How are you enjoying Hellas?

[ArchDevious]

2 people mentioned it in this thread, are we really likely to get random map next season? That will be so BA if true. Harder on new players for sure, but arena is supposed to be for the more dedicated playerbase

[Beammeup87]

I'm not as good as Bogeyun but am still a highly rated player (I was at or near 700 elo until two weeks ago), in my opinion Hellas is not as well designed as Tharsis.

In a lot of these games, because terraforming is not as strong, there are a lot of wins where the player with card draw tends to win. I feel like I am losing a lot more games to lower elo players just due to this. Not saying I'm perfect but I feel like I'm losing games I shouldn't simply because my opponent has card draw and gets to see 1.5-2x the cards I am seeing.

[FrankJones]

Our intention was to implement random map to make it available in the next arena season.

But, that's a decision to be made by the gurus who vote at the end of each season.

[rambling_coherently]

2 people mentioned it in this thread, are we really likely to get random map next season? That will be so BA if true. Harder on new players for sure, but arena is supposed to be for the more dedicated playerbase

AFAIK it's already an option gurus can vote for, it will likely easily win.

[ArchDevious]

awesome! all I need now is some amazonis planitia practice

[Bogeyun]

I'm not as good as Bogeyun but am still a highly rated player (I was at or near 700 elo until two weeks ago), in my opinion Hellas is not as well designed as Tharsis.

In a lot of these games, because terraforming is not as strong, there are a lot of wins where the player with card draw tends to win. I feel like I am losing a lot more games to lower elo players just due to this. Not saying I'm perfect but I feel like I'm losing games I shouldn't simply because my opponent has card draw and gets to see 1.5-2x the cards I am seeing.

a lot will depend what you prefer - playing vs CC/Ecoline on Tharsis w/ terraforming strats is also impossible to play against unless you have the most busted engine cards, that's not much different to what can happen on hellas, just in a different way. Maybe you will lose a game or two vs 'weak' players because they players default to engine, when you're unlikely to lose to them on Tharsis since they won't play the busted terraforming setups, but i'm not really evaluating the maps based on what happens vs low elo players.

If your criteria for a map is "how likely am I to beat up noobs on this map" - then tharsis (or really, Elysium) is gonna be more for you - Hellas just has more potential for interesting games in even skill match-ups I find - Tharsis is mostly 'solved' on how to play it, while Hellas allows a lot more creativity

just wait til we get some elysium arena games for peak RNG anyways

[charliec247]

awesome! all I need now is some amazonis planitia practice

The random map option excludes Amazonis Planitia

[sozabaru]

awesome! all I need now is some amazonis planitia practice

The random map option excludes Amazonis Planitia

I am glad to hear this; map doesn't seem great for 2P

[Beammeup87]

I'm not as good as Bogeyun but am still a highly rated player (I was at or near 700 elo until two weeks ago), in my opinion Hellas is not as well designed as Tharsis.

In a lot of these games, because terraforming is not as strong, there are a lot of wins where the player with card draw tends to win. I feel like I am losing a lot more games to lower elo players just due to this. Not saying I'm perfect but I feel like I'm losing games I shouldn't simply because my opponent has card draw and gets to see 1.5-2x the cards I am seeing.

a lot will depend what you prefer - playing vs CC/Ecoline on Tharsis w/ terraforming strats is also impossible to play against unless you have the most busted engine cards, that's not much different to what can happen on hellas, just in a different way. Maybe you will lose a game or two vs 'weak' players because they players default to engine, when you're unlikely to lose to them on Tharsis since they won't play the busted terraforming setups, but i'm not really evaluating the maps based on what happens vs low elo players.

If your criteria for a map is "how likely am I to beat up noobs on this map" - then tharsis (or really, Elysium) is gonna be more for you - Hellas just has more potential for interesting games in even skill match-ups I find - Tharsis is mostly 'solved' on how to play it, while Hellas allows a lot more creativity

just wait til we get some elysium arena games for peak RNG anyways

I just disagree. I've lost more to 300 or lower ELO players in the last month than I can remember in any two months combined. It's that your card draws and starting setup is just so much more important. I could think of some creative ways to use terrible preludes and corps on Tharsis. On Hellas, if you get UNMI and Phobolog and you have no good space cards and just average terraforming cards, you might be screwed.

All five milestones favor card draw (hence engines) over terraforming setup. Diversifier requires extending for sub-par cards, so that one is a wash. Polar Explorer is not where a terraformer wants to be. Energizer can work for either engine or terraformer but the best card for this is 5 science locked, which is something engines might have but rarely something terraformers will. The Jovians are clearly engine based. Hitting requirements is pretty RNG.

Then, the awards, 4 of the 5 favor or highly favor engines/card draws. Cultivator is obviously a terraformer award but, beyond that, every other one so heavily favors card draw it's actually somewhat rediculous.

Comparing these to Tharsis milestones and awards I just think it favored a good balance between terraformer and engine.

The problem is that card draw on this map is so ridiculously overpowered. We can see this by the win rates for Point Luna. Point Luna is winning more now than ever, why? Because this map greatly favors card draw. On average, the player with more card draw is going to win this map more often.

On Tharsis you could at least SP out of the game and sometimes win. On Hellas you can't win awards if you're SPing, except the aforementioned Cultivator. Additionally, to compete on awards or milestones you might have to select some weird or bad cards. Pets is generally pretty bad but is a decent card because of the tag on Hellas. I'd keep pets maybe 3% of the games I saw it on Tharsis, on Hellas, it depends a lot more about how badly I need the animal tag.

Sure, in some setups you can push/rush the game down but that is so much less often on this map because you're pretty unlikely to win more than one milestone and possibly any of the awards.

My last piece of anecdotal evidence. Sometimes when playing Tharsis I would triple or get tripled. I see people getting tripled a LOT more often on Hellas. I'm curious what the winning percentage of a player tripling another is, because I bet it's pretty high. Again, a lot of this is down to card draw.

On Tharsis you could force out some milestones if you needed to. Gardener, Planner, and Mayor were all possible. On Hellas, if you don't see energy cards what are you going to do? Are you going to force polar explorer on a terrible portion of the map?

[FrankJones]

My experience has been that the milestones on Hellas and Elysium are absurdly easy for whoever gets the right cards. I'm not a fan of either map personally.

The 3-card spot and the two spots where you get a heavily discounted terraform also are frustrating; just seems so random.