Lady Raya. & Major Ursa,
Thank you for posting about the gear damage from the bots. This leads me to believe that Charms of Durability will not reduce the damage as much as it does in PvP.
I hope the updates are done soon, to show us the gear damage Every Fight! (Please add your name to the forum post, if you haven't already: dragoneternity.com/forum/drako/12105.html#cP=1)

I have also been told by others, that the level of the bot effects the hop money drop. Level 70s are getting reduced rewards because the bots are all level 69 or less? Anyone else having this problem?

We all have to remember the gear level and skill level set by the game doesn't match a players normal progression. Not even close. This is why we are all struggling with the bots. They made the bots to be be ideal players for their specific levels, which is better then 99% of actual players. They didn't want it to be 3 players joining and one side lose due to bot. I think the extra buffs such as temple, phials and kandelas are a bit much of non-Event aoh bots. Makes it a pointless update because cost to get third medallion vs mainland hops is maybe a profit of 4-7g. With average cost in war being 10-15g. 2 wars a week say 30g. 4 hops a week (4 red bags) you won't sustain your game play without spending real money. If we still had island and you just did first medallion you'd make 22g a hop x 4 making 88g a week with net profit of 50g after wars allowing you to do other parts of game. Only need first medallion because number of mobs needed is drastically less to make profit. Now at best you make 10-12g a hop and you need third medallion to avoid the amount of exp because you kill so many more mobs. If you are a top bracket player you don't care. But just saying I see game play going down significantly due to these current changes. It's basically eliminating the free to play player or we have to go back to our toon days of 2 hops a day.

One small question about the new AoH HoP.... Do we give I the possibility of real drops in the battleground? With four hours in so far, I have not gotten any real drops. Could be bad luck. But I wanted to ask. TYVM

Love the idea of doing HoP in arenas, and the effort to make bots competitive.
Here are my early observations in pros/cons format. Granted what my be a "con" for me can and will be a "pro" for some others.

Pro:
Arenas go regardless of number of people queued, so gladiator drops can happen and reputations can be worked on.
Arenas give gold during the use of Hours of Prosperity.
Garuug's bag along with other money buffs can increase the money made.

Con:
Not getting reals drops during HoP in arenas since it's combats versus players.
Trade off of essence farming versus PvP
Coin amounts are vastly different depending on the player, some get 13g+ per fight, others 1g+ per fight.
Non-player characters seem to be overpowering for most players, not equally matched.

For me, and I'm fully aware that others don't have the same experience in arenas as I do, but I make about half of the gold I could make fighting rachni's on islands. Doing those I could make about 50g for two hours of HoP, as well as make some death essences and (normally) fire essences. I will plan to mix up how I do HoP, will do some on pvp, others on mobs.

I also appreciate the fact that reputations are a trade-off of not getting essences and reals drops.

It would be great to have the opportunity to make gold on an island fighting level-appropriate rachnis, pirates for corsair piastres, other mobs for specific sparks as well as get gold in arenas.

I also suspect this will have a significant impact on high cost events like war and sea battles. With lower gold and reals generated, fewer people will be able to afford the combats.

I laud the efforts, and like the changes, although I would like to see some minor adjustments to coin drop rates that aid the weaker combatants.

Thanks for the innovation!!!

It would seem to me that the stronger the player is the more gold they will make as they will be on the winning side of combat most of the time. So the strong get stronger and the gap between the strongest and weakest players continues to grow regardless of the effort being put in to grow.

One other con. Bot kills do not count for star quests or AoH quests.