Arena Spartacus what it looks like and how it works

Timers

In addition to the standard countdown timers for waiting and fighting, a more visual meter type timer was added. Until 4 players join a room, you do have the option to leave. The timer remains at -1s until the 4th person joins (you won’t see this is you are the 4th, 5th or 6th to join a fight). If you don’t want to fight with the players who have already joined, you can click on the “leave” link to leave the room and join another. For more details on how this works, go here.

Once 4 players have joined, a 20 second timer is activated. 

Once the fight starts, the meter will be 100% gray at the 90 second mark and will move towards 0% as the fight progresses. 

Rank Sorting 

During the fight players will shift in rank based onscore. This makes it extremely easy to monitor your placement throughout the fight and more importantly which players are standing in your way. Below I’m in position #2 and appear in the second line. Once I have more points than the player ahead of me, I move into the first line on the list. This eliminates the need to look at scores to calculate in your mind who is in what position. 

Intervene Options

Intervene buttons allow you to perform actions (or non-actions) on specific players. They are located to the far right of the player list. 

Clicking on the yellow cross hair symbol to the right of a target will attack the player until they are dead. 

Clicking on the blue defense icon will avoid them all together. Players that are much stronger than you often drain your stamina for very little return in score (damage done) and sometimes it’s to your advantage to avoid attacking them. Players who don’t like to attack their friends or mafia members will also find this option useful.

In addition to the strip of click to use Power Ups under the timer, they can also be used in the intervene area. The difference is there is more control over which targets the Kamikaze and Drained Power Ups are used on. If you use them from above, they will apply to the first target you attack. 

To use a Kamikaze or Drained Power Up on a specific player, click on it from the intervene area. If a player is dead, the Power Up will be shadowed and you can’t use it until their health is regenerated. 

The same principle applies to the Meta Flair, Pain Killer and Reflector. In order to activate them, you need to be alive and they will won’t light up until you are. In the image to the left, I’m have health so the Power Ups I’m eligible to use are in the on position. In the image on the left, my health is 0% and the ones I can’t use are shadowed. When you are dead you can always use a Health Refill. When you are alive they remain shadowed. You can also activate the Kamikaze and Drained Power Ups but they won’t trigger until you are alive and are used on the first opponent you hit. Obviously you can’t use the attack player until they are dead option if the player is already dead. If that is the case, the yellow cross hair symbol is also shadowed. The defense shield can be used at anytime because you are just avoiding the player. 

With all the moving around due to rank sorting, one might be worried that they would accidentally click on the wrong player. There is no need to fear because rank sorting becomes locked whenever your cursor is inside the intervene box. You can tell this is working because a lock icon will appear next to rank and sorting will be temporarily turned off until you move your cursor out of the box. While it’s locked, rank will be listed by number only. It’s a shame Zynga would never implement this on the home page! Many accidental reward point purchases would be avoided.