fine without the jetpack, so one team gets Sniper and the other team gets Rockets, I don’t know. But as it is, Reflection (and Uncaged, to an extent) suffer the same issues as Sword Base.
Which leads me on to another of Arena’s major issues as it is. Jetpack.
Again, lower level players who don’t try to get and keep map control may not understand why this is an issue, but I can assure you, that at higher levels of play, it is an issue. I’m qualified to say that because I’m a jetpacker. Why?
Because being a jetpacker allows me to negate map control, the whole problem with it. It gives me an advantage, so why not use it?
Take Reflection, for example. The enemy team manage to fight their way to having map control at top sniper spawn, a preferable area to control with the good vantage points and routes of access.
If jetpack didn’t exist, I would have to communicate with my team to fight back and try to regain that position.
But it does, so what do I do instead? I jetpack up straight above sniper spawn and drop grenades like a B52 on steroids followed by spamming DMR down the corridors at enemies who didn’t die from the initial bombardment. This is not smart gameplay. This is stupid. But advantageous, so I do it.
But it needs removing.
Or Synapse. Lower level players may not take advantage of soft kill zones, but I certainly do, and every match on Synapse I will most certainly jetpack on top of the central structure and shoot down on enemies for 10 seconds, giving me a massive advantage over non-jetpackers. There is no penalty to me for doing it, so why not? I will fly up here to let my shields recharge, too. Non-jetpackers cannot touch me.
This is just a blatant issue with Arena.
The third issue with Arena that less skilled players may not understand is bloom. I’m sure you’ve all heard this one a thousand and one times so I’ll skim over it. Arena is supposed to be competitive, where the best player wins. The combination of unbalanced maps, jetpack, and bloom takes away this by adding randomness and a lack of balance to the starting spawns, an ability to negate what better players can do with jetpack, and randomness to individual battles with bloom.
Arena matches end up being more of a dice roll than a competition of skill between two competent teams with these three factors that need removing still in play.