Trips said:

1. PvP has always been harder. The PvE missions have always been easier. This is an indisputable fact. 

2. Arena has become significantly more difficult. Fact. It was always difficult. But yes, as I have stated over and over it is far more difficult.

3. It is not more difficult because of sandbagging, changes by plarium to make it harder (they don't change things at all LOL). Fact.

4. It will continue to get harder because of "inflation" and "aging population". Fact.

5. Aging population: The longer the game has been around, the tenure of the base skews older. Fact. This will continue.

6. Inflation: Better gear, better champs all concentrated on just 4 heroes. Everyone's team is stronger. Particularly those playing longer. Fact.

7. Even "stupid" players stuck in lower levels because they do not fully understand game mechanics have crazy stats just from getting better gear.

8. Plarium acknowledges that arena is more difficult and will address. They are slow to fix ANYTHING. We as a group have no patience.

Solution:

Make the tiers bigger

1. Increase platinum. Very few try to achieve plat because it is too difficult to win medals for most. This is the only time sandbagging exists to any measurable level. It makes Gold4 easier.  Good for me. But they should probably make Plat more attainable. Bad for me, but good for the game.

2. Increase Gold 1, 2, 3 and Silver 1-4. NOT Gold 4. This would essentially bump everyone up a bit to levels more consistent with the past.

3. If someone is inactive for 3 weeks, there defense in slots 2-4 are removed. 

1 & 2 are solved simply by replacing constants in existing logic/code.

3 seems like a simple addition to code if there is already a mechanism to drop after inactivity.

In the meantime as any fix could take weeks or months, I choose not to complain that my Alt can't get past silver 3 (I am at Gold 1 mission). I am improving in other content so I am not stuck when the really difficult missions come up. I can do dragon19 and golem 19. I do FK13 with a level 40 Grappler. Spider, I can manual 13, and have no expectations of improving this with current roster.  Clan Boss, I can 2 key Brutal and I am at almost 10M on NM. Not bad all around.

As for arena, I will begin to farm better gear in Dragon/Golem when my 2x XP is out. Finish masteries for 1 or 2 CB members (shards drop in CB boss chests btw... and books). Decide whether ranking up spirithost makes any sense -- probably not. Decide if HK is a better choice -- maybe. Save up my shards and hope for better luck next 2x event, or at least an apothecary sighting. 

That is all. I will continue to offer help to those that want to actually try and get better. To those that sit idle, good luck but I recommend improving your team and/or learning more about the game.

Best of luck to all,

Trips

Tripp your "facts" are flat out wrong. 

The change in arena was not from player "inflation" or "player aging". The change literally happened over night. Players in high gold/plat droping to low gold, players in low gold dropping to high silver etc.....ending up with players that were in silver dropping to bronze, making it nearly impossible for new players to be able to progress in arena at all, without having gold tier stats in bronze arena. THIS IS A FACT

You yourself in another post said 2-3 months ago arena was "so easy" and "you wondered why it was like that". THIS IS A FACT

The only "fact" that you stated is correct it that arena missions are and should be harder then the non arena missions. No one is saying differently, but they should be balanced to how far your account has progressed along. 

Your ways of help are simply just "get good" or "grind for better gear" doesn't change the fact that EVERYONE IS DOING THE EXACT SAME THING, so no matter what you do, it will just get harder and harder.

First of all, you are a detriment to the arena is too hard side of the argument.  You have proven:

1) You don't understand game mechanics (see Warmaiden with 0 ACC)

2) You make no effort with your team. Arena team horribly slow, in wrong turn order, completely unleveled gear! 

I applaud you for being brave enough to post your team, but what you posted looked bronze to me.

You argue about having to fight against 60s with +16 gear. Nothing prevents you from doing this! After two months you should have 4 or more 60s. If you choose not to level up your gear, that is on you. F2P get to do this too!!

"Inflation" and Aging are a FACT. Not sure how you or anyone can argue this.

If 10% of the base was level 60 (player level) in January.  It was probably

20% in March and

50% now.

I have no idea what the actual numbers are. But the % of higher levels grows every day, this is a FACT.  You can not get "younger".  Yes there are new accounts every day, but if you can't beat the teams in bronze...guess what silver is even harder!

This game is not for you. Darwinism at work

Exactly right.

Game aging is the issue here.

Last year when I started it was tough but there was light at the end of the tunnel (shorter tunnel I guess :p).

Now the tunnel is much longer (accounts are not deleted - whoever reached mid-end game and stopped playing is still in arena).

Back when I started I had like 40-60% chances to see team my lvl in list of 10 just due to many players at my level and not so many (comparing to now) higher.

Now... When 80-90% of player population is mid to late game (over exaggerating to make a point), new guy have only 10% chances to see team of his / hers lvl.

Trips said:

First of all, you are a detriment to the arena is too hard side of the argument.  You have proven:

1) You don't understand game mechanics (see Warmaiden with 0 ACC)

2) You make no effort with your team. Arena team horribly slow, in wrong turn order, completely unleveled gear! 

I applaud you for being brave enough to post your team, but what you posted looked bronze to me.

You argue about having to fight against 60s with +16 gear. Nothing prevents you from doing this! After two months you should have 4 or more 60s. If you choose not to level up your gear, that is on you. F2P get to do this too!!

"Inflation" and Aging are a FACT. Not sure how you or anyone can argue this.

If 10% of the base was level 60 (player level) in January.  It was probably

20% in March and

50% now.

I have no idea what the actual numbers are. But the % of higher levels grows every day, this is a FACT.  You can not get "younger".  Yes there are new accounts every day, but if you can't beat the teams in bronze...guess what silver is even harder!

This game is not for you. Darwinism at work

First off never ASSUME anything because you just end up looking like an ass.

Because since I posted my arena team last time, i have change things. My seeker goes first, warmaiden goes second, HK goes third and Kael goes last....all my champs have speed no lower than 180, and warmaiden has 109 acc

I never said i don't understand game mechanics, just because i asked a question due to how something is worded. That does not show anything in reguards to me not understanding things.

You don't get to see my account. So you can't say I make 0 progress, based on something from weeks ago. But ill say it again, if the stats match what is needed, why waste the silver to upgrade artifacts that will just be changed at a later point.

I never said inflation or aging wasn't a part of anything, because every single game has that, so get off your high horse and learn reading comprehension. 

I only stated that the changes to arena matching were made, which there are several patch notes that state changes made to matching that were done, which then over night completely changed arena. Those changes forced gold to drop to silver, and silver to drop to bronze. Which in turn made arena completely unplayable for new players, because they can not hope to get the proper stats to compete. 

Thinking that a person who just started the game today, could ever hope to have the champs and artifact that can compete against players that were able to farm high rank silver arena before, just shows that you have no clue how the changes made effect new players

ksthecr0w said:

Exactly right.

Game aging is the issue here.

Last year when I started it was tough but there was light at the end of the tunnel (shorter tunnel I guess :p).

Now the tunnel is much longer (accounts are not deleted - whoever reached mid-end game and stopped playing is still in arena).

Back when I started I had like 40-60% chances to see team my lvl in list of 10 just due to many players at my level and not so many (comparing to now) higher.

Now... When 80-90% of player population is mid to late game (over exaggerating to make a point), new guy have only 10% chances to see team of his / hers lvl.

The wall gets higher every day. When you were around when it started getting built you hopped over without sweat, later on someone had to extend his arms and climb to get over, now you need quite long ladder before you can cross that wall.

I never said that account aging was not a factor because it is that way in every game.

But there are other things that are a factor that effect new player now more then it did in the past, and these are the things that Plarium doesn't want to do.

They made changes to matchmaking at some point which ended up pushing plat players to gold, gold players to silver, and silver players to bronze, which in turn now mean that new players need stats that should be in silver - gold to compete in bronze. Inactive players getting deranked instead of removed, meaning that they just get passed down the line and become the problem for lower players for months, because it take 3-4 weeks to get deranked, meaning that when a gold 4 player quits, their gold 4 team filters down and ends up in bronze, making it impossible to compete.

in case no one noticed this, I'll post it here. 

That is good news. Too bad it's not unranking those accounts that have not fought for 30 days+ immediately. 

Would be nice to save another 30 days of frustration as a new player.

Curious as to whether the 30-day rule is a new "counter" starting from the last update or will include all inactivity to date. 

Curious as to whether the 30-day rule is a new "counter" starting from the last update or will include all inactivity to date. 

I assume this is a new rule? Be nice to get input from a mode on this.

killerclone187 said:

The fact is simple the arena if full with bots or old players who quit and they dont wish to fix it and bottom line if you not spend a 1000 or more dollars to pull some speed champ with a blade u are done!!! There is a reason why the done that its called $$$$$$$$

Bots? No, there aren't bots in the arena. :)

I,m player lvl.44 with team power 49k:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/s3oxKnXrruiW7o488

Evry time when last couple hours left before arena close up i get tons of attacks and imposible enemies in bronze tier 4★ but all those days before zero attacks on my, only when time near end too much attacks...

Also i would like to know is it possible for me to reach silver 1 with my standings atm and if not what should i do?

Another thing all my enemies shown in bronze tier 4★ are with two champs at least lvl.60, are those actual normal or...?