First, we changed the way we search for matches. Before, when taking event rating into account while matchmaking, we looked for opponents within a certain range above and below your event rating. Now, we still limit the amount below your rating that we look (so you don't get worthless matches), but you can now be matched with players that have event ratings any distance above yours. We rolled this out during the first run of the Ares tournament and it looks like it's having a positive effect so far.
The effect of this should be that it's more dangerous at the top, and players at the bottom can rise faster. We're adjusting the progression rewards to take this into account. The thresholds for the 175-500 progression rewards are higher, but our intent is that, for most players, it takes roughly the same amount of effort to earn a similar reward as it did before. A couple of rewards at around the 1000 point mark have also been reduced a touch since many more players are earning them.
We're also experimenting with doubling the price of shields in these events (as we experimented with halving them in the last set of lightning rounds). We want their use to be an interesting strategic choice, and some of us think the choice to throw one down is too obvious right now - top players easily have enough Hero Points to shield the whole time they're not playing, and it's exceptionally hard for others to catch up. We want the use of shields to remain within reach for lots of players, though, so we'll be watching how this affects shield usage closely.
One thing we've been concerned about is encouraging you to skip a zillion opponents before fighting one. We think most people have more fun fighting than skipping. We've added a feature to a future release that adds a small Iso-8 cost to skipping. Our hope is that it will add a little more strategy to deciding whether or not to skip a fight, and a side effect is that it should improve matchmaking (Rating players accurately is more difficult the greater control you have over exactly who to fight. We want you to have some of that control because it's an interesting choice, but infinite skips may be too much). This feature won't be in these next events - it'll be in an app update.
