I don’t get what’s been asked here.
The points system was just that, points. What changed is that before someone with 500 more hero power than you meant a lot less than now. I have around 3200 hero points and not a single maxed hero yet, fighting 3500 means fighting people with max heros, the 300 gap means a lot now. Fighting them is really though for me, I usually try to avoid them.
Back then, the gap between me and a person with that much maxed heros were a lot bigger, if I was a 3200, they were almos 4000. Because of that they seemed a lot more “scary”. The change in points just ajusted how we perceive them. If I would complete avoid them back then, now with good boards I can win against a 3700 that are pretty much the top players.
If there was any actual change to the raid system itself, how mana is gathered and all (other than the combo thing a couple months ago), I’m not aware nor noticed it to be honest.
What I think it’s happening is that more people are joining in, and that means more competition. More competion means getting hit more often. But there’s nothing you can do about that.
Raids work on a fairly obvious system, it continuously match people with close amount of trophies. If you have a X number of trophies and the average of people with that amount is higher than you, you’ll be hit a lot more, since you are a easy target. So unless you get stronger, you’ll find yourself stuck in a fixed range. The same way, after getting hit for a while you get to a Y number where you are a lot stronger than the average and you stop getting hit as much.
In my case, I’m usually at 2300, when I don’t play or raid I get down to 2000-2100 and no one else hits me. That’s the core of the system. It’s the same way in other games, although some has those “shield” mechanics that locks your scores for a given time if you pay for it.
Get hit less or winning more when people fight you is highly influenced by luck, but also strategy. Having a good defense team, for example. I fight some people that clearly paid a lot for their teams, but they have just no idea of how to position the heros, It’s a walk in the park.
Also see many people that don’t know how to take advantage of the revenge system or the reward preview. People that just don’t know how to choose their targets, that don’t know their weakness and what teams to avoid. They seem to go blind based on how much trophies they will potentially earn.
Raid will favor smart moves, strategies and good teams. That won’t change even if they make it harder to win. There’ll still be good players hitting you. And as more people join, more and more people will raid too.
Other games solve that by separating the players in brackets of less people, like brackets of a thousand people. The problem of that is the brackets are never even, and while one you would be the king, the other you are bellow a dozen people that farm your *ss off.
Every system will have it issues.