Has Valve Officially stopped the support for Arena Mode?

[Asd417]

There's practically no way to play any official arena mod.
Even community servers run 'troll' arena maps.
It just feels like they abandoned the gamemode despite the fact they added in the invasion update.

 

[Crowbar]

It's not in the rotation probably because the rounds are really really really short compared to what is worth 10 minutes searching like PL or CP.

 

[Mikroscopic]

That wouldn't be a problem if you were allowed to play more than 2 - 3 rounds at a time.

 

[nᵗʰSonata]

I think the main reason Valve took it out of the rotation is because it is completely different from the rest of the game, and is harder to learn.
removed arena because it is too confusing to new players

 

[Idolon]

The main problems facing arena mode are:

1) Bugs. During Invasion, a lot of people reported getting stuck in rounds that refused to ever begin. I don't think this got fixed.

2) Player count. Early on they decided to restrict the mode a smaller player count, and a lot of the maps are designed around that notion. As a result, sticking it in rotation with maps of other game modes is going to cause issues since a fair number of people have to sit out every round. On top of that, TF2's sort of drop-in/drop-out pub play doesn't match up with arena's short format (similar to CS), and an odd number of players means sitting someone out.

3) It's highly divisive. A lot of people hate it, a lot of people love it. Around the time that Valve was probably thinking about arena again (i.e. Invasion) Arena: Respawn was in its heyday, so they probably didn't see a reason to revive it when the people who actually like arena already had an outlet. I could be totally wrong about this though.


When Byre was added to the game, I don't think it solved any of these issues. Obviously it couldn't solve 1 or 2 without Valve's help, but it also didn't exactly receive universal praise (though I don't think that was the case for any of the Invasion maps), so whatever reasons Valve had for not supporting arena mode weren't really overturned.

The way that they ran the Invasion maps on rotation was a limited time deal, so any problems that might come from running an arena map weren't going to be around for very long. My guess is that they wanted to run Byre for their own reasons (because the map is really good of course!) and that any repercussions (buggy servers, sending false signals about reviving arena mode) were either unexpected or not important to them.

 

[Jekyllson]

Yeah, the fact that Invasion maps weren't guaranteed to stay on in the game is probably why Valve was willing to let them be as far-out as they collectively were. As popular as it was/is, Watergate probably would've stayed gone if it hadn't been for the introduction of "Alternative" game modes.

 

[Adawby]

Arena was doomed from the start and I blame the gamemode's focus on survivability and coordination. The mode is obviously made for the more competitive folks which only make a small percentage of the people playing TF2. The two problems could be minor if arena allowed respawns. Let's be honest, no one likes to spectate an ally and have to rely on a surviving member of the team to win. Valve should really look into reworking the mode so it's closer to a sort of deathmatch than team elimination.

 

[Jekyllson]

Arena was doomed from the start and I blame the gamemode's focus on survivability and coordination. The mode is obviously made for the more competitive folks which only make a small percentage of the people playing TF2. The two problems could be minor if arena allowed respawns. Let's be honest, no one likes to spectate an ally and have to rely on a surviving member of the team to win. Valve should really look into reworking the mode so it's closer to a sort of deathmatch than team elimination.

Should they, though? I feel as though King of the Hill and Player Destruction are already great natural successors to Arena. Aside from the feeling of actual weight behind your deaths, what does Arena have that those two proven game modes don't already offer?

 

[Asd417]

Should they, though? I feel as though King of the Hill and Player Destruction are already great natural successors to Arena. Aside from the feeling of actual weight behind your deaths, what does Arena have that those two proven game modes don't already offer?

well the fact that the gamemode punishes dead players is already enough to lose people's attention in a game where death is inevitable.