I think that those who like this change either have a large abundance of maxed champions already, spend money (which I am not indicating as a bad thing to do), or have played for a very long time. I am 1 year in as FTP and just now got to where I can 4 key UNM. I did (4 key) NM for about 3-4 months and only got 3 sacred shards in all that time. However UNM has given me 6 in about a month and a half which is a huge boost.
I think that legends are being overvalued on this post. Some legends can be outstanding in everything or outclass epics in one specific area, but there are epics that aren't usable at all. Then there is the fact there are some Legends that are really good but only if booked, which is a whole other thing. So far the people who advocate for the change seem to ONLY talk about the sacred shard, and equate that sacred shard as being a low chance of giving a legend and completely disregards the epics you get.
However the loss of this shard ISN'T just a chance at a legendary, It is also a garunteed epic champion and a possible fantastic epic champion that is easier to book than a legend. I know, your next argument is "but that's still RNG" and you are correct, however you are also neglecting that even if all 4 sacreds are dupe or trash epic champs you are still gaining something. A dupe can be used as a book, which is pretty hard to come by, and a trash champ can be used as a resource to work towards another 6* champ. To make one 4* food out of only rare's....I think that equals somewhere around 350 energy. so if all 4 of your sacreds were trash champs that's a loss of 1400 energy just to get one legend.
Personally, I don't think the loss of 4 Sacreds is a massive loss especially if Cleopterix is as good as she seems. However we aren't just losing a sacred shard, we also lose a 5* chicken every month. This is the biggest loss of the change IMO because to make one 5* fuse food out of only rares is roughly 1500 energy, thats a 6000 energy loss.
So in summary we are trading four 5* chicken's AND four sacred shard for 1 legend. provided that all the sacred shards are trash epics, that is equivalent to roughly 7400 energy. Personally, I would prefer to have all that fuse food over even a somewhat decent legend.
As a bit of reference to how important that energy is to FTP players. In one year I only have 22 level 60 champs, however 4 of them have no masteries (I'm out of energy at the moment). To max masteries it costs roughly 2000 energy if you farm stage 15, sure you could use gems to get the masteries but that costs 800 gems. As FTP, those gems (at least after you get 4 champs at max masteries) are best used to buy ancient shards, otherwise you will only be doing around 20 shard pulls every x2 Ancient shard weekend which MIGHT get you a minimum of 1 epic or 3-4 if your really lucky. These numbers will obviously vary but so far this is my experience.
See, this is what I love to read. Other players demonstrating that the existing rewards provide versitility and options to the game. Some (like myself) see them as avenues to explore events and tournmanets, while others see them as potential sources of energy substitutes. Still others in this thread mention using them as a source for books. This is the value that the old rewards brought to the game. It allowed players of varying stages to determine what they wanted to use these resources for, and how they wanted to interact with the game. It encouraged players to play the game
The current rewards whereby you have to wait 4 months to get a (potentially duplicate) legendary doesn't drive players to play the game. It just encourages players to log in, get the fragments, then log out. Sure, after another 120 days they get the legendary and they can finally do something with it (assuming they haven't already gotten Cleo from a shard pull), but it's still 120 days of doing nothing.
If the goal of this change is to encourage players to stick around after 180 days, then give them something to do!
PS. I don't know how many days I am in as I've been looping through the 271+ rewards at least a couple of times. Probably about 380 odd?