Fixing the Arena (bullet points)

[CarnivorousDeathParrot.2]

Major and minor problems. . .
Feel free to add. . .

GLITCHES
- Clones look abnornal (when both toons are using them)
- LoH doesn't seem to work (or maybe it's penalized on purpose).
- Healing after FoK set effect is incomplete (or maybe it's penalized on purpose, in which case it's a balance problem).
- Invulnerability seems to bug sometimes (I've kept damaging opponents during DFA, with bolts).
- When an opponent is beaten, the death-scream comes from your toon (which is even weirder when the opponent has the opposite gender).
- Sometimes, searching for opponents returns an error and the ticket is lost.
- Some effects seem to bug and/or be vulnerable to exploits, e.g. Encrypted Shield

BALANCE
- Stun effects last too long (can be solved by reducing the duration and adding a control bar that fills quickly).
- BH Smokescreen paralyzes your toon but the a.i. toon can move freely (it should really be just an invisibility cloak).
- BH traps, Singularity don't seem to affect your movement at all. . . but Shockwave does (correct me if I'm wrong).
- The a.i. toon (warrior) systematically chases your clones, except when it randomly doesn't and you die (this allows me to be in the top 100 with an Arcanist build just from trolling warriors. . . but the a.i. should go for the real toon every time and the power equilibrium point should be fixed for that scenario, right now a.i. stupidity makes clones way too convenient)
- a.i. fov seems infinite (preferable that it is 100% by default and increases only to match players at 110%, 120%, etc. . . )
- Paradox and MagTrap need to be 3 charges again (no, it won't break the game)

[Ozymandius]

+1 on returning Magnetic Trap to 3 charges.

[LodWig]

+1

[Kristoff]

+2!

[Windthin]

The balance is way off, particularly when facing warriors or stun attacks. I've been beaten by warriors half my level regularly if they have two pieces of fury armor, often so swiftly I can't do anything. Forget challenging people my own level or higher; the computer is too fast to react, and virtually always wins in a game of speed. I also went up against one warrior who just seemed utterly invulnerable. Nothing I did made a dent in it and it just wore me down gradually.

One other thing I forgot to note: the AI is allowed to attack you from offscreen, giving it a decided advantage in any encounter, whereas you can't really strike back effectively with most strategies until you see it.

[Dudeface]

+1 to AI attacking from off screen.
+1 to stun effects lasting too long.
Both of the above make fighting mages = or < impossible.

BH avoidance from warriors is negated by limited places to tap to send your character. Tapping anywhere on top of screen near listed effects will cause character to stop. Tapping near any of the columns will cause character to stop. Turning in too sharp of an angle will cause character to stop.

[CarnivorousDeathParrot.2]

I have to say that whatever was changed in the last patch it's causing the Arena to crash very often when loading opponents

[Kristoff]

This! I lose at least one free ticket or more each day to crashes when loading opponents. And worse is when it crashes when you fight, because you automatically lose.

[benettnash]

The balance is way off, particularly when facing warriors or stun attacks. I've been beaten by warriors half my level regularly if they have two pieces of fury armor, often so swiftly I can't do anything. Forget challenging people my own level or higher; the computer is too fast to react, and virtually always wins in a game of speed. I also went up against one warrior who just seemed utterly invulnerable. Nothing I did made a dent in it and it just wore me down gradually.

Exactly this. My BH can't stand a chance against much, much weaker oponents. In the vast majority of cases, I got 1 rating point for the victory, but if I lose, I lose 25 points on average. All of these is getting incredibly frustrating, definitely not fun, and "Making fun" did really poor job balancing this. Playing arena is just detremental to user experience, I grind it, though, 'cause of high gemstones drop rate.

[benettnash]

Not to mention if I got farmed by much stronger character with 300+ higher rating, I lose 16 rating on average. This is soooo frustrating and seems completely unfair. Please fix this as this is just horrible.

[CarnivorousDeathParrot.2]

I forgot to add collision height of toons.
Whenever I try to circle north of a column to avoid a Frostbeam south of it, the toon keeps attacking back even if I'm clicking two characters' height above.

[Kristoff]

Not sure if it's a flaw in the Arena hardware or software, but when I'm using warrior to fight BHs, the AI BH can often use superior speed to avoid all my leap and charge attacks while sniping or shooting at me with impunity. However, when I try the same tactic with my BH vs AI warriors, they catch up to me easily, especially when the framerate starts to lag.

[Dudeface]

It's a total flaw giving the AI the advantage. See some of the other issues in this thread like:
AI can attack from off screen but player (obviously) cannot;
AI doesn't get stunned by spells, stun, smoke screen, etc., but player does;
AI with half of attack and/or defend capabilities of player still winning without effort.

The support team says they will fix known issues before Arena opens to full competitions. But as with other known bugs and glitches in the game it seems to me (personal opinion) they just make something new and shiny (Arena?) and ignore putting in effort to fix known issues.

Standard business model for most apps these days. Still a good standalone game, but they do crunch the numbers on what's worth the effort to make money vis making a flawless game.

[Kristoff]

My mage does way better when I let the AI do the fighting. My AI mage had an unbroken string of victories, then I decided to play today and lost to a mage with less than half my CLs and less than a third of my toughness. I had a lot of bad breaks by getting frozen over and over again and then being hit with frostbeam. And I had to re-draw my ability symbols more than once before the spells would execute, while the AI mage effortlessly fired off one spell after another and never missed.

I'd probably do better on a PC, but the portability and convenience of my mobile device makes it hard for me to give up playing on it.

[CarnivorousDeathParrot.2]

I think I'm noticing something strange in the new arena where I get Rain of Swords from the enemy toon off-screen - but the enemy toon does not seem to do/complete the jump, instead running on screen seconds later.
. . .so it's not clear what that first effect is all about.

[Kristoff]

That's probably charge, not jump. With my warrior, I'm sometimes actually able to cast charge in one direction, have storm of swords hit the target, and move in a different direction. It's useful in high TLs when you're trying to damage the boss while at the same time avoiding their attacks.