Now I am rather new to this game, so I may be missing the big picture here (am going on my first FA now).
But this seems so obvious I have no idea why nobody (with one exception) seems to get it. If a game generates money by players clicking, why on earth would they change the system from clicking 50 times (15 items, 3 clicks to move along each) for obtaining a badge, to clicking 1 time? It would mean their income of (real) money would go down by 98%! Who of you guys would give up 98% of your wage to make other people have more fun???
This is not a difficult technical problem, that programmers can´t solve. It is a financial problem that the game does not want to change.
The only ones who can change this problem is all of you guys out there. As soon as you click less the game will change immediately. How to click less? Two ideas come to mind: Stop playing altogether (which is probably not a serious option for most, however deleting high power accounts would send a strong message) or simply refuse to do all the things that make you click excessively (this is a rather weak message. There will be less clicks either way, by people refusing to click or by changing the game. There is no real incentive to put resources into change). So in my eyes the only thing to do would be all the top Fellowships would have to get together and agree on sitting out an adventure or two. The reduction in clicks has to be more than the reduction of clicks by a change in the game. Seems quite unlikely to me, too. So my guess is: You will be waiting for this change to happen for a very long time
. People complaining about this is not costing the game money, if anything it generates more clicks. Of course it is a bit of a tactical fight, since the game is also dependent on the mood of the players, which brings us back to option 1. Once enough players start leaving the game because of it, the game will finally change.
Now I am off to do some more clicking, thereby undermining your chances of this happening even further... until i get bored of the clicking (most likely during the FA). Cheers all!