Arena Grouping Change

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Many players have reported that something has changed with Arena groupings. In the past grouping seemed to go in waves. If you lost a lot of fights, you would eventually be grouped with easier players and go on a winning streak. Players often refer  to this ebb and flow as easy and hard mode. It doesn’t seem to be happening anymore. Players are also reporting that they aren’t able to use all of their stamina in one fight as they were before. This is most likely a direct cause of the grouping change. Performance in Arena fights is based mainly on your defense skill and defense equipment score. To improve performance you need to build your characters defense and many aren’t willing to do that. All the Power Ups in the world will not help you beat a much stronger opponent. This is especially true if they are in it to win it as well. What I’ve noticed for my account is I always get grouped with easy opponents if I do manual Arenas and when I use Spartacus there is more balance. You can see in the manual image below by Respect is 16,592 and my opponents are all at least 10,000 below me. You can also see by the scores, it’s not a very fair fight.

When I use a script, the groupings are always much closer. While Respect is no longer an indication of strength, it does reflect who is doing the most Arenas. Players who do well are the ones most likely doing them all day long. There are currently no incentives to do Arena fights so the playing field is more populated with stronger accounts. When the loot is updated or there is another mastery event, it should get better. One thing the Arena does need for success is players and unfortunately for Zynga, this ones favors the fighters. 

Understanding how Arena scores are calculated and knowing what skills matter can help if you want to improve. The key to good performance in the Arena is defense above all others.

1. Defense: Scores (damage) are tabulated based on an equation that compares your defense to the defense of your opponents. Player difficulty is based on both skill and equipment scores compared to your own [1]. You will score more points shooting easy players than you will hard ones. You will also be able to get in more shots than you will a hard player. If there is a wide range between the defense difference, your opponent will actually get credit for the passive damage you do to yourself when attacking them.

 

2. Stamina: Stamina is only a factor when you or your opponents run out of it. Most can last 90 seconds in a 100 Arena but it’s a different story for the 500 Arena. If you are weak in defense but have a lot of stamina, you could compensate and do well in Arenas by outlasting your opponents. In the case where all players have enough stamina to last 90 seconds then stamina is irrelevant and building more will not help you. While Stamina Refills can combat a low stamina pool, they are not good to use in the Arena because most players will level and could lose their energy for the past level. All experience earned in the Arena carries over to the next level [1].

3. Health: Health is only a factor when you don’t have enough to max on your Arena Health. The maximum Arena Health any player can have for a 100 Arena is 800 and for a 500 Arena it’s 4,000. The equation used to calculate Arena Health is based on your total health pool [1]. If you have 4,000 health or more, you will max on the 100 Arenas and if you have 10,000 or more, you will max in the 500 Arenas.  Most have this so in most Arenas health is irrelevant. If you are below the value for the type of Arena you enter, you could improve performance by increasing your health.

4. Attack: Attack doesn’t play a big role in Arena scoring. It’s function correlates to the rate at which an opponents heath meter is knocked to 0. The more attack you have, the quicker you can kill your opponent which can result in more kills and provide more bonus points to your score. If you are outmatched on defense, it won’t matter.

 If you find you are always coming in last place like this guy. You can either accept that your account was not built to perform well in the Arena and ignore the feature or you can start building it to be better. Accusing those who perform better than you of cheating just makes you look like a sore loser and displays a complete lack of understanding on how the Arena works. Scripts do not aid in performance and most have a much better track record in manual Arenas.  Humans make better decisions and it is to your advantage to do them manually if you want more first place finishes.  Scripts simply allow players to do more Arenas and without them, the Arena would be much less populated. If Zynga wants more to participate in this feature then they need to figure out how to keep players grouped by strength and not whatever system they are currently using.