I appreciate your input—very detailed. The fact that you paid 12k in crystals and can’t collect your rewards—what the heck? That’s even more ludicrous than I at first thought. If I’m understanding that screen shot correctly, is it saying you need to have a certain amount of shards in order to collect the rewards on the achievement you already completed?
I agree with you—Conquest is definitely a better balance of free-to-play and pay-to-play. This update was allegedly made for free-to-play but it certainly doesn’t feel that way.
In retrospect though, I don’t recall if they ever specified that this update was to help free-to-play players achieve their goals or to hinder free-to-play players. It may actually be the aim to drive them away.