Does the game still give those free crystals though?

Maybe I'm wrong but the star chests don't give crystals anymore for me but potions instead.

Also a 40% of getting a hero shard is only on hell mode and good luck beating hell mode if you don't have any of the good heroes unlocked already since they also made the later levels harder. You also need 40 shards now instead of 20 to unlock.

Since you also now need plenty of shards to upgrade hero skills to make them good they've massively increased the time to clear the harder levels on hell mode.

I don't really see much good things for the player. Especially for somebody that doesn't already have everything unlocked you're looking at much much more grinding.