Next season Arena suggestion

[SpajderDzerusalem]

Bonus Maps on for next season perhaps?

[Monkeyunit]

Bonus Maps on for next season perhaps?

If they do, please remove the digging/tucking cards map.
It's so high variance with whats on the display and who's starting player.

[JDansp]

For playing with and without a draft. the draft does not bring balance to the games. No game is lost in advance. just look at the top 10 with 90% victory. drafting really doesn't seem necessary because we rarely get high rolled.

the top 10 are coop winning mostly it seems. they spectate each others games all the time. And draft would 100% bring balance. you cant just be dealt the perfect hand for the awards.. would only be able to take part of what you need towards a goal and hope the other guy isnt competing... naturally creating compitition on them.

Shhhh, I'll let you into top10 if you delete your post and don't talk about it.

[skrohmagnon]

For playing with and without a draft. the draft does not bring balance to the games. No game is lost in advance. just look at the top 10 with 90% victory. drafting really doesn't seem necessary because we rarely get high rolled.

the top 10 are coop winning mostly it seems. they spectate each others games all the time. And draft would 100% bring balance. you cant just be dealt the perfect hand for the awards.. would only be able to take part of what you need towards a goal and hope the other guy isnt competing... naturally creating compitition on them.

Shhhh, I'll let you into top10 if you delete your post and don't talk about it.

Maybe he speak about the second who play only in beginner map with player with elo around 100. Great competitor !

[Stan2137]

Personally, I would stop playing arena if the season would be 3 or 4 players. That's for the following reasons:
* lack of control over the flow of the game, making the player feel less in control
* accidental or intentional kingmaking, introducing politics and that's also frustrating
* games taking longer while 2p games can already take quite long

Draft variant would be nice if we had green light from the publisher about it. Going over Marine Worlds rules, there is nothing new about such arrangements unfortunately.

[werfmark]

I don't see how a draft variant would improve the game at all.

1. No matter how you draft, one player will get a first pick at a potentially super juicy card (archeologist on Silver lake for example).
2. Depends how you do a draft mode but say you go 2-2-2-2 or all cards out on the open then 1-2-2-2-2 and so on, you'll still have that one player can easily get much more good cards than the other. For example one hand contains 4 juicy cards the other contains 2. It's impossible to come up with a fair draft system that is somewhat elegant as a good draft system depends on stuff like 'how much better are the top cards than the rest?' and are cards 'combo heavy' or not.
3. Takes away the hidden aspect of the opening play. The game needs a bit of hidden stuff to it, 'will he break or not?' these kind of interesting decisions fade away if you know most of opponent's hand.
4. Would just add gamelength and unneeded complexity.
5. The game is inherently filled with lots of randomness, introducing a draft wouldn't make the game more skillful per se. The law of large numbers applies, lots of random moments tend to balance out. Are games sometimes lost on a terrible opener? Sure. But plenty of times a player makes a comeback by getting lucky later.

Arena should be 2 player, no draft.

Personally i feel that Rescue station / map 10 should never have made it into the map pool. It's a silly map I feel where starting player just has too big an advantage. If anything player position balance should be looked at more than an opening draft. I still think player 1 is quite advantaged in a 2p game, the 1 appeal doesn't seem nearly enough payoff for the fact P1 gets first dibs at most things AND has the potential to have 1 more round in the game.

[GTSchemer]

Paradoxically, I feel draft would actually make Ark Nova games MORE swingy. Why? Because players will in general have more consistent hands, and the MOST powerful consistent hand would accelerate the game even faster than it already goes in the hands of an experienced player.

With random hands, at least a high-ranking player must deal with bad cards on occasion.

[pjt33]

If anything player position balance should be looked at more than an opening draft. I still think player 1 is quite advantaged in a 2p game, the 1 appeal doesn't seem nearly enough payoff for the fact P1 gets first dibs at most things AND has the potential to have 1 more round in the game.

One way to rebalance this, which has been adopted in various forms by some games, is to have an auction. It's not entirely straightforward to design an auction for Ark Nova starting setup because there are multiple assets to divide (maps, starting position) and currencies to bid with (money deducted from starting 25, cards removed either from the initial draw of 8 or from the number kept, appeal given to the other player as a handicap), in addition to multiple styles of auction. But if Mathias Wigge is reading this, please consider whether you think it could work as an officially sanctioned variant.