ввфцвф said:

No trolling. Thank you plar for not changing missions. CASUAL GAME=DEAD HAME . No acchievement no win.

All weak cry ppl should become stronger watch guides insted of crying.  

Thank you plarium

Gear more important then heroes to win

So you say this but at the same time you are asking for notes on re-balance of heroes, something doesn't add up.

ввфцвф said:

!suggest

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE

give us notes early on REBALANCING 2.20

we realy need it on MONDAY)

thank you

Greetings!

Seeing that, lately, the Classic Arena has been a subject of many heated discussions and, to be perfectly candid, a cause of pain for a lot of players, we have decided to summarize the state of things there and to address the most salient concerns in this post.

Arena is broken. There are OP opponents in Bronze and Silver. Is it a bug?- No.

The Classic Arena has become more challenging and competitive than ever before for players in Bronze and Silver owing to several factors. The increasing complication in lower Tiers occurred organically - more and more players are joining our game, developing their teams and offering greater competition than we witnessed on the Arena in the earlier days. This is not a result of a bug or any sort of an irregularity, this is a consequence of the playerbase growing stronger.

Why haven’t you fixed it yet? - We’re on it.

Our dev team has already begun to take steps towards adopting measures for tackling this issue. In patch 2.12, we decreased the time-span needed for inactive players’ Def teams to be removed from the Opponents list to 14 days. This was just one of the steps that we have in store. We have been monitoring the Arena for some time after the change took effect, and are now preparing the next step - modifications in the matchmaking system itself. We want to make sure that opponents get picked to better fit the current development level of your account taking into consideration various factors and criteria.

Arena-based Missions removal.

We are focusing on the complex set of changes in the Arena overall rather than on short-term solutions like removing the Arena-based Missions from the game. These Missions are an inalienable part of the gameplay that help players to progress and should not be removed because of the complications.

We would like to point out that curing the Classic Arena is our top priority right now. We believe that all players should be able to progress in the Arena (with some effort, of course!) and we strive to make the feature enjoyable for both veteran and newly joined players.

Before releasing any changes, we need to make sure that they are going to be effective and not disturb any other side of the game. That's why it will take some time for us to implement those changes and for you guys to see them in action.

Thank you for taking your time to read this post. We’ll get back to you with the update on this issue as soon as we possibly can.

LordVika said:

matthiashallenmittede said:

Atm it is impossible (the arena patch brought no improvement to my account) for me to reach silver 1 in the arena, even if I renew the oponnent list every 15 minutes. I cannot understand what is so difficult to improve the matchmaking. How should I beat an opponent 10 levels above? How should I beat an opponent with 4 6-star legendarys including Rotos and Valkyre in Bronze 3? How should I beat an opponent who has double my strength in points? There are so many ways to improve the situation! The only thing I can hope for is that players put only one unit in their defence!

Unfortunately and to be honest, I dont believe that you will change anything in the near future.

Then lets have a look at the arbiter mission where I stuck to reach silver 1. All upcoming missions, e.g. get two Champions to rank 5 are so easy until I should get 50 silver medals ... and so on ...

Really really annoying that the community ask for this for months!!! If Hell Hades not had startet a FTP series and if Chosen didn't speak to some investors, this wont even be on your list!!!

 

As a free to play player....I disagree 100%....I dont have arena Legendary champs, I have 2 epic and 2 rare champs in my arena team and i find at least 1 team per refresh to that i can beat. The only thing they did so far, was reduce the time that it takes inactive account to not show up in matchmaking, which is a huge difference.

Team power and player power is a lie. Player power can be inflated just by having gear on all your champs, and team power can be inflated by certain stats being high, like res gives a much higher team power than other stats do.

Arena is completely different then the rest of the game, because defense teams always fight on auto while you can fight on manual. If you can't win it means you need a better team or need to change the artifacts you have on and rework your team. Speed is one of the biggest factors in arena, because if you can go first then you will usually win. Also your team need synergy, meaning every champ you use has to have a specific reason to be there, not just because they are your strongest champs. The biggest debuffs you want to use are weaken, defense down, stun or freeze, the biggest buffs you want are atk up, def up or block debuffs.

For the longest time i was stuck in bronze 4 and couldnt get past it to save my life, but then i reworked my team and bam, i made it into s1 and sometimes close to s2.

Also yes Valkery was correct, one of the major things people are ignoring is that, as people play for longer times, they will get stronger......because thats just what happens......so to say the game is broken because you are new and can't beat players that spent more time in the game is just silly.

I disagree to 100% too! 

First, Speed lead, Maiden comes next with defence down, then Kael nukes! He nukes all the teams in my level. I do not nuke teams with Rotos (needs double hitter); Liily nearly unkillable (hope they go nerf her) and so on ... So I face 2 problems, I get in addition equal teams where the player level is 10 to 15 level higher than my level, in conclusion they have better gear, and for sure I had no problem to stuck in Bronze, cause my account is not that "old", but the Arbiter mission wants me to get to silver, what is impossible in the next 6 months or so ... think it that way!

Second, team power means nothing in gold and above, but in lower tear there is no way that you beat a player lets say 50k to 100k where in Gold u win with 100k against 200k easily with the right matchup. 

Third, after the first and second refresh I found teams that i can beat, as you said, but then u can refresh and refresh and you got teams as described above. After u fall a few points and press the refresh button there is again ONE team you can beat. So no way to get to silver for the arbiter mission. That's the point, not that I cant beat the whales!!!

Here an example for Bronze 3:

This is the 2nd time you've said you're planning to "fix" the match-making system so that players will face opponents closer to the strength of their teams (the first time was for TTA). In what world does that make any sense? If you do this, then weaker teams will outrank stronger teams (because they'll get easier opponents). Why are you always so bad at:

1. identifying problems with the game design,
2. prioritizing problems that need to be fixed, and
3. coming up with intelligent solutions to each problem?

I've said it before: you need to hire better people.

The issue with arena isn't that weaker teams can't get into Gold IV, because weaker teams DON'T DESERVE to be in Gold IV! The issue is that players need to get into Gold IV for the Arbiter missions. Simply change the mission. You already have arena-related missions with the GH requirements, so remove the requirement to get into Gold from the Arbiter missions. Change it to something like, "Get an ancient from X dungeon". Or, if you want to keep it arena-related, make it, "Earn 1,000 gold from winning TTA battles". That will integrate your new content into the old missions (and might actually create some engagement in TTA). 

There are PLENTY of issues with Classic Arena, but the difficulty to get into Gold IV isn't one of them (the problem is with the missions, not with Classic Arena). If you actually want to improve Classic Arena (as well as TTA), then here are issues that you should be fixing:

1. Make Platinum a proper tier with 4 ranks. I understand that you like how the restrictive "top 300" system drives spending. You can keep that, but apply that to Platinum IV only. 
2. Put a turn count restriction on battles. Defenses that rely purely on out-lasting the opponent (forcing them to quit rather than winning legitimately) should be discouraged. Long, drawn out battles make the game not fun, and games are supposed to be fun. After the maximum number of turns, the team that dealt the most damage (i.e. the team that was actually trying to win) wins. This has ALWAYS been a problem, but it's so much worse now that TTA is here (and is one of the biggest reasons that players aren't engaging in TTA).
3. Alternatively, introduce x5 SPD for arena battles (although the above issue will still be a problem because some of these teams are effectively unkillable).
4. Alternatively, allow heroes to only be resurrected once per battle in the arena.   
5. Nerf OP heroes. I know you're planning to do this already, but I also suspect you're going to fail miserably. I've also said this previously: use "usage frequencies" to determine which heroes are OP. Anyone who owns Siphi is using her in their arena team (as well as virtually every other team). You won't get a stronger (and more unbiased) metric of how OP a hero is than their usage frequency. The higher this frequency is (especially across multiple content), the more that hero needs to be nerfed. 
6. Create more metas. Currently, that means creating more solutions to the SPD meta. Of all the games I've played of this type, RAID probably has the least diverse meta. The fact that you have so many heroes, and yet we see the same ones over and over and over in arena is a testament to how poor your hero balancing is. Tormin was a step in the right direction (anti-SPD meta), but ever since you released him, you've been nerfing him with every single patch (and I'm sure he's not on the re-balancing list because you're planning to buff him). The day you released him, there were already more counters to him, than to the meta he was meant to counter...and yet since that day, you've continued to create more Tormin counters (Siphi, Dark Elhain, etc.) and nerf his ability to counter the SPD meta. Instead of creating counters to Tormin (a non-meta hero), you should have continued creating more counters to the SPD meta. How about a hero that applies an ATK debuff whenever an enemy gets a TM boost? Or another hero that applies a DEF buff to their team when an enemy gains an ATK buff. How about a hero that applies an AoE provoke if they get debuffed? How about another "automatically goes first" hero like Hegemon, but this one applies AoE provoke? The number of options for counters to the various SPD metas are limitless. Getting into platinum shouldn't be about creating a meta team - you should need to create multiple teams to deal with all the other teams you'll face (and that list of meta teams should be constantly growing). That makes the game more interesting that just building 1 uber team. The more teams we're forced to build, the longer we stay engaged with the game.   

Seems like an easy fix for arena. Tier lock lvls 1-2-3 4 in bronze silver then g1-2. Many “real” computer games that utilize really smart computer nerds, well out of plariums pay range, do it in many aspects of there games, for example. World of tanks have tier locked most of thier match making. If you use a lower teir tank. It’s will not drop you onto a map filled with 15 top tier tanks. Exceptions apply but they make it work.

Bronze 1-2 shouldnt even be able to field a legendary, in fact I’d restrict bronze 1-2 to rares, 3 and 4 to rares epic. Silver 1-2 epics and 3 limit legendary to one, silver 4 should be restricted to 2 leggos. Gold is open to all 

Obviously this isn’t a perfect example, but it’s a good guide line to establish a parameter for arena so new players can be competitive, mid game can be competitive and end game can whale it out. 

Second. We need a niche spot for rare only teams, epic only team because I need a spot to use the useless fkn epicS you’ve managed to create not a single use for. 

Nonum said:

How ridiculous!!! The missions are to assist progress in the game yes? The difficulty should be structured to your organic growth as you get build a team get stronger aim for the next mission and so on so forth... agree missions should not be easy, but I’ve played for just over 60 days, completed 3star brutal campaign, on brutal cb yet I can’t with 50 silver medals in arena! But afterwards simply rank a champ to 50 when I already have several on 60?  How bloody hard is it to change a value? In a mission? Dropping the silver medal requirement to 10 even would be a quick help, although now a fix! I’ve only just last week touched silver, passed that mission. Flew through the others as I’m way past the account strength requirement for them, yet again hit a brick wall now needing not just to touch but somehow win the 50 silver medals required! It does make you feel like just not bothering with that part of the game! Then I know there will be fusions missions for I champ I really don’t think I will need by then!!! (Aside from rhazin :-) ) 

Im guessing that you spent a bit of money to have all those things done within such a short time period.

One thing about spending money to progress ( not saying that you did, just in general ) is that you grow your account faster than it should be.

Arena is a completely different animal than the rest of the entire game. In the PvE ( Player vs enemy ) content, yes the enemies are a huge level but they dont use artifacts, so they dont get the same boosts to stats that players do. Also in arena attack teams can fight manual or auto, while defense teams can only fight on auto. 

In arena every champ has to be there for a specific reason or they are just food for a team with better synergy, reguardless of how strong they are. Speed is also a huge factor, if you are not faster then the team that you are fighting, then you better hope you have way more HP and Def than they do, because most arena fights are done in the first turns of every champ.

bcgumbert said:

My suggestion to everyone who plays RAID. Stop spending money on the game. Do not spend anything on the Game until they fix this problem. If you have not figured it out yet as long as you are spending money they are not going to fix this problem stop spending money and they will fix it immediately.

WHY THIS ARENA ISSUE IS A PROBLEM

Currently, I have just about completed everything on the missions list except the arena stuff. I have everything in place for the fusion required but have not done that due to the screwed up way your missions list is functioning

You keep stating it is not possible or difficult to change the program. It is not only possible but would not take any programmer with any experience in database and interface programming no more than an hour or two to make the changes I propose at the end of this. Why I say that it is because that is how long it would take me to figure out how to make those changes if I had never looked at the code. I could do that right now and I have not written a line of code in almost 20 years.

So your EXCUSES as to why you can not fix it are BS. You are only concerned about raking in money at all costs.

When you have someone start a game and want them to play long term and spend money you hook them. Make the beginning 3 or 4 months easier by making the changes I suggest to the missions list. Make the changes I suggest to the Arena. It will fix your lower level arena and mainly new player issues disappear.

Rational on Why nothing has been done

 My take on what is going on and how to fix it.  I just happened to hold degrees in Business and Systems Analysis so I do have the education to back up my experience.  This first part is a little bit of how I see the motivations of Palarium for not fixing the issue and my rationale as to why.

To be arrogant and as egotistical as the leadership of Plarium. I would say I have more managerial and leadership experience that obviously anyone on your staff has. I know what I am going to outline can be done. However, to date, nobody at Plarium has shown that they have the capability of fixing the obvious problem. As a company, you only care about your whales and content creators who you give things too.  

Your refusal to fix the Arena problem is a little myopic and childish.  Not everyone who plays a game thinks that PVP fights are fun.  You have emphasized that aspect over everything else. You have also tied that one aspect to PREVENT mission progress for anyone but WHALES.  The strategy is to be blunt STUPID and shows I DO NOT CARE ABOUT THE PLAYER BASE.

Saying you can not fix it is BS. Guess you think blowing smoke up our bums is admirable or something.  I have been stuck bouncing between Bronze 3 and Bronze 4 for about 3 months now.  You are not being truthful. You have set up this game so the only people who can progress are whales. Spend money to progress or we will ignore you.

You are not going to even attempt to fix the arena issue because you are making tons of money off people buying gear just for the arena. It seems you are concerned about maximizing profits and only that.  Just confess that is the real reason you will not fix the arena and mission issues.  Seems to me the only thing you think everyone should be doing is the Arena PVP matches. I have played other games that have PVP and they did not make success in the only limited area the focus of the game.  

the glut of people who can not get out of where I am at is because you have whales buying gear and spending massive amounts to get the good champions. Not everyone has an unlimited budget. Some people like me play a game as a diversion from more serious things happening in the real world.

HOW TO FIX THE ISSUES WITH THE GAME

As a programmer, your comments about you can not fix it do not hold water. Database issues are simple to fix. AI issues are simple to fix. 

 GIGO  garbage in garbage out    That is something I learned in my first few months of programming. 

Computer programs do EXACTLY AND ONLY what you program them to do.  

This issue could be fixed with a few simple things.  

1. limit the number of legendary champions you can use at lower levels like Bronze to 1

2. Limit the number of Epic Champions you can use at the lower levels like Bronze to 1

3. Add a speed rating to the team's interface.  Like average speed/highest speed and then power

The reason for this is If I play a team that I have 20K to 30K more power I should be able to beat them but never do. That is an issue 

All of this is easily done and if your programmers tell you otherwise I would start with firing the head programmer to send a message to all the other one to start doing their jobs. Fix the problems 

Your missions list is flawed in requiring silver Area progress where it is given the current situation.  You are trying to allow for progression for newer players. this is how to fix the progress of the mission immediately

1. Lower the silver requirement to Bronze 3 or 4

2. Change the silver medal requirements to bronze and up it to say 300 bronze medals

3. Change the linear nature of the missions list if you refuse to change the silver requirements. Please do not tell me it can not be done because currently, that is exactly how the challenges list works.

Do what I suggest from code changes to QA testing to production will take about a week. Start on it on Monday next week and then roll the changes out next Friday.  yes, it is that simple. Change the programming priorities and just have the programming groups spend all their time implementing these changes.

There is an old saying "Do not piss on my back and tell me it is raining"  That is what you are doing saying you can not fix these problems.

What I think Plarium will do is two-fold.

 FIX nothing 

BAN me from the game for pointing out the actual truth of what is really going on. GREED and PROFITS above all else

What a lot of people dont get is that if you spend money and get strong champs early on, that does not mean that you will get far in arena at all, its exactly the oppisite, it will actually halt your progress. I'm not saying you spent money on this game at all. Because you inflated your account way to fast and got through a bunch of campaign stuff faster than you should have and assume that arena should be easy is a huge mistake, because in there you have people who grinded out dungeons and stuff to get artifacts and max out their stats the way they needed to be.

No new player should be given an easy of free ride, a balanced game experience absolutely but nothing that would be seen as hand holding. Arena is not meant to be gone into from day 1 and expect do do anything good, it take weeks and months of grinding gear to be able to function in arena with any chance of winning.

LordVika said:

Nonum said:

How ridiculous!!! The missions are to assist progress in the game yes? The difficulty should be structured to your organic growth as you get build a team get stronger aim for the next mission and so on so forth... agree missions should not be easy, but I’ve played for just over 60 days, completed 3star brutal campaign, on brutal cb yet I can’t with 50 silver medals in arena! But afterwards simply rank a champ to 50 when I already have several on 60?  How bloody hard is it to change a value? In a mission? Dropping the silver medal requirement to 10 even would be a quick help, although now a fix! I’ve only just last week touched silver, passed that mission. Flew through the others as I’m way past the account strength requirement for them, yet again hit a brick wall now needing not just to touch but somehow win the 50 silver medals required! It does make you feel like just not bothering with that part of the game! Then I know there will be fusions missions for I champ I really don’t think I will need by then!!! (Aside from rhazin :-) ) 

Im guessing that you spent a bit of money to have all those things done within such a short time period.

One thing about spending money to progress ( not saying that you did, just in general ) is that you grow your account faster than it should be.

Arena is a completely different animal than the rest of the entire game. In the PvE ( Player vs enemy ) content, yes the enemies are a huge level but they dont use artifacts, so they dont get the same boosts to stats that players do. Also in arena attack teams can fight manual or auto, while defense teams can only fight on auto. 

In arena every champ has to be there for a specific reason or they are just food for a team with better synergy, reguardless of how strong they are. Speed is also a huge factor, if you are not faster then the team that you are fighting, then you better hope you have way more HP and Def than they do, because most arena fights are done in the first turns of every champ.

All true, and yet there's no denying that Plarium has sold so many shards and speed sets that we're seeing OP teams too early. I'm barely staying in Silver IV and have to face speed teams with mutliple revivers. No wonder they are having the x10 right now... but guess what? If you're not a spender, this event is meaningless to you unless you made some unholy pact with the RNG gods. I think the game should stay super competitive on the top but if you want new players to have fun, don't make it so darn hard to progress in the Arbiter missions. Grinding hundreds of medals by beating 2-3 teams per refresh is just mind-numbing and leaves no room to experiment (I like trying to beat teams I lose against but not when farming medals). Plarium needs to strike a balance between fun for existing experienced players and newbies like me.

“Medications in matchmaking system itself” will not solve the problem of “playerbase growing stronger”.  

As long as you match newbie with other veteran, less spending newbie will never have any chance to finish all missions no matter how you modify the matchmaking system.

To be honest, this is the most newbie unfriendly game I have ever.played.

No trolling. Thank you plar for not changing missions. CASUAL GAME=DEAD HAME . No acchievement no win.

All weak cry ppl should become stronger watch guides insted of crying.  

Thank you plarium

Gear more important then heroes to win

рубль said:

Arena is working the way it should. If you lower the requirements for the missions, you would spit in the faces of the players that got an Arbiter on ''the hard way''. Im one of them. I just got my second Arbiter on my second account. I grinded the hell out of arena with 3 epics and one lego(none of them game-changing). I didn't complained or cry. I played smart, chose my enemies carefully. It can be done. 

--

Valmeyjar said:

LordVika said:

Nonum said:

How ridiculous!!! The missions are to assist progress in the game yes? The difficulty should be structured to your organic growth as you get build a team get stronger aim for the next mission and so on so forth... agree missions should not be easy, but I’ve played for just over 60 days, completed 3star brutal campaign, on brutal cb yet I can’t with 50 silver medals in arena! But afterwards simply rank a champ to 50 when I already have several on 60?  How bloody hard is it to change a value? In a mission? Dropping the silver medal requirement to 10 even would be a quick help, although now a fix! I’ve only just last week touched silver, passed that mission. Flew through the others as I’m way past the account strength requirement for them, yet again hit a brick wall now needing not just to touch but somehow win the 50 silver medals required! It does make you feel like just not bothering with that part of the game! Then I know there will be fusions missions for I champ I really don’t think I will need by then!!! (Aside from rhazin :-) ) 

Im guessing that you spent a bit of money to have all those things done within such a short time period.

One thing about spending money to progress ( not saying that you did, just in general ) is that you grow your account faster than it should be.

Arena is a completely different animal than the rest of the entire game. In the PvE ( Player vs enemy ) content, yes the enemies are a huge level but they dont use artifacts, so they dont get the same boosts to stats that players do. Also in arena attack teams can fight manual or auto, while defense teams can only fight on auto. 

In arena every champ has to be there for a specific reason or they are just food for a team with better synergy, reguardless of how strong they are. Speed is also a huge factor, if you are not faster then the team that you are fighting, then you better hope you have way more HP and Def than they do, because most arena fights are done in the first turns of every champ.

All true, and yet there's no denying that Plarium has sold so many shards and speed sets that we're seeing OP teams too early. I'm barely staying in Silver IV and have to face speed teams with mutliple revivers. No wonder they are having the x10 right now... but guess what? If you're not a spender, this event is meaningless to you unless you made some unholy pact with the RNG gods. I think the game should stay super competitive on the top but if you want new players to have fun, don't make it so darn hard to progress in the Arbiter missions. Grinding hundreds of medals by beating 2-3 teams per refresh is just mind-numbing and leaves no room to experiment (I like trying to beat teams I lose against but not when farming medals). Plarium needs to strike a balance between fun for existing experienced players and newbies like me.

Oh i do agree that selling the speed sets is what hit arena the hardest currently, but at the same time you can't expect something that is actually considered mid-late game stuff right away. Even those OP teams that you are seeing currently will be struggling to get higher in arena, because they got the champs to get this far with sub par gear, but they won't be able to go further unless they farm dungeons for much better gear. Because remember even though they sold speed gear, the rolls for stats were still random, so they could have gotten really bad gear and wasted money.

the basis of this is that arena never evolved or atleast in the last year and a bit i have been around.

 its been the same setting with the same points with rising power and hasnt been adapted for peopke to join later on im in gold 1 my main is in gold 4  i do it for the tokens the rewards are useless  bronze and silver rewards are even worse so whats the point  theres nothing new to do most games would have upped platinum to 4 and   moving on to a new tier lets say diamond increasing rewards so the set numbers arent the only ones getting gear worth the time.

even tag team arena had a good idea time based ranking works bit slow being weekly but still not a bad concept

Plarium, I'm sorry but your wrong.

They game has been up over a year. In that time things change and the balance and perceived player difficulty is the first thing you are taught when it comes to game design.

Go ahead, tell me I'm wrong.

If a game is challenging it keeps people invested. Make it too hard and people rage quit, too easy and people get bored.

If the whole community is telling you it's impossible to progress, you need to balance the content.

Its ridiculous that I've 3 stared nightmare campaign and yet the missions either side of "get to silver 4" (which I cant get into by the way) are to 3 star brutal campaign.

My team is running at 300 speed and I cant progress.

Just to show you how unbalanced it is, I'm also on nightmare Clan Boss (I dont have a CA champ). And level 20 dungeons.

Make platinum 4 ranks that take in the top 10% of players and watch the arena open up.

Otherwise, nerf the missions so they are balanced the missions in the same group.

Hi,

Here I try to suggest improvements for the arena:

Intro:

As far as I can remember, I started playing raid sometime early 2019. I eventually reached gold 1 or gold 2 in arena. After a bit, around the time when we had the new quest system for tormin or frosting (forgot what it was called; where you got the bears), I quit raids as I got bored. When I came back to raids, a few months ago, I found myself being able to climb to maximum silver 3.

Problem No. 1:

The problem with arena is that behind it locked a major account progression mechanism. This in itself is not a problem, what makes it a problem is if players can’t progress in arena. The account progression mechanism I am speaking of is not missions, which generally seem to be the main point highlighted by even content creators. I feel the great hall is a much more important mechanism which allows for account progression than one character (Arbiter). Furthermore, the issue although highlighted is not restricted to new players, but extends deep into midgame players. We have to remember with arena becoming so much harder, definition of beginner and mid game player has also evolved. I consider myself as mid game player and will obviously face arena missions as road blocks once I get to the relevant ones; although as expressed earlier my concern is more for the great hall.

Now with the background to the problem out the way, let me highlight the problem with my personal example. It has been around 2 months I have been back to the game and over these 2 months (roughly) I have only managed to accumulate around 400-500 silver medals for the great hall. With a simple calculation, at this rate it would take a staggering 17.1 months to max out one section in the great hall (considering we are able to use silver medals to upgrade the gold medal parts of great hall). With such slow progress, how long can layers be expect to carry on playing? One month? Maybe two? What makes it worse, the current system will not allow progress to higher arena tiers for majority of the average players. See problem no. 2 as to why.

Problem No. 2:

With the current situation, of course the problem is not going to get better. As mine, or anyones account progress, so will others who are in same arena tier. Thus although our accounts may be progressing, one can expect our progression in the arena to be stagnant due to everyone progressing at the same average rate.

Solution:

I agree with Valkyries post that removing the arena missions or addressing them specifically is not the solution to the problem. Arena is bigger than just the missions.

Plarium can use examples from other games, and see how they evolved their arena as the player base and power grew. Once such example I can think of is Clash Royale; Ash maybe you can help here? I am sure plarium would be able to evaluate their system and since I am unable to dig deep into Clash Royales system atm, here are my suggestion on improving arena:

•    Rebalance the points needed for all tiers. For example: B1 (900p), Bronze 2 (910p), B3 (930p), B4 (970p), S1 (1000p), S2 (1010p), S3 (1030p), S4 (1070P) and G1 would start at 1100p. In this way, majority of player who climb past the beginner stage would be in gold and able have their account progressing (such as in the great hall) in an observable rate.

•    Rebalance the progression from tier to tier by increasing the amount of points gained for a win and decreasing the amount lost for a loss. Since this will eventually also become bottlenecked, this system may need constant balancing.

I think Clash Royale probably used a combination of these two ideas to address their arena. Of course, these suggestion are a rough guide, and would need fine-tuning by plarium.

I hope these ideas are helpful. I look forwards to your thoughts.

Actually balance Rotos, siphi and Serris.  Don't be wimps.  Add an "unbook" button for gems ala Hades' suggetstion, or at the very least allow all players to unbook a champ that has been nerfed in the first 2 weeks after a patch (Hades' other suggestion)

Because of Rotos, there is no tank meta.  Because serris' a3 is so OP, it makes her one to avoid.  

I understand you dont want to turn off whales by taking away their toys, but IF you want to lend more balance to PvP you're going to have to touch the aspects that make them broken there in the first place.  Dropping serris's a3 turn count does absolutely nothing to her a3 in arena, round length is not even 1/100th of of the issue compared to what happens in those first two rounds.  Dropping rotos a token 10-15% def bypass will not bring back a tank meta.

to recap (not rocket science):

1)  nerf completely OP /broken arena champs in an actual meaningful way, not in a token way to just 'say you did'.  You say the devs actually play the game?  If so, you know exactly what I mean

2)  allow an "unbook" button for cost (or give free after a nerf on select champtions affected)

I do not foresee a scenario where you can make arena more interesting (more than one "meta") unless you do both, as otherwise you'll be afraid to actually make meaningful changes.  I suppose the only alternative is to introduce new champs that specifically counter these handful of broken arena champs.. in a way that doesn't completely revolve around speed.

Oh and your Gold IV rewards absolutely SUCK.  If Gold IV is supposed to be "Elite", then treat it as such by giving only 5-6 star gear.   Since the new rewards came out months ago, Ive had ZERO pieces that made it onto a varsity squad member nor any books or shards.  What's the point?  People who can stay afloat in GIV these days have far outgrown the lame rewards given to them at the end of the weeks.   If i wanted pure silver (which is what it becomes) i could spend 5 minutes in Spider 20 to recoup the same pittance.  Again, if the devs play the game as they say they do.. and if anyone is in G IV consistently at week's end, you know exactly what I mean.