I love a hard challenge. Specifically, I love overcoming challenges with a combination of tenacity and strategy.
I have a character that is well-equipped and I have a lot of experience under my belt. When I am suddenly, unexpectedly faced with a nearly impossible in-game challenge that is ridiculously costly to overcome, it's really quite disheartening.
The new Planar Arena is one such nearly-impossible challenge. At the very least you at STS could have set expectations much better. If I knew my fully mythic mage with combo elixir would be a one-hit joke in the first 10 seconds, at least I would have gone in expecting a bloodbath. If I knew two fully-arcane warriors would be taken out in the first 30 seconds, at least I'd have gone in with my eyes wide open.
All you top players who pooh-pooh those of us who are expressing legitimate concerns over the Arena difficulty need to check your attitudes. I'm so very thrilled that you've breezed through the arena with macros, unlimited plat, arcane gear/pets and whatever else you've used to accomplish the feat. I'm not so thrilled that you seem unable to comprehend that having a feat that close to impossible for serious, experienced players just may be detrimental to the game.
When you start shutting out the serious-but-looking-for-fun players in favor of the hyperactive elitist players, it's not a sign of a healthy game environment. If this pattern repeats too often, the serious players will move on to another game. Has this happened in AL already? Probably to some extent, yes. Another example: arcane pets available only to leaderboard fanatics willing to play (literally) 24 hours a day. Who is being shut out of that? You know. The real moneymaker group for every gaming company is the silent serious players, not the high-maintenance elitist players. STS, which group is your priority?
Thankfully, in this case, technology makes it possible to please both groups.
My idea: Create a robust algorithm that periodically auto-adjusts the boss difficulty to the players present in the Arena zone. AL already has this technology in place, so I am hoping that it would only be a matter of enhancing the existing algorithm. That way the Arena is equally difficult to every player who meets the minimum qualifications to enter.
As it stands now, a party of fully or partly mythic players stands little chance of (affordable) success in the Arena. That means the serious, non-fanatical players are shut out. Their first experience with the new content is very negative. That colors their perception of the game and discourages further game play.
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