They're inactive players that haven't played in a while but not long enough that they get removed from classic arena.

My advice is just to avoid them, not all of the opponents you'll find are like that. 

One thing the devs can't do is forcing people to play, many people have multiple accounts and don't really play all of them but they aren't inactive (they do like 5 battles a day) , so that might give new players hard time.

Keep reseting till you see bots, otherwise you have no way to advance. 

I have the same problem. 

No excuse at this moment, refreshing constantly allows you to reach high silver/low gold tiers quickly if you have a minimum decent team with those all low defences

i feel that arena has got a lot easier lately. i normally could only stand up to bronze 4. but now I am in gold 1.

but there are of course lvl 60 in bronze too.. just avoid it

Just kinda curious, what is your Arena team set up?

I refreshed at least 8 times, all the pages are the same.

My current set up:

1 - Spirithost for speed lead + atk buff lvl30

2 - Warmaiden for def down lvl40

3 - Kael for nuke dmg lvl50

4 - Athel as 2nd nuke lvl40 (I got lucky to pull her from mystery shard)

Overall ~33k power team, I can lvl Athel and Warmaiden to 50 but it won't make much difference when all the teams are so overpowered.

You just have to work on your team to keep progressing- grind in Brutal 12-3 and six-star Kael, use gems to get Helmsmasher (or Flawless Execution) masteries, get better attack, accuracy, crit rate, and crit damage, and build up on your speed sets. Then replace Athel with High Khatun as your speed lead for a nuke team. It takes work to get better.

Gotta get the level up on whole team before u start climbing in arena its kinda set up for 50s n 60s even in upper bronze they dont need all the bells n whistles in (masteries. Ascention. Books. ) but u need to be high enuff ur base stats can take a hit.