I have to disagree with some things here…
As a mid-gamer, I think the new explore is a significant improvement. I hated the randomness and mindlessness of the old explore with a passion, and appreciate the sense of progression, and the guaranteed arcane reward.
I do think the new explore has problems due to it being yoked with the new token/elite level system, and that most people (rightfully) are disappointed with the implementation of this new time/resource sink.
To improve explore, I agree with:
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shortening the cycle; 4 battles before getting to the good stuff is just excess content padding, it should really be half as long before getting to a mini-boss. It’s also dumb to see the computer pick essentially the same troops in each explore round, make them choose different teams.
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give more ways of receiving tokens (enter epic tasks): it was expressed that while it wouldn’t be reasonable for players to expect to epic level their entire collection, upgrading your favorite and most-used troops was supposed to be a reasonable goal. That’s laughable, under current conditions. Most players’ favorite troops are of legendary rarity or higher, and it could be months before they get a single medal of Anu (forget about Nysha), let alone six. If this is an attempt to encourage gambling with lower-rarity medals, it’s a failure - the soul costs are too high.
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increasing gnome rate to compensate for players playing less games
disagree with:
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muddying the system with any further upgrade tiers: three tiers is too convoluted as it is, they should have just released it with badges and medals, and made the cost for medals higher
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forcing players to choose between rewards: this would require non-endgamers to increase their explore-grinding time, as they will want both arcanes and tokens (unless you double the rewards for each path, in which case, sure that works).