Yeah… I mean, obviously there is no “objectively correct” answer here, it’s all just subjective. Apparently, Khary thinks one arcane every half hour is just fine, whereas I find it excruciatingly slow. I guess to each their own. As you point out, requiring 20 hours of gameplay to trait out one mythic, to me, is horrible. I enjoy other aspects of the game more, such as PvP and such, so I’d have to spread that 20 hours over probably 40 or more of the stuff I like better to make it palatable at all… because doing literally nothing else but Exploring/Griding arcanes isn’t really going to keep me going.
It’s the main reason I was hoping there would be other ways I could acquire the stones in a reasonable way (beyond global RNGs). The whole idea is that, to the best of their ability, the developers should consider allowing us to get what we need to succeed in reasonable time doing whatever mode of play we like. If I’m mostly a PvP player (as is the case) and don’t like maps (which I find boring), and explore mode doesn’t do it for me, then allow the resources I gather from PvP (like Gold, and Seals) to be convertible into what I need, like Arcanes.
It’s perfectly fine to have the easiest thing to get (gold) be convertible into the hardest thing (arcanes) by simply altering exchange rates. If it costs 100,000 gold per arcane for instance, that might be just fine. Still takes a while, you can’t just buy up dozens of them in a day, but you CAN build up gold doing something you like (PvP) and then get what you need, that you’d otherwise have to do by doing stuff you don’t like (such as Explore).
Just makes everyone happy.