Some responses here seem to be “just develop your heroes better!”
Which
(A) not everyone can, especially if means taking limited resources (e.g. emblems) away from advancing more commonly-used, more-needed heroes for titans, raids, war, even regular old PvE, etc., but also
(B) what, for this?
It would be one thing if SG rolled out an extra-grueling challenge in exchange for significantly improved rewards. It’s quite another for one of the more difficult aspects of the game to have one of the worst returns on effort (at least, for anyone not in top 100 scoring, and given what it probably takes to get anywhere near the top 100, possibly even more egregiously for them).
I can’t help but think that if the player response to “we made the challenge harder and the rewards worse” is “the players burned more resources and spent more money,” that the result will only be an acceleration in the game continuing to make challenges harder for worse rewards.