I think it depends where you are in the game

Struggling to get arbiter? it certainly will not hurt although getting rank 10 GH outside of G4 is a massive bind, so it will still be a long road for people stuck in G1. But they have definitely made it less impossible for people to get arbiter

Matchmaking, they just seem to have tightened the range of points you can fight, nothing more?

Overall arena issue-  mechanisms that remove points causing points deflation, does not seem to have been addressed at all.

In a month at this rate almost no-one will have 3.4k points never mind 3.5k

So some good, and some bad in that they do not seem to understand the issue with the arena economy, but i do feel churlish moaning about the game considering the situation.

Yeah, about the overall issue you bring up... 

This change is going to be pretty expansive from what I am picking up:  "Furthermore, an additional alteration is introduced into the system to prevent players from dropping through Tiers too fast in case they get attacked too frequently."  

.... and it might help SOME with the impact of the reset loss in points. 

The fix to discrepancy of points awareded/deducted is working fine:

i

On Arena Offense it's also still the same. You might want to check your drawing board again.

Change only helps noobs get arbiter, who cares! And whales get back in plat, double who cares!!

Where is the help for mid tier players like me!!!

😆 🤣 just kidding 

I think changes make sense for plarium, keep whales happy = $$$

And make arbiter obtainable for noobs, potential $$$.

Does it help f2p, not really. But if you are waiting for one of those business decisions to happen...

At best I can say skeptical but optimistic, time reveals all.

On a not at all related side note just for laughs, some food for thought - yes pun intended.

Our "Micky D" here by us had some changes fairly recently, we used to get (if memory serves) a normal medium meal, then if you wanted to up size, there were Large and Extra Large to choose from.

The changes that were made now label the then Medium Meal as Regular Meal, the then Large Meal as Medium Meal, and the then Extra Large as Large now.

In essence, although it sounds less, it's still exactly the same as they simply redefined the meaning of the words instead of the actual quantity of the product itself.

I really hope that there will not be any similar tactics involved here.

I can still attack a team at the top of the list, if I lose twice and win the third time I'm picking up more points for one win than I lost in two

It's still not worth me looking for teams below me if I win it's only a few points, if I lose I lose a lot

Yes they made it easier to get Arbiter, but that's only because when this game started she was the top champ - now she's a nice to have but by no means the gamechanger she once was  so they aren't that bothered blocking the pathway to her

This does not look like it will get folk into G5 and Plat, so they will continue pushing good teams down the tiers which will have a knock on effect through gold and into silver

This right here in a nutshell.

They did nothing for all the gold tier players that got pushed back and in a game about progressing to be regressing just kind of kills the desire to continue on IMO

i

Point deflation. I rage fought til I won 😆 

We both end up with net loss :)

I am hopeful that the matchmaking and point changes help me (as F2P Gold4+ person). I have been told that they will. And I would expect that if they don't help that there will be more tweaking.

But that's just what I am told. We shall have to see what happens as they are implemented.

How many losses can we NOT see? lmao

I genuinely believe that Plarium's intent was for G4 (and, subsequently, G5) to be endgame content. I think that the playerbase has been unfortunately spoiled by how easy it was to achieve in the past.

I very much doubt that there will be significant changes going forward. I think the changes they made today were far more than I was expecting, and they may end up doing small tweaks here and there, but, largely speaking, I think this is what they are aiming for.

The problem is that the environment over the past few years has created an artificially strong set of players. I was fortunate in that I joined early enough to benefit from that, and also have been focusing almost 100% on arena for months now, so I'm well-positioned to handle teams. Anyone entering in now is going to have a much harder time competing. And, short of drawing the top-tier arena champs, I'm not sure if there's going to be much they can do.

I am going to make a bold prediction, though - the next several fusions are going to be arena-focused champs. The last several were clearly DT hard / Hydra focused. I fully expect to see them introduce new fusion/fragment champs to shake up the meta. I don't pretend to know what they will add in, but I wouldn't be surprised to see champs that are specifically intended to counter some of the more popular teams/champs.

U can see, barely, the next battle was a different team :)

Classic arena is just a time suck for me, so I use tokens quickly. Win or lose has no impact.  I spend more time in brutal 12.3 than Classic, and I am a bit beyond mid game. 

How can you have an artificially strong set of players?  It's the champs Plarium have been producing and if they do that and FTP or PTP get them it does not matter if they are beginers or endgame

The early days where you could say a 30 day player should be 'here' in campaign, 'here' in dungeons, Silver in arena etc went a long time ago, you can get lucky or you can buy your way to 'endgame' and having an 'endgame' arena which you believe is their aim is not sustainable as is being shown - still no players in Platinum btw - these tweaks help missions - very little else, certainly not enough to dispel the frustration in the arena

To answer your first point - because, as a result of Arbiter being easily obtained, people were able to advance faster than intended. That snowballs into those same set of players continuing to advance faster than the rest of the playerbase.

As to your second point - we'll see. I don't think there's been enough time yet to conclude whether or not these changes worked. If it truly doesn't pan out, the simple solution is to just push some players up into plat/G5, and see if that does the trick.

This might be a solid prediction.

I know Gliseah was meant to be arena focused. And they have done two 10x for her at this point. It is a shame they went with Tatura as the fusion champ rather than her, at least for my account specifically. 

I'm supportive--particularly of the retroactive change to the "Reach Gold III" mission, on which I've been stuck since the middle Triassic.  I'm still not paying $70 CAD for that Jake the Snake skin, though.  Who do you guys think I am, the Sultan of Brunei?

I remain unclear, that said, why the tiers are "gated" at all.  Hell Hades discussed that this morning, e.g. why can't it just be that the top 500 players are assigned to Platinum, the  next x# of players to Gold V, the next y# of players to Gold IV, etc.? Tier size could be changed periodically to reflect the total number of accounts playing.  Wouldn't that largely do away with the deflation problem? 

...I'm inattentive enough to have thought, for about my first year in the game, that that's how it already worked.  

Trips, solo Dragon farmer when?????

0_0

yes I get that - but I don't think it's artificial, it does not matter where in the game you are anymore, early on it did matter to reach 'end game' and get Arbiter as she was the best, no longer the case, if I had the money I could join, buy shards till I had legendary teams capable of gold arena, nightmare campaign, doom tower, pretty much everything, so new/mid/end would mean nothing to me

Early days you were new/mid because even if you pulled a few good champs you still had to grind, now I could buy feasts and brews, artifact sets with speed gear, all the masteries, books, potions, this isn't artificial it's what Plarium want - money spent

I used to be able to stay in G4 and farm medals quite easily (with some selective opponent choice)

Now I'm just about hanging on it G3 and pretty much have to manual all fights (choose opponents very carefully)

The design of the Great Hall and Arena tournaments would seem to indicate that they expect people to (easily) win (farm) a lot of Arena fights

However I still cannot do this whereas I used to be able to

So this still feels broken to me

Although I'm not sure what sort of experience Plarium want/expect me to have with the Arena

If it was intended to be end game content then it was short sighted to tie it into pve and offer no alternative methods to progress things such as great hall. Even in G4 its a grind and a half to do GH.

From silver? it would take decades.

Looking at my matches right now - every single team has a combo of siphi, rotos, warlord, valk, hedgemon , tormin and candy...not a single team on my list without some combination of those champs.

If you havent pulled any of those champs through poor luck, your options are extremely limited. I used to tell people gear > champs, but with everyone fighting for scraps in g4 right now it isnt the case, you need at least some of the top tier champs.

If they want to make it uber competitive, rip out pve links

1) Give alternative GH methods

2) Remove tied tier bonus

3) Put in an arena shop - a good one with cool pvp gear and pvp skins so people can brag and show off as an incentive to do arena.

I dont think it will happen - i think plarium want people to struggle just enough to try and spend their way out of problems, but not enough to quit.