You are misunderstanding the problem, the problem is too high a percentage of players are in bronze and silver, and inactive whales are part of the matchmaking. This is because the system is naturally deflationary with downwards pressure at all times.

Fiddling matchmaking just screws over someone else

The answer is

1) Require setting of a defence weekly to only have truly active players involved

2) Add tiers past platinum to reduce the downwards pressure from G4 downwards

3) Stop removing excess points at reset to also reduce deflationary pressure

At present 60-75% of players are probably in bronze or lower silver and unable to progress great hall, by making the above changes that would reduce significantly.  That coupled with requiring a weekly setting of defense would naturally make bronze and silver easier.

The whole idea of progressing in an rpg is not to make the content harder as you get more powerful,, which is why matchmaking by power is a horrible idea. Quite simply- The best teams should be in the highest tiers, but the lower tiers should be easier.

Progressing in any rpg is usually offset by matching your gained power with stronger opponents. You just dont farm newby areas anymore. Like WoW, once you are 5 levels or so above your enemies, you dont get any xp. Because it still should be a challenge, if its too easy, it becomes boring. On the other hand, if you start out new, and constantly get rect, you lose interest. Unless you are either a masochist or have too much monex on hand and just throw it at that problem.

Why do you see a problem in people fighting amongst nearly equal opponents? The only ones losing out are those who use their superiour team to farm easy targets. Everyone else gets a fightinging chance.

I have to deal with enemy teams of 100k+ team power, in frigging Bronze II. If i spend enough time and refresh every 15 minutes i get about ONE team per draw of comparable power level, Maybe... 

Exactly -- as you level in wow for example- you dont farm newbie areas anymore, and the 'newbie area' for raid is bronze. The stronger teams that 'wreck you' should not be in bronze and if they were not in bronze, you would not be facing them

The answer is to reduce the percentage of players in bronze by reducing deflationary pressure as i suggested. That way the teams 'wrecking you' will be in silver, and you will be facing other newbie teams naturally.

The problem i have with your suggestion is simply that stronger teams could be in a lower tier than weak teams purely because they are higher level due to matchmaking, that already happens to an extent now with matchmaking on player power.

I started a fresh account recently and with targetted farming hit silver in a week of playing and never faced a team of full level 60's because i kept player power low.

You're correct that people should be in a place where they fight equal opponents. You're wrong in asserting that the way to do that is player level or power in any form, as neither is representative of your actual potential. The only metric that is accurate to assess just how strong your arena team is, is your success in the arena. As it is, we have a convenient system to track exactly that; the arena points. It's not a perfect metric due to the assymetrical nature of the attack/defense system, but it's by far the most accurate one out of those we have readily available currently.

There may be other problems with the arena, such as being too top-heavy for people to advance out of the lower tier in any reasonable amount of time (or ever, as the case may be), but without access to statistics or the removal of the current matchmaking system, we don't know. Changing matchmaking is step one, but it's not the final one. It may be a sufficient one for now, depending on what the situation is like, but in the long run it's almost certainly not.

Yes its quite ridiculous that my brand new account flew into silver 1 in a week or two with a top speed of 190 and a freebie farmed team, but people with mature accounts in silver 1 face arbiter teams.

The arena definitely has other issues- it needs more tiers and they need to stop ripping away excess points, but a person can have been playing for a year or so, and be clueless about pvp, and the current matchmaking system means that if they decide to try- it will be impossible for them.

What you say is simply not true, no whale is fishing new players in Bronze. The great hall medal system prevents that. Completing great hall with bronze medals, with 30 fights a day, would take something around 30 years. In addition to that, you get fewer points for arena tournaments in lower tiers.

In a certain way sandbagging into lower tiers can be usefull, but only inside the same level, so maybe Bronze 4 players go down to Bronze 1. But nobody from Silver or Gold would voluntary go to Bronze and abstain from Silver and Gold medals.

Your "solution" is similar to what they are actual doing, where account power has influence to matchmaking. Obviously you don't see why that destroys the arena completely: account power doesn't say anything about the power of your arena team. It grows when you get Deacon Armstrong (a top tier  epic arena champ) and bring him to lvl 60, it grows the same ammount if you get Occult Brawler (a top tier epic Clanboss champ that is absolutely useless in arena) and bring him to lvl 60. To take your boxing example: the fighters are grouped by weight, but they have to go to the scale carrying every bar-bell they own.

Easyiest way to prevent sandbagging: checkpoints in Bronze 3 and Silver 3. No bulls** algorithm, that takes accountlevel, accountpower or the player's hair colour into matchmaking, needed at all.

Funny how a thread created from almost 1 years ago can still be revived a and still as relevant.

Proof that Plarium doesn't know how to fix arena.

lol

The whole crappy system is designed to push people down, i slid to s1 and instead of just leaving it i spent 40 million silver rolling tonnes of gear up to try and get speed rolls and crit damage rolls...no skill at all, just cashing in endless grinding

So this was 55 mins before reset, if i was asleep? id have lost 197 points ...a deliberately deflationary system

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Luckily i was awake and got some wins to give me a buffer zone, but not because of skill! just because i was awake.

Also my logs show this poor guy had THREE attempts to beat me, he would have lost points every time, i gained points one time only...and would have lost them if he had eventually found a team that works . Another deliberately deflationary system.

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And finally, at reset? back to walls of arbiters everywhere, in bottom of gold.

TLDR its a deliberately deflationary and frustrating system that pushes players downwards, which is why lower tiers are such a nightmare.

Having proven to myself i can push back into gold (and none of it was skillful just grinding) i am definitely done with arena

So, I spent much of yesterday farming food in 12-3 and my account power went up 75k.  Now, obviously my account is not stronger at all, but plarium believes in the course of a day, I made my account 11% stronger with common champs with no items.  I mean, that is just bereft of reason.  Before I started farming at the beginning of the day, I had dropped about 50k power when I fused 4 stars into 5 stars to take Brogni to 6 stars.  So I obviously made my account a lot more powerful by leveling Brogni but plarium believes that I was weaker.  That is also bereft of reason.  If account power was a useful measurement, I could understand them using it in arena matchups but account power doesn't actually measure an account's power.

If they want to pick something simple to determine matches other than win-loss record (although I'm not sure what it is about elo that they hate), they should do it based on Great Hall development.  That makes some sense at least.

They could yes, but i still think the best measure of arena 'strength' is arena points, the problem is that the system pushes everyone downwards, i think it is intentional, plarium wants players frustrated and trying to spend their way out of it

Oh, I agree completely.  They should have a top tier where you get more points than you lose essentially (just copy Clash of Clans if needed) which is reset but there is no reason to reset all of the lower tiers.  Of course, they should also have way more tiers than they currently do.  Bottom 3 (or 12 if one prefers) could stay the same and they could add 3x that many above it.  That would fix the great hall issue (with all tiers above getting what they currently do in Gold 4) and they could motivate people by actually giving them good bonuses the higher they climb.

I mostly just wanted to give them something they could immediately switch to which would make way more sense than what they are doing while they work on a longer-term fix.

I am sorry but accounts that are not used (like no activity in 30 days) should be removed from the pvp ladder period. 

I also have issues with ladders and T1 Bronze being fulled with people that have maxed out toons (shouldn't happen) They should be forced into and stay inside a specific tier that is for their power level etc.