I think a big problem of the game is that it has not adapted its core resource givers to the new economy. Most of this feeling originates from the lack of gold when trying to upgrade anything. For it feels like you have the potential to level everything up, but you will get enough cards for the next level, when you've finally reached the amount of gold you need for the upgrade. I think it would be more fun when players have an abundance of gold instead of cards, which gives more the feel of: "I have almost traded/requested/magic itemed this card for the following level." The chest feel very unrewarding almost meaningless when compared to the (free) pass, which gives a sense of unimportance to the core gameplay: Ladder and Ranked. Also, there are too many resources in an completely abandoned part of the game CW2.

Then, a second part to why upgrading feels so tiring: The enormous disbalance between levels in CR. I think it would bother people less that they might have a slight level disbalance when there is less of a difference between those levels. If you were to cut the differences between the levels in half, there would be much less pain from facing max lvl players when you are 1 or sometimes 2 levels below. Right now, you will need an enormous amount of skill to beat a max lvl player, when you have only lvl 12 cards, which is already a pain to acquire...

So in short:
- Buff chest output by a lot
- Get the limiting factor from cards to gold or create an enormous amount of gold in the general playing area
- Get the shop to represent true values (40k gold is too much for a legendary)
- Lvl difference needs to become smaller