The crates either need less crystals to be opened or they should contain more rewards in them imo.
I believe the crates are just a tiny little detail in a loooooooong row of cuts we have seen over the entire time this site has existed.
The site has continually cut pay on anything that would give actual cryptos, down to a level where by now a full MONTH of mining, including the mining boosts required to bridge your sleeping time, will pay a grand total of about 40 cents per month in value ....... even including missions and all the rest, for someone who has a life outside CMG it is next to impossble making more than $1 a month.
Have you done the math?
A level 20 crypto mission pays just over 1 sat and getting the 20 energy to do that mission takes 10 minutes, including a shortlink energy refill.
Even if you never sleep and have no life outside CMG, doing 24/7 an energy refill every 10 minutes, moving around on the map fast enough so you always have as many level 20 missions available as you get energy, you'll make roughly $0.015 per day or just under 50 cents a month in missions.
Subtract 8 hours of sleep and you get to just so 35 cents a month in missions, plus 40 cents from mining gives $0.75 a month, adding daily bonuses and stuff you can sell in the market you might just so make it to $1 a month, but only if you work 16 hours a day 7 days a week on it.
For the fun of the math: That comes down to a pay of $0.002 an hour.
Of course, I know, it's considered to be a game where the pay is not the important part, but the amount of disappearing users (visible by how many referrals become inactive) can tell you that most users have the opposite idea.
It's as logic as it gets, that ever deeper cuts in pay of actual cryptos vs ever more stuff the site generates itself, the value of the site generated stuff keeps going down the drain.
Looks like they want to slow down the collapse in price of crystals and stuff and the effect is visible in the market already.
Unfortunately with increasing prices for crystals and mining boosts the prices for cards collapse even faster.
In short: I don't think the problems of this site could be fixed by adjusting the content of crates.
I assume the site doesn't make enough revenue to pay more to the users, but that gives a devils circle, where not enough revenue and subsequent cuts in pay for the users, result in less users and thereby even less revenue for the site.
I did have (and still do have) the solution for @jamboom, I've presented it to him about 2 years ago, he said he was really excited about this and he would get back to me about it ...... yet he never did.