Add Back Shadow Arena
Feb 6, 2024, 08:09 (UTC)
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Last Edit :
Feb 6, 2024, 08:29 (UTC)
# 1
Family Name: Anishd6
Region (NA/EU): NA
Suggestions/Comments:
Does anyone remember how enjoyable this game mode was? I could easily get my friends into playing the game with this, and everybody was having fun.
Ill paste this from reddit outlining the strong arguments for the return of this mode:
With the recent addition and success of Arena of Solare, despite its bugs/issues, has reminded me of how fun competitive PvP can be. Back in early 2019 Pearl Abyss released a piece of content called Shadow Arena which was a Battle Royale type game mode with simplified yet similar combat to Black Desert's. This game mode was a massive success, until it became riddled with speed hackers who were trying to farm the competitive rewards offered for participating in the game mode. This botting issue was large in part due to offering BDO for free during Shadow Arena's release, which allowed offending players to infinitely make new characters. Additionally, Kakao was the publisher at the time, and they were in charge of ban waves, which they did so rather poorly in comparison to PA.
Because of the botting and Shadow Arena's success in Black Desert, they decided to make it a standalone game. At the moment, the game is dead. Shadow Arena is a great game in the context of BDO where you are rewarded for your time and it's very convenient to queue into, but not very good as a standalone game where you're competing with the greater Battle Royale game market.
Fast forward to today, where hacking is much less of an issue, Shadow Arena would be a very successful game mode inside of Black Desert once again if it made a return. Shadow Arena via steam is completely dead. In order to salvage the effort and time spent on the game mode it could be ported back into BDO, and be a massive success.
This is a plea to Pearl Abyss. Please don't let the concept, time, and effort go to waste by committing to leaving it as a standalone, and simultaneously let down the large player base who wants to see it make a return.
I will also add some points of my own.
1) This mode is good for new players to get into the intricate mechanics of pvp
2) This mode is great for new players to try out different classes
3) This mode is great for advertising the game to players who might be intrigued by the mode, and end up checking out the game.
4) The mode is extremely replayable and wont require an incredible amount of maintenence.
5) Not everybody enjoys generating silver via running around in a circle be it lifeskilling or grinding, alternative methods such as nodewars, boss rifts/shrines, world bosses, etc... Are whats keeping the game successful.
Last Edit :
Feb 6, 2024, 11:09 (UTC)
# 2
I agree, it was really fun and enjoyable mode.
Last Edit :
Feb 6, 2024, 12:46 (UTC)
# 3
Am 06. Feb 2024, 08:09 (UTC), von Anish
Does anyone remember how enjoyable this game mode was? I could easily get my friends into playing the game with this, and everybody was having fun.
Shadow Arena in BDO was successful because of the rewards you got for BDO! And people only played it (and cheated in it) because of the rewards! The game mode, without the connection to BDO, was not realy good and thats why the standalone version failed!
So the main reason why people want it back is to get easy and good rewards for playing it and not because they liked the game mode so much!
If they liked it so much, the standalone version would not have failed!
Last Edit :
Feb 6, 2024, 13:39 (UTC)
# 4
The standalone version failed because:
1. It was no longer connected to the game people wanted to play
2. It was completely different to how it played in BDO (worse controls, worse systems, forced remastered graphics, worse monetisation)
3. You had to close BDO to play it, aka losing out on passive income, as well as active ones
4. Cheaters were an issue, but it got aggrevated by the free account event that was going on at the time. If rewards were no longer far better than the best PvE modes, and more in line with PvP rewards, this likely would no longer be any driving factor. The cheaters also still existed in the standalone version.
As someone who absolutely enjoyed the game mode, and would have played it without rewards too (see me playing AoS for hours without a single reward as well), I really miss this game mode, and all the friends that were made with the party queueing and random matchups. It was extremely fun and I still regret the day PA decided to take it out and make it into an objectively and strictly worse game by itself.
Last Edit :
Feb 6, 2024, 15:18 (UTC)
# 5
On: Feb 6, 2024, 12:46 (UTC), Written by Megta
Shadow Arena in BDO was successful because of the rewards you got for BDO! And people only played it (and cheated in it) because of the rewards! The game mode, without the connection to BDO, was not realy good and thats why the standalone version failed!
So the main reason why people want it back is to get easy and good rewards for playing it and not because they liked the game mode so much!
If they liked it so much, the standalone version would not have failed!
It wasn't "just the rewards". The cheaters used speed hacks because of the rewards.
Last Edit :
Feb 7, 2024, 05:38 (UTC)
# 6
On: Feb 6, 2024, 12:46 (UTC), Written by Megta
Shadow Arena in BDO was successful because of the rewards you got for BDO! And people only played it (and cheated in it) because of the rewards! The game mode, without the connection to BDO, was not realy good and thats why the standalone version failed!
So the main reason why people want it back is to get easy and good rewards for playing it and not because they liked the game mode so much!
If they liked it so much, the standalone version would not have failed!
The rewards during its existence was good, however, it wasnt actually better than the meta grind spots at the time. You could really only make consistent high silver an hour if you were good. So that should help debunk the idea that people only played it for the rewards. Every activity on the game has rewards due to the structure of the game and its sandbox nature where you can choose to progress in your own way. I see this argument thrown out alot, but I and many people I know would play the mode for a low amount of reward simply because its fun. Personally I would rather play 3 hours of shadow arena for the same reward of running around in a circle for one hour.
To your other point about the standalone.. Yeah it was not fun because it was drastically changed among other issues.
I cant really think of any negatives about adding it to the game, which is why I think it should be supported.
Low effort/risk & high rewards in terms of the game state.
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