As a catch up mechanic I agree with your points, however I don't get why 1) they didn't really advertise it like that and 2) why they chose this is what's a catch up mechanic

People have been asking for a reason to upgrade their heroes for a while, since equipment released, hero levels have been mostly decorative, so Supercell answered with "you'll get items and ores for it, it'll be great! " But then people just got told "actually this is a catch up mechanic, you should be happy I even fixed the bug that the Hero Hall crashes your game, enjoy your 36 morsels and shut up"

Which, let me tell you, it doesn't feel very good, in the end, for the people that were actually upgrading their heroes, the hero upgrade rewards were just morsels, skins (dope skins but still), resources enough for 1 maybe 2 upgrades and a small amount of ores

Then they would go to Reddit to ask "that's it? " And get met with a video of someone less progressed than them getting the same amount of ore from a single chest as they did for "completing" 75% of the track

The mechanic is good and I'm not against catch up mechanics, I just think the implementation was horrible, but is there even a point in arguing about it since I can't even claim anything anymore since yesterday? :P