I won't yammer on about what everyone else has already covered lol. I just want to throw in my two cents on the arena update since that seems to be the largely overlooked one.

I absolutely understand the frustration with afk grinders, it makes the game way less fun if everyone is just afk, but I also feel like having an ensured reward made things feel a lot more open and accepting of new players. It was something I always made sure to tell people, to not worry so much about whether or not you know what you're doing because there's a guaranteed reward for you no matter what, to just do your best and to have fun! And I feel like this makes the arena a little less welcoming in that regard.

While there's certainly mostly bots playing right now, there have been matches completely full of actual players, and I feel like cutting out rewards for some of them takes away from the welcoming feel of the experience when you spend 20+ minutes for nothing. It stings to go up against 9 other players and walk away empty handed, when you had already lost and done poorly.

Perhaps a better way to handle it would be to have something monitor participation? In that you get no rewards if you never put anything into combat, perhaps? Sure, people will still abuse it to try half-heartedly, but it takes away from people clicking ‘play’ and then leaving the tab to do something else by forcing them to at least do something.

I don't think it's inherently a bad update and I understand the reasoning behind it! I just feel that it makes the arena less welcoming to more inexperienced players and can result in people who are already struggling feeling even more stung and less inclined to learn how to play. I absolutely agree that something should be done to address the afk problem; while I get why people are doing it, the arena is meant to be a participatory minigame, with absolutely no requirements any which way to play it. It makes the experience less fun for the people who actually do want to play when no one else is even doing anything, then it just becomes a game of ‘sit and stare at the screen for 20 minutes’. And that's not fun, and drastically ruins the enjoyment of people actually playing for the sake of a few people getting singular tickets without doing anything.

So I'm glad that the situation is being addressed, really! And I don't feel like this was a bad way to go about it, by and large it's not going to pose a problem for anyone beyond the afk grinders; few games reach full capacity and most people (edit for clarity: i say this based entirely on what i've seen in the arena channel on discord!) can claw out of 9th and 10th place even if they don't know much about what they're doing. I just feel like there are better ways to address the problem that don't open up the risk for new and inexperienced players feeling stung for the sake of being new. :)

I actively try to figure out how to play arena effectively and still am very poor at it, watching myself dwindle down to the last rank as time goes forward… so knowing that I already had to sit through losing 125 times (probably in a row) just to get a tiger while trying my best to NOT lose is …well.. disheartening to say the least.

Yeah, i hadn't gotten around to trying arena yet and now i don't think i will.

I think you've made great points here, and the sustainability of this as a long-term solution is rather poor anyway (and even now - if there's three people afk in a match, one still gets tokens)

I agree that an activity monitoring system would be the best, and afk players would be kicked. I'd like to see a system like in online games that punishes if you're repeatedly going afk, by locking you out of joining a new match for a certain extent of time. but also ik these have to be carefully balanced to not punish people who actually have to leave for whatever reason, plus in an autobattler you often can basically afk when your team is fully upgraded and just coast to the win.

I think this is a good system for now because like you said games very rarely fill with humans, and bots are not hard to beat. but also would love to see a more sophisticated system implemented to deal with this in the future!

I was just about to head to suggestions to post about the same stuff dude, but you've summed up my thoughts entirely!

The reduction of rewards for 9th and 10th makes the time spent just giving it a go an utter waste, PVP's a phrase that tends to scare folk, the fact that what Lorwolf's PVP even is making this effect even bigger since most people look at the word and run for the hills.

This makes both the bot-issue even worse as well as creating a whole new problem for existing arena-goers, now it's not just the bots whooping our behinds that puts us off the grind because it's the rewards too! The thing I liked about Arena shop is how you're always guaranteed a ticket after a tourney's over, playing at least like 4 tourneys a day whenever you have the spare time makes accessing the rewards from the shop much less daunting and unattainable since hey! Every failure still gets you just that bit closer.

Thought I'd add in my support as I haven't really seen this touched upon at all - everyone was, understandably so, focusing on the WW issue.

Yeah, imo removing the rewards for the bottom placements was NOT the way to go about dealing with afk farmers. The arena rewards already don't feel worth it for the time investment, but now the chance to get nothing just because I got horrible rng? Yeah, I might as well not even bother.

Agreeing with the notion for some sort of afk kick/penalising system, such as kicking and putting a cooldown on joining a match if you don't do anything within the first few rounds…

Yeah. Hope my response makes sense, tl;dr I agree

I was going to put my suggestion about the issues few days ago but forgot. Instead of remove reward from bottom rankings you should implement an auto kick system to any player that didn't do any action and/or have a team after 10-15 min instead

I agree that removing rewards for 9th and 10th wasnt the best idea because it punishes people who are trying to learn-- arena has a pretty wild learning curve. people don't understand it and it stops them from trying to get into it, and not getting rewarded for trying and coming last isn't the best way to handle the afk grinding situation.

i am really glad it's being tackled, because i spend a lot of time in arena and it's frustrating to get excited you're put with another player only to realize they just hit ‘play’ for the free ticket and nothing more.

Agreeing with the notion for some sort of afk kick/penalising system, such as kicking and putting a cooldown on joining a match if you don't do anything within the first few rounds…

i like this idea, but i think it can be refined. sometimes people queue up and forget (me) and just end up building a team in a blitz with the small stockpile of paws you get. maybe cooldown could start short, and get longer and longer as you continue to queue up and afk?

I was nervous on trying the arena to begin with, but now, I'm not sure if I want to even try, if I can't even work towards the torcine while trying to learn how the whole thing works. I feel like this wasn't the solution. It's gonna be discouraging for new players.

I guess I am the odd man out on this forum. I actually think its fair. It helps cut out the Afk players. There were a lot of them. Almost every arena game there were almost most if not all AFK players. Which was great for me because I got more paws but that is not the spirit of the game. I do wish they had added a better prize for getting first like a moonstone. Which I think would help encourage more play.

I think that maybe a better solution would be to kick any player who reaches the fourth round without buying any creatures? Like, there is a legitimate strategy where you throw the first three battles so you can have more paws on the fourth, but after that, you should just get DQ'd if you aren't actually playing
(And I say this knowing that it'd affect me too, I'm not immune to entering the queue and then going to a different tab and forgetting to check back until it's been A Minute… but I think it's the best solution).

I agree with the other people who were saying that the guaranteed tickets helped with the sting of a loss. Sometimes RNG just will not give you what you want (as an example, I don't seem to get Lupins during 90% of games, and if I do it's not enough to evolve 'em to tier 3!) Consolation prizes good for newbies.

(Side note, but I think it'd also be good to just fast-forward and end the tourney when there are no more human players left- it's boring to have to watch bots smack each other until I can get my tickets.)