You have certainly put some thought into all this, so well done there. Definitely a good jumping off point for discussion.
The notion of ditching loot tickets is certainly a good one. They always struck me as a very artificial paywall, when we were already throttled on WE. I just can’t envision much downside to that. Ditto all the skinning and cosmetic items ideas. I despise paying for cosmetic upgrades myself, but I’m a rarity; cosmetic customizations are very popular, and there’s very little downside. Certainly, waiting until your country’s pin pops up in the rotation is ridiculous. If people want to give away money for no game advantage whatsoever, by all means.
Many of these ideas will generate significant negative second-order effects, though. The proposed War changes will require radical change to a matchmaking system that SGG insists on thinking about in the most naive way, creating more animosity when the latest fix continues to exhibit exploitable loopholes. Allowing significantly cheaper summons, with better odds, devalues what earlier players paid for their Heroes; like nerfing, this will create a friction point for the big money players with an “investment” mindset. Moving loot around the map will frustrate the data miners; increasing loot without altering what’s available will only trivialize previously hard-to-find items, leading to even more declarations of “boring junk”… but “boring” farming will continue as a method of supplementing food and iron income. And so forth… lots of risk to manage.
One point I find deliciously ironic, and it applies to many games as well as this one: player decisions must be significant (or else, as you say, you may as well just sit at home and roll some dice), but most players largely hate making those same decisions. Consider the Telluria debacle: if there was only one tank in the game, and that was Telly, everyone would immediately react to having their choice taken away by quitting (“Boring game u cannot choose ur heros!”). But because, stats-wise, Telluria was the only tank worth having, those exact same people immediately spent a bajillion dollars to get her, or bemoaned the fact that the game is unplayable without her, effectively enjoying that their decision was made for them.
More and more, I see a game that seems like a solid self-contained system early on, but didn’t have a comprehansive plan for expansion. The Classes/Emblems are a perfect example. The entire original system was predicated on there being a radical asymmetry between attacking and defending. Attackers had an enormous advantage, and a few things had to be implemented (like the infamous hidden 20%) to even make the system useable. However, as noted, defences are enormously strengthened by Emblems; notice how the three Talents named OP are all defensive ones? It seems obvious that they didn’t really consider how so much defensive boost would alter their core principle. In many respects (Pull rarity, 4* AM rarity, Emblems, Challenge Event scoring, feeder Heroes), it really seems like SGG has painted themselves into a corner, with serious negative consequences no matter how they choose to progress. Honestly, if this game is still around in a big way in a year, it will probably be because they bit the bullet and shed a bunch of their legacy game mechanics… and shed, too, the veteran players that are unwilling to adapt to that radical change.