Thank you, lol. 

Then make it PvP and remove it from the PvE progression. It's always going to be an issue when you try to both have the cake and eat it. It isn't even PvP to begin with, it's just glorified PvE that punishes players for not joining the game earlier.

It's not live PvP, but I built my arena defense team, it's clearly not PvE. Compared to sports, you're not involved as player in arena defense, but as coach/teammanager, the players you've chosen before are in your line-up.

I hope the planned and announced "player-preference" for the skills your champs use in AI-mode comes soon. Would enlarge the PvP-aspect of arena defense even more.

No it punishes players who focus on wrong things, if you want to progress as f2p you can't do that... the game is purposely designed to make $$$

It's is functionally identical to Plarium putting similar bot teams in its place, which is exactly what they do with PvE (except instead of equipment, they make levels higher). In fact, if Plarium did exactly that, you wouldn't even notice. Any PvP aspect here is at best redundant, and at worst destructive.

You can blame people for doing the wrong thing all you want, whatever that is supposed to mean given that the game itself encourage you to do things that will hurt your arena progression, but it doesn't change the simple fact that the nature of the arena is that it gets increasingly more difficult over time. The first people who got to gold had a much easier time doing it than a new player who joins today, and that will get worse.

I would assume part of the game being designed to make $$$ would include improving player retention in order to produce more whales, and deliberately increasing difficulty and cost of admission for your whaling to be effective is directly counterproductive to that goal. For that matter, even whales should welcome improving the experience for new players out of pure self-interest, because their experience directly relies on there being plenty of other players they can outspend. I would imagine it's a lot less fun to spend money to win in an environment where everyone else spends just as much to win.

I actually find myself somewhere in the middle here- on the one hand i think the difficulty bump people hit early on is ridiculous, and find it silly that people have to try and keep their roster small.

On the other hand i understand why people want to keep arena competitive. God knows there is precious little real competitive stuff in the game

Plarium wont remove arena from pve progression, because they know most players find arena boring and simply wont do it if not forced to.

To me the solution is simple, yes have some bots in, but not in gold...keep that a goal to aspire to, but by keeping silver somewhat easier it means people dont lose all sense of progression

Of course this wont happen, as trips says the sole purpose of plarium is to fleece you for as much cash as possible, frustrated players are likely to spend cash before they quit so it is win win for them.

I agree arena has become more difficult over time, and that just makes it more important to play the "right" way.  Plarium doesn't care about f2p, if arena forces you to spend or quit that is fine with them.  And whales don't need minnows, lol, this is a 100% false premise.  They have no impact on them whatsoever.  They are only competing with other high-end whales, not f2p or low spenders.

Oh they'll miss the minnows when they are stuck in bronze 1 fighting other 250k whale teams because of oversaturation in the arena tiers.

You are correct.  I thought seperate arenas  (pre-Arbiter folks and post) made sense to solve the issue.  But I eventually realized, its not that Plarium doesn't know this aleady.  It is that they don't care, lol.  Player Retention ne Customer Retention.  I now believe the analysts are telling them three things since the bot removal (yes, I think they were purposely introduced and then removed despite them saying otherwise):

1) Player Retention Down (f2p quitting)

2) Player to Customer migration up

3) Whale spending up

I had predicted bots would return, but if the above is true then I doubt it.  

Unfortunately i agree, and a player that spends money to try and get out of bronze then rage quits...is a successfully monetised player.

They get lots of 1 star reviews as a result, but it is easy enough to pay people to counter that, and well, their ads are everywhere.

This is normal, in the beginning no one have 60, now more than 90% have 60.

Only need little math 40-50% stay in bronze i, 30-25 in bronze ii...

This happen in all games (that is why pvp allways have fix in games).

I choose, wich champ is in my arena team. I choose, in wich turn order they act (by speed on their equip).

You wouldn't notice if it's a bot team or not when you attack because the whole Raid is a turn-based game you play via internet. You wouldn't even notice if it is a real player or a bot if there would be "live PvP", similar as you don't know if your opponent in any turn based strategy game, for example, chess, is a bot or not.

This is an alt account, my main is gold 4, playing since 2019 (as suggests my account date of creation) but to put things in perspective, this account is at the stage where missions asks you to pass to bronze 3 ... but i'll clearly won't be able until, as you said i have one (perhaps more) heroes lvl 60.

I don't think it is normal since it blocks missions progression for at least a week or two, when normally (as i did on my first account) you should just peacefully pass those missions with lvl 50 heroes.

Disagree.  An intermediate mission is not stopping actual progress.  Not creating lvl 60 heros is slowing down your REAL progress.  

If i try to extrapolate your saying : not having a full 60 leg team is slowing my progression, you're totally right ...

that, is, not, the, point.

The point is, the opponents encountered in the 2nd(/16) stage or the arena is way too high given one of the first arena based mission is to pass to bronze 3.

I got bored with my alt account after about 5 days, but just booted it up...

Look at the matches, not a 60 in sight, although people really do whale out early from all the legendaries lol

It really is all about player power, my player power after 5 days was less than 100k

i

My point is you can't get hung up on the intermediate "progress" missions.  Since this is your alt, you should realize that getting to bronze3/silver1 a little sooner is not relevant to actual progress.  It does not slow you down from getting to Dragon 20 (real progress!!).

I concede the missions were easier 18 months ago.  Who cares, this is how it is now.  Adapt, adjust, and move forward.  

It is slowing you down, when having a f2p account, those mission rewards (300gems, shards, tomes) def speeds up your progression ....

i

To better illustrate : the next mission is to pass stage 7 NORMAL (where lvl 30 heroes do the job)