Arena is for the PtPers

[Diophilous]

So, if you're a FtPer like myself, there's something you need to know about Arena or any other major event that these so called "developers" do: you're going nowhere if you're not a PtPer. I have multiple accounts at wildly different levels and in Arena it's all the same: either overpay for absolutely ZERO RoI or get relegated to fighting base toons for zero advancement. And arena equipment has been taken away from the lower levels like it USED to be. In the past, you could get some "decent" equipment for at lest participating. Now you have to be a PtPer to even get anything close to a decent chance at 1 piece of equipment. Otherwise it's just 2 or 3 free rolls to get garbage commons from whatever chest you roll on. You don't pay to play...you get garbage.

With Arena, it's just "buy-a-rank". Anyone can purchase coins to keep hitting lower lvl opponents for 70 or 80 points at a crack. And that's the whole point for the devs - just keep pumping in the $$$. There's no skill. It's just about pumping in that cash. Good job at buying your ranks all you Rank 5 and above.

Like I said, I have various levels. They rank from under 200 to over 1000. For the really low lvl toons, it's just a queue full of rank 1 & 2 so you can only advance if you pay out tons of cash. For the upper levels it's always the same - be able to hit opponents 800+lvls or more or be relegated to insignificance. The devs don't care. You're not paying. I basically get a queue FULL of UNHITABLE opponents who are HUNDREDS to THOUSANDS of levels above me or I get 1 or 2 opponents/humps at my level or lower but only rank 1 so I get GARBAGE points. Gee, what a surprise. The developers screwing over the "regular Joe". *sarcasm*COUGH*sarcasm*...

If I'm still playing this game next year I'll try to post the same thing for the 99.4% of players who are the FtP but constantly getting SCREWED over.

[Bandigerbolls]

Last year was the first time I participated and actually realized how skewed it was. In previous years, I would just enter all my toons for the minimal prize, and let the other players have fun bashing them. That was actually the best return on investment.

I'm participating in Arena once again for the whole year of guild bonuses, hoping for Phalanx or Cohort rank. None of the individual prizes are worth it, so I'm not even tracking my individual scores.

[Diophilous]

I begrudge no one "buying their ranks". If you feel the need to buy more FP to buy more Arena tokens, great, fine. Happy for ya. I see no reason for my Arena queue to be full of players 800+ lvls higher than me that I have NO chance of hitting. Such a waste of developer time. Way to make the game worse.

[graeme]

The whole game is just a way for a few high rollers to pad their bloated toons with even higher stats.
Any 'normal' players who are in it for anything more than a bit of a giggle and some guild banter can expect to be very disappointed.

[gogoo]

You should absolutely be able to reach at least Gladiator very easily for free, as long as you drop all your tokens every day.
I used to do that every year when I was super weak 5+ years ago.

Now I'm not that weak anymore, especially because I have some relatively nice piercing and resistance thanks to hunting a lot (lvl 2k now), so I have no issue finding targets of my rank or +1 or -1 (which all gives +100 points) that I can beat, which helps . And even though I wouldn't consider myself really weak, by no means am I a strong PvPer (I have very little invested in atk/def compared to ene/stam).
And I will probably end up being Legend for free. That's where I ended last year.
I also have Monkey King giving me a small boost of +7.74% tokens, which also adds up in the long run.

But anyway, I think at a low level, if you try a bit hard (spending some time finding relatively good targets, and spending all your tokens every day), you should definitely be able to make Hero for free. Or at the very least Gladiator.

Not saying Arena doesn't have issues - it definitely has - but I think your post is greatly exaggerating how bad the situation is.

But anyway, unless you reach EV and get the general, there's often nothing interesting to get at the other ranks anyway. And EV costs a lot. And keep in mind that those who pay don't even know what the general will do exactly (or at all sometimes) and about half the time will get something useless for all their time and money. So even big spenders can get really screwed in this event lol.
AV did get a good piece of equips last year though, and Legend the year before that.

Btw, in the past, even though you did get equipment at all ranks, the good stuff was at the top ranks IIRC. I doubt you would have gotten anything truly useful before Hero or maybe Gladiator sometimes. Not completely sure though, I may be wrong.
Personally, I'm fine with getting useless equipment, and some free rolls and a lot of freebies just from hitting players. But I understand not everyone may feel the same.

[Barathor]

Of course most AV and all EV will have to pay. You should be thankful to them for keeping the game alive spending. And if you think they keep their level hitting people at rank 5 or lower, you are mostly wrong.
Aside form that, every devoted free to play pvper will end at least hero (rank 5) and many legend (6). If you end lower than that chances are you did not spend your tokens wisely or did not spend many of them or you build is wors than average for a F2P player.
Maybe if you focused on one account and selected your targets with care, as suggested by gogoo, your performance would be better.
Regarding lower levels, you realize they are mostly from people who entered will several accounts and don't work them out, artificially widening player amount and making it easier to stay on top but harder to find good opponents, do you? does it sound familiar?

Edit: this said, I of course recognize that the list of available targets should be worked on, amongst other things.

[Bandigerbolls]

Maybe if you focused on one account and selected your targets with care, as suggested by gogoo, your performance would be better.

I believe that even with my monster-hunter builds, I could certainly push one of them into hero+ by neglecting the others.

I'm playing the "Moneyball" version of Arena, though, building a team of mediocre toons in an effort for the collective prize.

[Ditendra]

Of course most AV and all EV will have to pay. You should be thankful to them for keeping the game alive spending. And if you think they keep their level hitting people at rank 5 or lower, you are mostly wrong.
Aside form that, every devoted free to play pvper will end at least hero (rank 5) and many legend (6). If you end lower than that chances are you did not spend your tokens wisely or did not spend many of them or you build is wors than average for a F2P player.
Maybe if you focused on one account and selected your targets with care, as suggested by gogoo, your performance would be better.
Regarding lower levels, you realize they are mostly from people who entered will several accounts and don't work them out, artificially widening player amount and making it easier to stay on top but harder to find good opponents, do you? does it sound familiar?

Edit: this said, I of course recognize that the list of available targets should be worked on, amongst other things.

Disagree with that. I play everyday (multiple times, at least 4 times) and I'm usually getting 100 or 90 points from targets and I'm still gladiator. Yesterday night I was too tired to play arena before bed and this morning I noticed some of my toons were warrior ranks already. Oh and my toons aren't monster hunters or weak. I'm a daily PVP player with balanced builds.

I personally find this arena very tiring and time consuming even though I like free random gifts during hitting the opponents.

Another problem that I'm facing is that Castle Age becomes very laggy and glitchy at some certain times, like for example at 11 AM PDT when 10v10 starts. I'm hitting something but it doesn't register, get a blue ball spinning and everything gets messy. It just adds more frustration to this already time consuming event. I'm not enjoying it, to be honest and can't wait when arena ends.

[JefferMC]

If you played 24 hours a day, then you should get 24*12 tokens, or 288. If you got 90 points each hit, never losing that's almost 26,000 points. LEGEND is going up about 25,000 a day, so, if you never get hit for losses and you didn't ever sleep, then you could just barely make Legend. Hero is going up about 20,000 a day. That means you can stand to loose 4 hours of tokens from sleeping 8 hours, because you can store about 4 hours of tokens and still just barely make Hero. If you wake up in the middle of the night and hit your 50, then, more better.

[Bandigerbolls]

If you played 24 hours a day...

That raises the important point that even if you could, why would you want to? Games are supposed to be fun, not drudgery.

People don't want to consider it, but a fast-rising whale is likely operated by several people. Either a voluntary team hobby, or some trust fund kid pays his toadies to keep the toon in perpetual activity.

[JefferMC]

I said you could make LEGEND by not sleeping and only getting 90 per hit. You can make HERO and sleep 8 hours, still only getting 90. I've had network issues that have cost me several hours, plus I get 7-8 hours of sleep each night, and I'm still in mid hero, FtP. If I do spend, I'm not going to spend until the end. Being that extra tier just makes me more of a target.

[Batw]

If you played 24 hours a day, then you should get 24*12 tokens, or 288. If you got 90 points each hit, never losing that's almost 26,000 points. LEGEND is going up about 25,000 a day, so, if you never get hit for losses and you didn't ever sleep, then you could just barely make Legend. Hero is going up about 20,000 a day. That means you can stand to loose 4 hours of tokens from sleeping 8 hours, because you can store about 4 hours of tokens and still just barely make Legend. If you wake up in the middle of the night and hit your 50, then, more better.

1/ The point creep in ranks is due to MK & Layla with MK.

2/ My MK is 7* lvl 80 for 17.5% of free stuff.

3/ My MK buff is 12 tokens * 1.175 = an expected 14.1 tokens per hour.

I will have no problem being in the 3rd ranking without spending any FPs. My MK’s 17.5% buff is a tough handicap to overcome if you don’t have MK.

[JefferMC]

Yeah, Monkey King is a hard thing to compete without. But it's sooooo expensive (well, not in comparison to finishing Arena at EV, but still... $90).

[Barathor]

[...] I'm usually getting 100 or 90 points from targets and I'm still gladiator. Yesterday night I was too tired to play arena before bed [...]
[...] I'm a daily PVP player with balanced builds. [...]

So you missed at least 100 tokens that day, at least 50 tokens every night plus a 10% everytime you get 90 points... You clearly not qualify for "devoted" player.
What shocks me the most is that being gladiator (rank 4) you attack people that gives you 100 or even 90 points. Why would you atack anybody under your own rank when you should be targeting rank 6 or above???? Frankly, I don't get it. If you enter Arena and there are no good targets available, just leave and go back 1-2 minutes later for a fresh list. There are a lot of LSI players with Layla and Monkey King placed high that are no match for a pvper and you should pray on them for easy 110 or 120 points.
Regarding your performance in general, IMHO entering Arena with several accounts is a handicap for the main one (unless you don't have a real life, which you and I do). The time you spend playing with each toon could be used to refresh more often and select targets carefully with the main account, maybe even get an excel with who to attack and who to avoid and track their regeneration and availability.

[Ditendra]

So you missed at least 100 tokens that day, at least 50 tokens every night plus a 10% everytime you get 90 points... You clearly not qualify for "devoted" player.
What shocks me the most is that being gladiator (rank 4) you attack people that gives you 100 or even 90 points. Why would you atack anybody under your own rank when you should be targeting rank 6 or above???? Frankly, I don't get it. If you enter Arena and there are no good targets available, just leave and go back 1-2 minutes later for a fresh list. There are a lot of LSI players with Layla and Monkey King placed high that are no match for a pvper and you should pray on them for easy 110 or 120 points.
Regarding your performance in general, IMHO entering Arena with several accounts is a handicap for the main one (unless you don't have a real life, which you and I do). The time you spend playing with each toon could be used to refresh more often and select targets carefully with the main account, maybe even get an excel with who to attack and who to avoid and track their regeneration and availability.

I don't know how is in your level range, but in my range anyone with higher ranks are way too bigger level or too hard. That's why I get 90 or 100. Obviously I can't defeat 1000 & 2000 bigger levels than me. I mean, come on, do you think me as 950 level can defeat targets that are 3000 or 4000 levels? And usually targets with higher ranks are either that big, either too tough (hence that's why they're alpha vanguard or similar rank).

Another thing is that I don't even see high rank players in the list, very rarely. For example, I just checked Arena. This is the list I see:

I play at least 4 times a day this stupid event, but obviously I'm not that "devoted" still. Sorry, but I'm not going to wake up & set alarm to play this dumb event 24 hours. I'm not that devoted. I have a real life.

Toons are more important, than just one account.