What I can say is this…
Some of your suspicions are correct. Having pet gnomes in PVP keeps the game mode more relevant after the re-work of Explore. The re-work brought more players back to explore, and made the game mode more attractive for mid to end gamers again. (Which was the intention! Most mid-end gamers were primarily playing PVP. More are in Explore now, but we also need to keep PVP relevant.)
I can also say that we are going to be making some additions to the PVP mode (later) this year. I can’t expand upon this, but we have been planning to for some time. I know you want a timetable, but due to the nature of game development and how often our updates are switched around and re-scoped, I can’t give you one outside of later this year. That means that you are unlikely to see this in-game until the second half of the year.
We did not consider pet gnomes to be found too often in the past, aside from that exploit that was mentioned to us well after they were introduced… We are happy with the rate that they are found in PVP, but less people are playing PVP which makes them rarer. With the additions we will being to PVP the game mode should be more attractive to players again, meaning that more pet gnomes are found.
For the average gamer, there is no need to collect all the pets. These players are less concerned with the very high kingdom levels, and are more focused on events and troop collection than pet collection. For end gamers this is obviously different, and these players will need to prioritise their play time and resources more carefully in the context of pets to ensure they can max their kingdom levels. It is possible to max all the pets in game through play, but it will be a significant amount of play. You don’t have to use your gems on pets, but it be a longer process like everything else in the game. You can earn gems through game play, and use them to speed things up or benefit you accordingly (Eg, in guild events, to open gem chests, etc) and pets are no different. (This is excluding exclusive cosmetic pets. We added faction pets to kingdoms so players can still unlock higher power levels if they miss out on an exclusive cosmetic pet.) However, we have heard you about having less opportunities due to less people playing PVP, and that is something that we will look into when we look at PVP.
As far as this being an issue, I will be honest with you, we don’t consider it one. There are many more pressing things in game that take precedence outside of our new content that we consider issues. This is a community request due to changing play styles, which we understand. We aren’t able to add pet gnomes to explore at this point in time, so we are looking at making PVP more enticing to help players/guilds trigger more pet rescues. We have heard you, and I have been collating feedback on this in particular. It is something I have mentioned before as a quality of life consideration to the team.