Playmage Forum

To PM:

Despite that I've said these in the support section, I want to suggest the following changes here again to bring your attention.

1. DEDUCT ARENA ACTION POINTS/ENERGY UPON HITTING "START", NOT UPON DRAWING THE OPPONENT
2. REMOVE THE STRENGTH FILTER
3. ADD AN OPTION OF QUITTING A BATTLE IN THE PREPARATION STAGE (WITHOUT DEDUCTING ACTION POINTS/ENERGY)

These changes have a number of merits:

1. For players who are reasonably strong but have problems with a few powerful players, like myself, those problematic opponents are drawn all the time. Meanwhile, the weaker players can avoid those overwhelming opponents. Both are due to the strengh filter.
Here is my philosophy: *IF YOU CANNOT PROMISE RANDOMNESS IN ARENA OPPONENTS, YOU SHOULD ALLOW PLAYERS TO CHOOSE WHETHER OR NOT TO FIGHT*
I have to admit that I have bought gems to make progress, but definitely far fewer than some others. This makes me a decent player, but not the strongest. But then I am screwed by much weaker players on arena rank due to the power filter. So I am being punished for spending, but not spending enough? That doesn't make sense to me at all. Either the first change or the second change above would resolve the problem described above.

2. Fair chance of ranking for all players: if players are allowed to choose opponents, they get to spend all 20 daily arena points on who they want to fight, if patient enough. If there are sufficiently many active weaker players, due to the clear advantage to attacker (triggering skills before defender), they are able to defeat each other and rank as high as the strongest (here I'm quite satisfied about the scoring scheme), only that weaker players need to refresh more. On the other hand, (without strength filter) only the stronger players can get the set bonus, by defeating all five opponents in the same class.
In short, under these changes, all players have an equal chance of winning the tournament, provided that weaker players need to be more devoted. And the set bonus can be regarded as a reward for those who have spent or have already devoted a lot to get stronger.

3. There was the concern of abusing the system by manually terminating the app from home screen when one runs into an undesired opponent. But as I've argued, players should be allowed to choose opponents. So why not adding an explicit option to exit a fight in the preparation stage? This also reduces the risk of losing arena action points/energy when the game gets stuck on the preparation stage, due to unstable connection, which is very annoying.

It seems to me that these changes are not hard to implement. In particular, they avoid changing the scheme for randomly drawing opponents. The only potential technical difficulty I can think of is the increase in request data stream. But under these changes, there would be no incentive for a player to deliberately abuse the system. So I wouldn't consider it a problem either.

I consider dragon tear a nice game, with great graphics and well-define pet evolution/stat distribution/capture system. What bothers me most is the poor mechanism design in the arena, which is the only aspect of player-player interaction. So I appreciate it a lot if you could seriously consider these suggestions.

Without Arena filter, Imagine RIGHT off the start, and a player with 2 pets fights the bronze area, nobody is yet above 1k and they pull you. Is that fair?
Without a filter at all, the people who are strong or intermediate in strength and don't use the arena, or are inactive, Would often be pulled by very weak people.. I don't think there is a way to solve all the issues.

Then you just use the "Exit" function armageddon suggested.
His suggestions aren't only to improve his play but yours too.

Talon, I was by no means referring to you as a "weaker player". As a matter of fact, you have a dangerous Kong which I have to take care of first whenever I draw you in arena
And as infernal said, you can exit the battle when coming across someone you don't want to fight, under the proposed changes. On the other hand, I do agree with you that the chance of drawing inactive players should be discount somehow (perhaps inversely distributed according to one's length of inactivity?).

The bottom line is: everyone gets an equal chance of ranking, only that stronger ones have to use less effort, and get the set bonus. These changes are the simplest I can think of.

Talon Lake wrote:Without Arena filter, Imagine RIGHT off the start, and a player with 2 pets fights the bronze area, nobody is yet above 1k and they pull you. Is that fair?
Without a filter at all, the people who are strong or intermediate in strength and don't use the arena, or are inactive, Would often be pulled by very weak people.. I don't think there is a way to solve all the issues.

Thank you for understanding, Infernal. You will get the races you want if the changes are adopted

Infernal wrote:Then you just use the "Exit" function armageddon suggested.
His suggestions aren't only to improve his play but yours too.

Like a time traveller, i gaze upon the sound of silence, and walk in the remnants of the glory of great players who didn't visit for a long time. I see even 2 years ago, when this ge was at is prime, you did care, but nobody cared to heed your prayers... That makes me sad.