Arena Crowns

[NekoKnight]

Some time ago, Tier 21 was added to Arena and with it, the Arena Crown to be awarded to those summoners who busted their wallets butts to get to the tippy top of the player base. So far, there isn't a big reason to get into/stay in Tier 21 as the Arena Crown is a silly accessory for Feh or a bragging right. Curiously, despite not having any inherit value, Arena Crowns are stored in your inventory, along with every other consumable resource. While I'm not sure if the crowns will ever become something that can be spent, their placement in the inventory leaves open the possibility. So the question is, should they be a spendable resource and if so, what would they be for?

As someone who hasn't invested that heavily into a single arena core (at least 660,000 feathers for a full team? Yikes) I can't say I'd be happy about heavily coveted features being locked behind getting into T21 Arena, but I'm curious as to what you might want to exchange crowns for. More orbs? Feathers? Nature editing? What would you want?

[Thane]

With the item being that rare, I can only imagine it'd be used for something Intelligent Systems would otherwise be hesitant to add. Changing a unit's nature would probably be the biggest such feature. Throw the whales a bone who spent so much mone on a unit without managing to get an ideal nature.

[Vaximillian]

I don’t want it to be anything I might want because I will never reach T21 ever.
And of course it will be something I will want because of course it will.

[Magical Glace]

19 minutes ago, Vaximillian said:

I don’t want it to be anything I might want because I will never reach T21 ever.
And of course it will be something I will want because of course it will.

Basically this.

Arena Crowns should stay bragging rights, and if they don't stay bragging rights they should be made more available.  Making them do anything important would essentially lock that important feature behind a paywall otherwise.

And quite frankly, screw that.  Arena is cancer with no sign of IS doing anything but making it worse, making something important locked behind it is the last thing I want to see and frankly might make me outright quit the game.

[Garlyle]

Maybe Book 3 comes with a new feature where you can invest, or it could just stay something for avid crown collectors.

[Usana]

I mentioned before that they could be equipable accessories. As for using up multiples, let them be merged together to make recolors/bigger crowns.  Maybe let you merge 50 to get a gold crown to put on a units head. And unlike regular accessories you can of course get multiples of these so super whales could have four units with gold crowns on their defense team. Though that would take a while.

[Captain Karnage]

I agree with Thane that their probably going to be used as a resource, but I'm doubtful just due to their scarcity. I doubt they would put such a game changing item in a hard to attain spot. My bet is that they'll let you go up a tank in the arena if you fall down a few ranks.

[Grandosco]

I hope they stay just bragging rights, because if they become something that has a use, anyone that has them is at a point where they don't actually need them for anything. What use are optimal natures if you've proven you don't need them to top the leaderboards?

Feh is pretty cute with one on though. Maybe one day I'll be able to get one, but that day's probably a loooong time away.

[Humanoid]

Crown means you've won the game, and therefore it should be usable to auto-skip arena and just get the maximum rewards in your mailbox every week without participating. As a result, positions in T21 are freed up for other people to earn crowns, and eventually no one has to do arena unless they really want to.

[bottlegnomes]

1 hour ago, Humanoid said:

Crown means you've won the game, and therefore it should be usable to auto-skip arena and just get the maximum rewards in your mailbox every week without participating. As a result, positions in T21 are freed up for other people to earn crowns, and eventually no one has to do arena unless they really want to.

That seems far too generous though.

[Humanoid]

5 minutes ago, bottlegnomes said:

That seems far too generous though.

Tongue is firmly in cheek. :P

That said, I'd definitely prefer to have more freedom to skip content I don't enjoy. My thoughts were to have something like a weekly cap of say, 75 F2P orbs but you can do any combination of content you like to get them, all content provides a repeatable source of orbs. Want to get all 75 from Tap Battle? Go right ahead. All from Arena? Also valid.

[Azuni]

Hoping they do something, anything, eventually. Right now, bouncing between tier20 and Great Summoner (20.5) is brain-dead easy if someone invested in a decent scoring f2p tri-core. Without some reward to work towards that costs Crowns, there's very little incentive to try to stay in Great Summoner, outside of using a bonus unit that you already had highly merged.

At this point, more Crowns is just a personal goal, giving (me) long-term projects to work towards, in the form of saving up orbs for 3 Legendary Heroes, prioritizing L!Tiki, L!Hector, and Fjorm. Using up orbs in an attempt to pull 1 copy of a new 5* purely for collection started to feel depressing, because they subsequently rotted in the barracks after their bonus set was over, at best getting turned into an AA budget killer.

[Alkaid]

I do assume they'll be used for something other than bragging rights, since more incentive to get them would encourage more whaling to hit/maintain tier 21. I'm hesitant to say what that something would be, though. I don't expect anything too generous like IV rerolls.

[Lewyn]

Tier 21 is whale tier, or super invested FTP (only spend orbs on merges for arena core, dedicated solely to that), so I don't mind if the reward for crowns are amazing.  Maybe they can be used to get a free merge of choice, or reroll a nature.  Perhaps instead of a free orb summon on banner you get a full free circle.  

[Astellius]

I doubt that they will be able to be used for anything that improves in-game performance, and I definitely think they should steer clear of that. Instead, I could see them implementing something that could alter the aesthetics of the game -- like reskins of accessories or something like that. While accessories are fun, they don't affect gameplay, and so I think that would be an acceptable addition for most people.

10 hours ago, NekoKnight said:

Some time ago, Tier 21 was added to Arena and with it, the Arena Crown to be awarded to those summoners who busted their wallets butts to get to the tippy top of the player base.

I'm F2P, and I reached T21 the first week it was implemented. But, fair enough, T21 is primarily for the whales.

6 hours ago, Humanoid said:

That said, I'd definitely prefer to have more freedom to skip content I don't enjoy. My thoughts were to have something like a weekly cap of say, 75 F2P orbs but you can do any combination of content you like to get them, all content provides a repeatable source of orbs. Want to get all 75 from Tap Battle? Go right ahead. All from Arena? Also valid.

75 F2P orbs per week? What game are you playing? That's not even remotely near what we get (although, with that said, I do get what you're getting at).

In any case, honestly, I would hate this. You already have the option to skip content you don't enjoy -- you just don't get the rewards for that. This aspect, in part, levels the game between whales and F2P. Currently, everyone can only get the rewards for any event by actually doing the event. Everyone has to go through the same grind and complete the same sort of content in order to get the rewards for that content. But, with your suggestion, whales would get an exemption from that process, and this actually gives whales an exemption from playing certain aspects of the game. I think this would be a pretty divisive mechanic.

3 hours ago, Lewyn said:

Tier 21 is whale tier, or super invested FTP (only spend orbs on merges for arena core, dedicated solely to that)

The F2P method is to spend feathers on the Arena core, not orbs. It's much easier to promote, say, Sheena to 5*+10 than it is to summon 11 copies of a 5* unit.

[NekoKnight]

6 hours ago, Lewyn said:

Tier 21 is whale tier, or super invested FTP (only spend orbs on merges for arena core, dedicated solely to that), so I don't mind if the reward for crowns are amazing.  Maybe they can be used to get a free merge of choice, or reroll a nature.  Perhaps instead of a free orb summon on banner you get a full free circle.  

I think this would be a better arrangement. Getting a full circle summon would be a bonus for people with crowns but not a strict advantage over people who can't get into T21. The amount of salt there would be if there were a feature like changing natures for crowns would be legendary.

2 hours ago, Astellius said:

I'm F2P, and I reached T21 the first week it was implemented. But, fair enough, T21 is primarily for the whales.

The F2P method is to spend feathers on the Arena core, not orbs. It's much easier to promote, say, Sheena to 5*+10 than it is to summon 11 copies of a 5* unit.

 

There is also premium skills to consider, which usually take orbs to get. I don't doubt that T21 is possible for F2P, but it's a humongous investment that would be out of reach for many players. Additionally, if crowns become a spendable resource for a highly valued feature, the number of people wanting to get there will increase, driving up the cost of what is required to get crowns.

[Humanoid]

2 hours ago, Astellius said:

75 F2P orbs per week? What game are you playing? That's not even remotely near what we get (although, with that said, I do get what you're getting at).

75 orbs a week is actually very near the average outside of the anniversary months. It's 300 orbs per 28 days, so a over a typical month it's 310-330ish orbs which matches up pretty well to the historical trend. Of course I'd love to see it a bit higher. :P

2 hours ago, Astellius said:

In any case, honestly, I would hate this. You already have the option to skip content you don't enjoy -- you just don't get the rewards for that. This aspect, in part, levels the game between whales and F2P. Currently, everyone can only get the rewards for any event by actually doing the event. Everyone has to go through the same grind and complete the same sort of content in order to get the rewards for that content. But, with your suggestion, whales would get an exemption from that process, and this actually gives whales an exemption from playing certain aspects of the game. I think this would be a pretty divisive mechanic.

I probably communicated this poorly, I don't propose any such system having any link to the arena crowns. It's just that arena crowns led me to contemplate how much I dislike doing arena, and then wander off-topic to proposing a completely different system for orb (and other resource) distribution in general. To be clear, *everyone* would fall under this system. Nothing to do with arena or arena crowns.

[Roflolxp54]

13 hours ago, Usana said:

I mentioned before that they could be equipable accessories. As for using up multiples, let them be merged together to make recolors/bigger crowns.  Maybe let you merge 50 to get a gold crown to put on a units head. And unlike regular accessories you can of course get multiples of these so super whales could have four units with gold crowns on their defense team. Though that would take a while.

It certainly would. A year is like 52 weeks. So based on your idea, it would take about a year to create one crown accessory assuming the player actively participates in Arena and stays in tier 21 in all those weeks. And who knows if the game would last for another 4 years, especially as some of the playerbase have jumped ship to Dragalia Lost or some other hot gacha game or just drop gachapon games altogether in favor of doing something else.

Edited September 30, 2018 by Roflolxp54

[Lewyn]

17 hours ago, Astellius said:

 

The F2P method is to spend feathers on the Arena core, not orbs. It's much easier to promote, say, Sheena to 5*+10 than it is to summon 11 copies of a 5* unit.

That's true usually it is 3-4 star armors available promoted to 5 star +10, and putting expensive fodder on them.

14 hours ago, NekoKnight said:

I think this would be a better arrangement. Getting a full circle summon would be a bonus for people with crowns but not a strict advantage over people who can't get into T21. The amount of salt there would be if there were a feature like changing natures for crowns would be legendary.

There is also premium skills to consider, which usually take orbs to get. I don't doubt that T21 is possible for F2P, but it's a humongous investment that would be out of reach for many players. Additionally, if crowns become a spendable resource for a highly valued feature, the number of people wanting to get there will increase, driving up the cost of what is required to get crowns.

Yeah I don't think many people will be upset about that.  Actually about arena crowns since it is mostly whale tier, or super dedicated invested FTP tier, I don't think people should be too upset even if it was nature changing or extra merges or something else desirable.  This coming from someone who will likely never be in tier 21 and am not interested.  

[Ice Dragon]

You should be able to use crowns to put an extra crown on Feh's head. And also let them stack without limit (scroll up to see all 50 crowns on Feh's head).

[Astellius]

22 hours ago, NekoKnight said:

There is also premium skills to consider, which usually take orbs to get. I don't doubt that T21 is possible for F2P, but it's a humongous investment that would be out of reach for many players. Additionally, if crowns become a spendable resource for a highly valued feature, the number of people wanting to get there will increase, driving up the cost of what is required to get crowns.

Absolutely, it's a huge investment. But, basically, I was just making the slight point that some of us F2P players have made it to T21 at least once! There are, at least, a few of us, although we're small in number!

22 hours ago, Humanoid said:

75 orbs a week is actually very near the average outside of the anniversary months. It's 300 orbs per 28 days, so a over a typical month it's 310-330ish orbs which matches up pretty well to the historical trend. Of course I'd love to see it a bit higher. :P

I probably communicated this poorly, I don't propose any such system having any link to the arena crowns. It's just that arena crowns led me to contemplate how much I dislike doing arena, and then wander off-topic to proposing a completely different system for orb (and other resource) distribution in general. To be clear, *everyone* would fall under this system. Nothing to do with arena or arena crowns.

I stand corrected on the first point! While 75 orbs a week is still a little on the high side, it's really not a ridiculous statement, like I initially thought.

As to the second point, my understanding was that you intended that to be based on Arena crowns. This is, after all, a thread based on what those crowns could be used for. But I'm glad you clarified! That does make sense. Even with that, though, I still want everyone to clear the content. Some of the content is at least hard for most people, like Infernal variations on LHBs or BHBs. I don't like the idea of people being able to skip that. But I would have no problem with, say, daily or monthly quests being fulfilled through other means.