Intro
3 V 3 Arena’s have been a brilliant addition to New World. Arena content can be incredibly fun, and this is good for player retention. Arena content makes gear acquisition feel more relevant, encouraging players to engage in PVE farming and in crafting, which in turn leads to a more stable economy. Simply put, Arena content is great for the game. This great Arena content, however, can still be further improved upon. This post is my attempt to highlight some of the problems that arena’s still face and some of the ways in which arena’s can be improved.
Team Composition
Problem: The premade players get the advantage of choosing the composition of their team. They can have a strategy and build a team of players around that. For example, they could decide to bring 1 healer and 2 bruisers, or, they can decide to bring three bow users. Whatever they choose, it is chosen so that the team has the best chance of winning. Solo que players do not get to choose their team composition. Once, as a solo player, I found myself in a team of three solo-que healers.
Solution: Allow for greater periods of time (perhaps 1 minute) between rounds so that players can find alternative gear and weapons (a task which takes surprisingly longer than people expect) and equip it. This would allow players to change their build between rounds, and give them more flexibility with regards to their team comp. It would also allow for counter play against specific team strategies e.g.
Different skill levels
Problem: It feels bad to constantly be matched against players with mismatched skill levels. Highly skilled players get bored by the lack of challenge, and players who are still developing their skills get disheartened while simultaneously receiving reduced rewards. This problem can lead to players avoiding arena altogether, making the pool of available players smaller and smaller until just a handful of the same regular players are left.
Solution: Win rate matchmaking. Players who have great skills, great gear, great teams or great coordination should win against players with less skill, weaker gear, poorer team composition and bad coordination. The players who win more, should be matched against other players who win more. This means that players wont constantly lose or win
What do you think?
Those are just two issues which are solvable, that stand out to me. But what do you guys think?
I tried to play heavy melee mage the other day and there discovered that this build is 100% not viable in the current meta, I would love to see grit be given to other players and not just strength users, but that is a topic for another thread.
Over and out
SaintxDale