Regarding draws, my opinion is this: if both players want to make a draw, they will make it. And I don't see anything wrong with that. Tournaments are played for the sake of the overall tournament result, not with the obligation to win every game at any cost. If a player believes that a draw will improve his tournament position, he can offer a draw. If the opponent is also sure that a draw will improve his tournament position, he can agree. The result was determined by the players themselves at the board, without the participation of third parties or cheating technologies? So, everything is fine.
In addition, the Arena system itself is unfair and does not aim to determine the best chess players in the tournament - only those who will be able to score as many points as possible in the time allotted for the tournament. Quick draws, it turns out, quite correspond to the spirit of the Arena. However, even according to the Arena system, no one has yet won a single tournament due to draws.
Thanks for your feedback. Indeed the arena format is flawed, but we don´t have too much choices, Swiss tournaments are hardly possible with a reasonable thinking time in 1 to 1,5 hours and I think 7 rounds are less than optimal in our group of 30 players. They are better for a large player pool.
Nevertheless we should find ways of how to improve what we have.
Also in many high-level tournaments early draws are forbidden, as you know.
Yes, every tournament system has its pros and cons in different circumstances. Players have to keep all this in mind in order to achieve good results. Therefore, it is rare to see many short draws in the first rounds of the big Swiss, but this is a common thing in a round-robin GM or IM tournament.
Restrictions on draws in top-level tournaments are a commercial decision of the organizers, not the choice of the players. In some cases, this may have something to do with the sale of entrance tickets or advertising time. In other cases, when the organizers do not expect any profit from the tournament, there are no reasonable reasons for restrictions at all. When I was actively playing offline tournaments, I always just ignored tournaments with restrictions on draws, no matter what the conditions or prizes were. Of course, this was largely facilitated by the fact that I never claimed to get into the ranks of top-GMs. :)