Max potential went up, minimum payouts as well. For pretty much everyone. If you are at the very high end of the score spectrum (say ~13k+ max score potential), however, you’ll see these high value options far less often because far fewer opponents are available that are considered “peers” or “stronger”. This is partially due to the introduction of 10 star kingdoms and factions mattering for your score, so while a huge number of players were available as opponents with at or near maxed out score values with just completed guild tasks and five star/level 10 kingdoms at level 1000+, much less people have these bonuses unlocked. Also, the hero can contribute up to 935 points more than a mythic fully traited troop on a team (rather than 25 less) due to talents and weapon upgrades contributing points, so not fully maxed heros or not upgraded weapons can be hundreds of points lower than their max potential, where basically every team fielded before was within 100 or so points of that person’s max potential. End result is that there are much fewer teams out there at or near the level required for the formulas for people with maxed out score bonuses to at least consider them “peers”, not “weaker”, which majorly shafts you on the payout.
I will say that the screenshots in the OP misrepresent the issue a bit, particularly on the gold front, since the “with guild tasks” shots show teams with much lower scores, and in the threshold of “weak” teams, which penalizes you heavily. Matchmaking is also part of the problem, granted, but there probably aren’t enough appropriate leveled matches around.
If all the people with 13k+ MSP were consistently matched with three trophy battles approaching the 13.5k score range, we’d see much less complaints about this. Similar things happened the last two times they messed with scores (and when they first introduced it), but these were able to eventually “even out” as more and more of the playerbase reached the point of diminishing returns by having level ten, five star kingdoms with completed guild tasks (whichever mattered for whatever version). However, this update takes that problem and exacerbates it much more than previously - this is unlikely to be phased out by simple “global progress” since both faction renown and 10 star kingdoms take a concerted effort to unlock and will continue to for the forseeable future, doubly so for players that entered the game after a certain point. PvP point payouts in particular for those at the high end are even worse than when they first introduced guild task score and very few people had the score bonus for completing them, and that is a 980 point disparity, which is more than every potential faction renown and ten star kingdom bonus is combined right now.
In short, we’ve seen the issue in the past and it was self correcting over time. But I highly doubt the issue will self-correct this time because of the amount of resistance required in reaching what is currently the maximum possible scores out on defense teams - maybe, given years. The formula really just needs to be tweaked at the high end so that more people are considered “stronger” or at least “peers”. For those asking for a full rework, well, it would also be pretty easy to make the system “fair” by homogenizing everyone to the same set of low-ish numbers. I’d rather not have that on the list of community sourced “suggestions”.
I’ll end with this, as an example a screenshot of an account with 13495 MSP:
The payout for the 13458 team is about where it should be, as is the 9k team, but the 12271 needs to be in the threshold for at least 1600+ payout and 30+ PvP points (on the 2 trophy slot, ~50 on the 3 trophy).
This account as a MSP of 13146:
Gold payouts are within reason (but slightly low), but score payouts still aren’t close to what they should be.
And an MSP of 9916:
Gold and score payouts are appropriate. Note that the middle team 10% lower than my max potential still gives almost 50% more gold payout over the minimum. While the middle team in my first shot 10% at less than that account’s max potential score gives only about 20% gold payout over the minimum.
This leads me to believe that the score differential “grace range” for when the formula decides if a opponent is “worthy” is probably a flat number, rather than a percentage. And it probably isn’t working on PvP point payouts, since they are consistently lower on all my higher accounts.
tl;dr: Players getting “less” for the same level of battles as they progress isn’t that bad if the intent is to make you want to take stronger battles as you progress, but payouts always need to trend upwards and such “stronger” battles need to be made available consistently or the path of least resistance is to always take the weakest battle and/or not progress, which does not serve anybody. The last score update currently broke this for people at the extreme high end by removing the availability of about 95% of their “peers” to fight by saying they are now comparatively “weaker”. Recommend lowering the amount of score differential needed at an MSP ~13k+ points for a team to be considered a “peer” or “stronger” for more consistent payouts at the near-cap to bring back the amount of options that give at least an “average” payout (~1.6k gold/50 PvP points) down to the high 11k/low 12k point threshold or so.
OR, basically
^^^ This. This is currently broken for the new score calc, for players at the very high end, because too few players are as close to the score cap as necessary and most likely never will be to have a matchmaking pool where you don’t feel consistently penalized.