Gonna get back into the Arena and I notice that it is extremely slow with a lot of items sitting there until entry price is very low. Also notice that there is a lot of luck in the time a person join an arena.
Im sure this has been mentioned before, but what I'm suggesting is an extra arena where everyone fight everyone else and a standing is generated from the results. The top 2 then fight two or three(if first battle was a tie) more battles and whoever ends up with more wins head to head wins the arena.
Or
The top half of each arena face off in another battle royale until a top 2 is generated and the same applied as above.
Tie-breakers
If 2 people are tied with one another whoever won the h2h battle get the higher spot. If 3 people are tied then the individual standing between the tied people are looked at and the standing is drawn from there. If everyone is at 1-1, then 10% off the highest stat and then the three of them fight against each other again. Similar for 4,5,6 way ties.
Alternately, allow people to choose 2 or 3 sets of combat moves and switch to an alternate set and run the battle again to get the standing.
What this idea means is that there will be no need for the maximum number of people to join before an arena can start, it just need a time limit(24 hr? random?) which will start the arena if there are people. The decaying join rate would still apply if there is 0 or 1 people in the touney. This would be especially useful for the moves arena as most people already have the first set of moves, but the newer (relatively) sets dont spawn enough.
If the token thing that is in another thread, here is implemented then it would clearly define a top 3 or 4 to give the tokens.
Thoughts?
Look, it is simple, you want to move the Arena tournaments along, then put a time limit on it similar to how the AH is set up. Every entry "fee" is a "bid". The fees can still deteriorate over time, but there is a time limit.
You have a tournament based on the number of players who have signed up -- in groups of 4. It would be "first in, best chance to participate".
Let's say you have a 8 player tournament set up, but time runs out and only 7 have signed up for the tournament. The first 4 to sign up are in, the remaining players are dropped and fees refunded -- just like losing a bid on the AH -- and the first 4 battle for the prize. Extending the example, let's say you have a 16 player tournament, and only 13 sign up before time runs out, the first 8 to sign up are in, the remaining players are dropped and fees refunded.
To add to the above, you could possibly encourage players in 6 and 10 player tounments, where the the first two to sign up get a first round "bye".
Finally, let's have some new items introduced as well. Maybe randomly generated items, etc.
There, and that, is what I think would accelerate the Arenas along.