Nearly empty arenas can be hard to fill, because with so few players its just hard to find a squad, a fight, an enemy defending a base -- whatever it is that you like to do. Once the arena reaches a "critical mass", folks join without thinking about it and the game is afoot.
Problems
1. This is an issue right after a primary arena meets 90% and a new arena is cloned. By far the most commonly full arena is the late war, and I've noticed that sometimes things will stall with the LW1 full, and the LW2 stalled below critical mass.
2. With caps, it's clearly harder for ANY squad to stay together in the LW arenas. Larger squads, many of which prefer the LW, can fnd it about impossible to get their guys in to play. If they try for the LW1, the cap gets in the way; if they jump into LW2, they're guaranteed massive side imbalance which hurts them (ENY) and others (think of swarmed bees on a single honeypot).
Suggestion....
Would it be possible to do an arena SPLIT at 90% rather than an arena CLONE?
If the 2 arena populations were divided in half, then both LW's would be above critical mass and could expand more naturally. They would each have room for joiners below the cap, and that could mean that larger squads woudl have better opportunity to get in without triggering unacceptable swings.
The goal seems like a good one, but I'm a bit stumped about how to make it work in a way acceptable to players. Thats why I'm posting it here, to see what the community can come up with.
The arenas could divide like cells, with each "daughter" being identical to the parent cell -- INCLUDING BASE OWNERSHIP and strat conditions at the time of division. That way it would feel like the same fight was going on, just with fewer people in each arena "cell."
My first thought was to have the arenas refill as players land. When they try to take off, a message could come up announcing the split and asking the player to move to the new arena. For those in squads, they could select to have their entire squad move as they reupped...so they could stay together.
The problem comes in that making a arena split work would require some degree of coercion...at some point, the system would have to be able to say, "no, you cant do that" in order to get the numbers to move in both directions (and, if it also became a goal, to get the sides balanced out).
This is a significant cost, no doubt at all...but I think the benefit makes it worth considering. Would it be worth the restriction to gain the opportunity for squads -- and especially larger groups -- to work together?
