I've just read this: http://forum.naruto.oasgames.com/en/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=19229&extra=page%3D1 and i honestly think this is a real problem for arena and one of the main reason behind the fact 95% of the community gave up on trying to rank up there.
They tell us that initiative isn't everything in arena and that is possible to rank up to sage of six paths even if you are in the cross server circuit without it, but how can you do it if you can't prevent in any way your enemy from casting his misteries even if you selected a ninja that should do it? They have the upper hand of initiative so they have both the barrier up and the first move of every single round and, if they are in kage+, they all abuse of this because all of them know exactly how to get the right timing so you can't interrupt neither their 2nd, 3rd or 4th prompt move. How do Oasis pretend that is possible to get a winning streak in kage+ big enough to reach the goal if any countermeasure you can think of is useless? This guy here pointed out a real issue and the guy that first replied gave out the obvious solution and what was the reply of the management? This requires a change in the core mechanics... (aka you can forget about it, it will never be done).
So what is the official reply of Oasis?
Forget arena exists for one year if you didn't cheat when your server wasn't in the cross-server circuit? (because all of us know exactly how was arena in our early steps in this game, when our server had less than two months of age and we all know, that wasn't possible in any way to find enough matches in rank arena to reach sage of six paths at that time without creating a ton of alts and almost none of us knew how hard would have been to even reach kage since that 61st day).
So, guys, no, you can't give that kind of reply to a guy that points out one of the main reason why arena is not playable right now for the large majority of the population.