Fixing Squad Arena
TL;DR at the bottom.
The problems
The biggest fundamental issue with squad arena is collusion. Not even specifically what those involved may refer to as "negative collusion" but collusion as a whole. Collusion damages the game because in collusive shards, it is impossible to break the top ranks without involving yourself in the collusion. It is therefore nigh impossible to genuinely fight for top spot in a shard day in, day out, when you only have five battles to fight with and, in shards with widespread collusion, you may find yourself forced down too far to realistically propel yourself back to top spot without multiple reset purchases.
Collusion is anti-competitive, and prevents squad arena from being a genuine competition between players. It stifles innovation in the evolution of the game's meta, as without the true competitive aspect of the game, there is far less incentive to try to build new teams that are capable of keeping you in the top spot. Finally, if you are in a highly collusive shard, attempting to play the game as it is meant to be played and compete with other players normally usually gets you targeted by those colluding, forcing you down the places.
An issue that fits under the topic of collusion is the ability for a group of five players to literally lock somebody from entering arena fights for a solid 25 minutes, usually right before payout time. This is not just bad ethically, it is a clear abuse of game mechanics, which can only be solved by preventing collusion entirely.
Squad arena's second large problem is that your shard, having been assigned at a very low level, is one you are then stuck with. I consider my own experience with the game to be a perfect example of why this is problematic. I started playing Galaxy of Heroes at release. I was consistently in the top 20 of my shard for a long period of time, until I stopped playing the game. I stopped playing for a few months - maybe four (these months happened to include the release of Darth Nihilus, which probably didn't work in my favour). Now, I cannot consistently break into the top 200, as effectively those at the top of the shard have spent four months longer than me collecting and upgrading their characters, yet the game places me in the same category as those players as they started playing at the same time as me.
The final problem I will go into on this post is the lack of balance within the arena meta, which comes as a result of true nerfs to overpowered compositions being rare, with the developers usually choosing to add equally overpowered counters instead. Now, this isn't necessarily directly related to the arena shard system in general. However, it is a further issue for players in my situation. When you're behind, without having the newest meta characters, the natural thing to do is to work on these characters. However, this is made very difficult by the state of the current major meta characters. General Kenobi is locked behind HAAT, which is only going to be available to players who already have great characters. Thrawn is locked behind a full 7* and relatively well geared Pheonix Squadron, which is a killer for players who need to focus on catching up in other areas already. Baze and Nihilus would take very nearly a year to farm free to play - as when you're not high up in the arena you can't really afford to be buying 320 crystal shipments over energy resets to farm crucial gear, which is also getting more and more difficult to obtain - with Baze having the additional problem that his node is incredibly difficult to 3* if you don't already have great characters. The volatility of the meta comes into play here, as once you've spent your year farming Baze and Nihilus, you'll find that suddenly, neither of them are at all arena viable because Ugnaught now has a unique ability meaning that taunts don't work and cooldowns can't be decreased. These things, in solitude, are not necessarily huge problems. Everyone knows that it would be pointless if every player could easily obtain every character. However, when combined with the issues with the squad arena system, I believe this to be significantly problematic.
The solutions
My suggestion for a modified squad arena system would, I believe, alleviate all of the problems with the functionality of the game mode I have talked about. Perhaps this is implausible, for development reasons, but I consider it important to at least present an attempt to fix these problems. After all, I have experience in game development and appreciate that solutions to these problems can be difficult to find. I will outline the fundamental idea of the system I wish to present, and explain what benefits it brings.
Shards should be re-assigned on a semi-frequent basis. This could be weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or whatever is deemed to be the best frequency by the development team. The assignment of players to shards should use multiple factors - I'm sure some experimentation on testing servers could be done to figure out how best to do this - in order to guarantee fair competition in which players must innovate, not go with the flow, in order to reach the top spots - in a shard where 500 people have a fully geared and modded triple cleanse team, something's got to give. If shards were assigned semi-frequently based truly on the quality of a player's roster, we'd see an end to so many of the game's long-standing problems, such as free to play players being disenfranchised by whales dominating the top spots in their arena shards - the whales would, by and large, be facing each other. Now, I appreciate that there are perhaps costs regarding arena shard switching for the running of the game. However, I believe that this improved level of competition would encourage the spending of crystals on resets - again, when so many in a shard are at a similar level of roster quality, there's genuine competition to reach the top.
I would also propose that the amount of places that can be jumped in one battle increase significantly. From my view, there's no reason this should not be the case if your squad is strong enough to do so. This would decrease the ability of anyone to 'lock out' players their collusive squad has decided not to like.
These plans would, in addition, stop the discouragement of old players who have taken long breaks from returning to the game - when they return, they would be able to partake in a fair and balanced arena shard, with other players around their level as opposed to being stuck behind hundreds of people who have an X month advantage over them.
Alongside these changes, it could even be possible for each shard to have its own reward level. Players who are in a very high level, high gear shard would get more crystals for each rank than players in the same ranks in shards for new players. This would further balance the system. This could be combined with a narrowing in the gap for rewards, making the system fair on players who have spent a lot of money to gain an advantage and therefore still encouraging further spending on the game in the future.
The suggestions laid out above would, obviously, work best if the size of each arena shard were to be reduced, but I have accepted that this could be costly to the developers and probably not feasible as a result.
Alternative solutions (none of these would entirely fix squad arena's problems in the way my first solution would, but they would help) include:
A one time only reshuffle of the shards, with player names and IDs then hidden to prevent future collusion.
Rebalancing the rewards so that the disparity between first and top 200 isn't so large, to reduce incentives to rotate the top spots so heavily.
Find a way to remove the mechanic of not being able to battle while someone is battling you, so colluders have less weapons in their arsenal to enforce their oligopoly.
TL;DR:
The problems
The biggest fundamental issue with squad arena is collusion. Not even specifically what those involved may refer to as "negative collusion" but collusion as a whole. Collusion damages the game because in collusive shards, it is impossible to break the top ranks without involving yourself in the collusion. It is therefore nigh impossible to genuinely fight for top spot in a shard day in, day out, when you only have five battles to fight with and, in shards with widespread collusion, you may find yourself forced down too far to realistically propel yourself back to top spot without multiple reset purchases.
Collusion is anti-competitive, and prevents squad arena from being a genuine competition between players. It stifles innovation in the evolution of the game's meta, as without the true competitive aspect of the game, there is far less incentive to try to build new teams that are capable of keeping you in the top spot. Finally, if you are in a highly collusive shard, attempting to play the game as it is meant to be played and compete with other players normally usually gets you targeted by those colluding, forcing you down the places.
An issue that fits under the topic of collusion is the ability for a group of five players to literally lock somebody from entering arena fights for a solid 25 minutes, usually right before payout time. This is not just bad ethically, it is a clear abuse of game mechanics, which can only be solved by preventing collusion entirely.
Squad arena's second large problem is that your shard, having been assigned at a very low level, is one you are then stuck with. I consider my own experience with the game to be a perfect example of why this is problematic. I started playing Galaxy of Heroes at release. I was consistently in the top 20 of my shard for a long period of time, until I stopped playing the game. I stopped playing for a few months - maybe four (these months happened to include the release of Darth Nihilus, which probably didn't work in my favour). Now, I cannot consistently break into the top 200, as effectively those at the top of the shard have spent four months longer than me collecting and upgrading their characters, yet the game places me in the same category as those players as they started playing at the same time as me.
The final problem I will go into on this post is the lack of balance within the arena meta, which comes as a result of true nerfs to overpowered compositions being rare, with the developers usually choosing to add equally overpowered counters instead. Now, this isn't necessarily directly related to the arena shard system in general. However, it is a further issue for players in my situation. When you're behind, without having the newest meta characters, the natural thing to do is to work on these characters. However, this is made very difficult by the state of the current major meta characters. General Kenobi is locked behind HAAT, which is only going to be available to players who already have great characters. Thrawn is locked behind a full 7* and relatively well geared Pheonix Squadron, which is a killer for players who need to focus on catching up in other areas already. Baze and Nihilus would take very nearly a year to farm free to play - as when you're not high up in the arena you can't really afford to be buying 320 crystal shipments over energy resets to farm crucial gear, which is also getting more and more difficult to obtain - with Baze having the additional problem that his node is incredibly difficult to 3* if you don't already have great characters. The volatility of the meta comes into play here, as once you've spent your year farming Baze and Nihilus, you'll find that suddenly, neither of them are at all arena viable because Ugnaught now has a unique ability meaning that taunts don't work and cooldowns can't be decreased. These things, in solitude, are not necessarily huge problems. Everyone knows that it would be pointless if every player could easily obtain every character. However, when combined with the issues with the squad arena system, I believe this to be significantly problematic.
The solutions
My suggestion for a modified squad arena system would, I believe, alleviate all of the problems with the functionality of the game mode I have talked about. Perhaps this is implausible, for development reasons, but I consider it important to at least present an attempt to fix these problems. After all, I have experience in game development and appreciate that solutions to these problems can be difficult to find. I will outline the fundamental idea of the system I wish to present, and explain what benefits it brings.
- Semi-frequent mixing up of the shards
Shards should be re-assigned on a semi-frequent basis. This could be weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or whatever is deemed to be the best frequency by the development team. The assignment of players to shards should use multiple factors - I'm sure some experimentation on testing servers could be done to figure out how best to do this - in order to guarantee fair competition in which players must innovate, not go with the flow, in order to reach the top spots - in a shard where 500 people have a fully geared and modded triple cleanse team, something's got to give. If shards were assigned semi-frequently based truly on the quality of a player's roster, we'd see an end to so many of the game's long-standing problems, such as free to play players being disenfranchised by whales dominating the top spots in their arena shards - the whales would, by and large, be facing each other. Now, I appreciate that there are perhaps costs regarding arena shard switching for the running of the game. However, I believe that this improved level of competition would encourage the spending of crystals on resets - again, when so many in a shard are at a similar level of roster quality, there's genuine competition to reach the top.
I would also propose that the amount of places that can be jumped in one battle increase significantly. From my view, there's no reason this should not be the case if your squad is strong enough to do so. This would decrease the ability of anyone to 'lock out' players their collusive squad has decided not to like.
These plans would, in addition, stop the discouragement of old players who have taken long breaks from returning to the game - when they return, they would be able to partake in a fair and balanced arena shard, with other players around their level as opposed to being stuck behind hundreds of people who have an X month advantage over them.
Alongside these changes, it could even be possible for each shard to have its own reward level. Players who are in a very high level, high gear shard would get more crystals for each rank than players in the same ranks in shards for new players. This would further balance the system. This could be combined with a narrowing in the gap for rewards, making the system fair on players who have spent a lot of money to gain an advantage and therefore still encouraging further spending on the game in the future.
The suggestions laid out above would, obviously, work best if the size of each arena shard were to be reduced, but I have accepted that this could be costly to the developers and probably not feasible as a result.
- Alternative solutions
Alternative solutions (none of these would entirely fix squad arena's problems in the way my first solution would, but they would help) include:
TL;DR:
- Squad arena is broken by all forms of collusion, by being stuck on the same shard you were assigned at the beginning of the game permanently, and by the way those who are already behind fall further behind due to the way the system works.
- The solution is to rotate shards to keep everyone competing, with people on shards with others of the same competitiveness, allowing more innovation in the meta.
- In addition, allowing people to jump more ranks per battle, particularly lower down the shard, would go a long way towards ending the strangleholds that collusive players have over many shards.
