Arena Mode - Developer reply to feedback [ Edited ]

[EA_Roger]

One of developers took the time to go through your feedback and wrote up a comprehensive reply based on your input, without further ado please check out what our NBA Live Mobile team has been up to. First of all, as of today we have officially opened the Beta to all users, the main menu will be updated to always show the arena tile instead of daily beats.

What type of feedback are we looking for? 

Telling us that it sucks or its trash doesn't help us make it better. Give us as much details as you can. Device type. OS version. Type of connection. What specific issues you have. Things like "give us better rewards" aren't what we're looking for right now. We're trying to keep the rewards from now until s4 where they are because we may have to shut the mode off at a given time without notice and we don't want people to feel like they are missing out. One of the things that I always want to communicate is that many only post feedback when something doesn't meet their expectations. It also helps to communicate positive experiences as well, as those bits of feedback help us know what you like/enjoy better. If all we hear is what you dont like or what you think is trash, it makes it harder for us to give you something you will like.

Addressing the community's main pain points

I've spent the past day going through twitter, posts here, EA help page, etc trying to get a sense of user issues and friction. Here are the top issues we're seeing.

• "Lag" - Players reporting gameplay being laggy, having bad connections, etc. I put lag in quotes because what people attribute as lag could be many different issues that The Arena gameplay is a long ways off playing/feeling like showdown or live events. There will always be some kind of latency as there is constant communication from your client to our relay server down to the other players client. Several things cause this "lag".
  
  

  • Connection Speed: The game has to slow whoever has the faster connection down to the speed of the slower connection, otherwise the 2 clients will desync (the error you get when it says it cant record a score). Right now we set a minimum latency of 300ms i order for the play button to activate (instead of showing no viable server). this is why we always encourage you to use WiFi, however sometimes your cellular connection may be stronger than your WiFi connection. Or, if you are in certain regions of the world, your cellular connection may have less "hops" to our relay servers than your WiFi. I've seen users in Africa have better luck connection via cellular due to this right now. Potential Solution: We could reduce the latency requirement from 300ms to something like 150ms, but that will cause more users to not be able to play the mode.Obviously, we don't love this solution, so we're working on identifying other solutions.
    
    

  • Device Type: Our game has a pretty forgiving minspec(minimum device requirements) right now. We'll be increasing that for s4, but even then, it is still VERY inclusive compared to our competitors. The down side of this is that low end devices will struggle to keep up in this mode. We don't do any device filtering or restriction, so you may encounter users with lower end devices that will impact your experience. Possible Solution: We either require certain device types to use the mode or segment lower end device users with other users. Both of these options are also not great.

• Shot Meter Issues - The shot meter right now is being smoothed out behind the scenes due to the latency issues detailed above. If we didn't do that, it would be impossible to use (as anyone who has tried to shoot free throws in arena can attest, since that doesn't smooth). This is something we will continue to refine as we go but unfortunately, we wont be able to ever get it feeling like it does in showdown or live events, since those are all done in client vs AI and dont require any network communication.
  
  

• Locked To Auto Switch on Defense: This is something many want us to address and we plan to. We encountered issues with clients desyncing whenever 2 opponents had different settings for defense control. In order to get the beta out, we had to make a call either to always use manual defense or always use auto switch. Internal testing with several different studios gave feedback that manual defense wasn't that intuitive. It is more of an advanced user setting, so we made the call to address it during the beta and lock it to auto switch. Lose/Lose situation, but we want the mode to be as accessible to as many as possible so we get the best testing data possible.
  
  

• Rebounding Struggles: Part of this is due to using auto switch, but part of this is also now due to OVR advantage not being a thing in Arena. Because of that, rebounding is much more of a simple compare of the rebounding stats between the players attempting to rebound at a given time. This makes it much closer of a compare since most the difference between 100 and 110 rebound in terms of how the compare is not as much as you'd think. That being said, you're playing with cards that have been designed to play well vs AI that we're released all season. Playing in real time against another person without the bonuses or penalties of OVR advantage is a whole different ball of wax that will influence how we build and stat players in s4 to make them feel better both vs AI and vs human beings.

For those who are frustrated, I know how that feels and I sympathize. I've been working on this mode in some form or another for the past year and couldn't wait to get it in to your hands. Launching as a Beta is essential for us to build it into the competitive mode you deserve and lets you get involved in that process. If the mode is too frustrating for you right now, that's understandable. You still have all the other modes to play and continual content for them.

We have 2 more tournaments that will roll out between now and the end of S3, giving you different ways to play, get more arena points and even a new tournament meta. I look forward to reading your feedback, both on things you like and don't like.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. I can't wait to continue improving this mode to get you the best possible competitive experience.