This is my initial reaction to the changes. I'll have to really play things out for a few weeks to see what things are really like.
I've only done level 1 so far, and haven't seen level 5 yet, so I'm going to wait and see how that plays out.
But the changed rewards, in a word, suck.
On level 1 and 2, the first, fifth, and ninth encounters are now all coins and supplies. This is trash. They were trash before, and simply increasing them to hundreds of thousands each on my main is no improvement. I didn't need them when they were in the thousands or tens of thousands, and I don't need them now. I have 2.6 billion coins in my city and make probably around 2-3 million coins a day. This number is actually down because I recently removed my St. Mark's to make room, before it was something like 6-7 million a day. Supplies are at about 780 million or so, and I make at least 2 million of those a day too. I'm spending them on just about nothing, the cost to recruit units, complete event or DC quests or build stuff in settlements aren't even a rounding error for me. In my alt cities, I have huge unused surpluses too. Yet, Inno continues to toss them out as trash prizes in events and apparently considers an increase in them in GE an improvement.
One the first three levels, the second encounter in each group of coins is now FP or a small chance of extra attempts. Bar FP is also becoming worth much less given how much that's cranked out. My city already makes about 400 FP a day. That's before I get extra rewards from Himeji prizes, GE relics, GbG prizes, etc. There are days I might be getting somewhere upwards of 700 or 800 bar FP, and I'm probably on the low end for long established players. I don't need these all over the map either. It's almost too much FP for me to spend, and it doesn't help that the bar caps at 100 unless you spend actual money to hold more for a limited time. At least it's not the old limit of 10 FP.
The third out of every fourth chest at least remains mostly unchanged as they're still units, and that's fine. Except for level 4 were the units replace the old diamond prizes.
ToR blueprints have now been bumped up to Level 3. This hurts new players. Under the old system, the 4th encounter always had a 75% chance for a ToR print. This was good, as it helped them build the ToR and get the full benefit from GE by having access to relics. Now, newer players will probably need to rely on established players for prints rather than earning their first set in low level GE. And how high do established players already have their ToRs making it that much harder for new players to get the prints?
And these new buildings aren't that impressive. Forgotten Temple? It's a bunch of fragments that once constructed turns into a limited use building. Limited use buildings are more trash, since once they run out, they're just space wasters, and you can't even recycle them in the AD. The feathered serpent is a chain building, and I'm not overly fond of those, because they require very specific placements and chain into long rectangular footprints that do not work well with FoE's lack of building rotation. And it doesn't look all that special or unique compared to existing chains. The divine sky watch again requires fragments, but isn't a terribly impressive attack booster. The upgraded ritual flame is the best of the lot, but again, pile of fragments.
The old GE building prizes have been reduced to fragments of selection kits, which probably is bad for the newer players again, but there's still the relics. The junk buildings were removed, which sucks because while I never really needed any of them, they served as good AD fodder, and it's been getting harder to collect stuff to sell in the AD. The extra attempts were spaced out in a way that there was always a chance to quickly advance through the GE, and now that's gone too. At least I can buy attempts with medals since I have all my expansions and over 3 million more medals to spare, so there's little else to use them on. My guild isn't active in GvG, so there's no point dumping them into the treasury.
Why the hell are the unlock costs for level 5 so much higher when compared to the previous levels? As I'm now one the leaders of my guild and have responsibility for unlocking GE, this matters to me.
I have to see what fighting on level 5 is going to be like, and I'm going to see how negotiations have been affected on Parkog, where I built a city to negotiate GE. I'm probably going to end up abandoning the IA GE city I have on Tuulech, since I don't feel like busting my ass there for reduced diamonds on level 4.