Habit, I suppose. Once upon a time it did make sense to hoard Diamond Crates and wait for certain times to open them, for two reasons: 1. To get a Diamond Crate Exclusive hero, since the contents of the crates were determined only when they were opened, meaning crates acquired months ago could still give a hero introduced in an update earlier today; 2. Contests that awarded points for opening Diamond Crates, though IIRC there were only two or three such contests, the last one being over two years ago.
I suppose the feeling that, at some point, we will get another Diamond Crate Exclusive hero plays a role in my lingering reluctance to open the rest of my hoard, even though, honestly, it wouldn’t be that hard to get enough crates from contests and the Prize Wall to obtain any future such hero.
Math time? Math time.
As mentioned in the other thread, Diamond Crates have a 32% chance to drop Hero Chips, and a 20% chance to drop a full Hero (which pretty much always means 7, 18, or 30 Hero Chips). Let’s take the current contest, which gives 650 Diamond Crates for the fourth progress tier. That’s 208 Hero Chip drops, and 130 full Hero drops. Currently there are 185 heroes in the game, about a dozen or so of which aren’t available via Diamond Crates; let’s just assume 170 heroes are available in Diamond Crates. Thus, from this contest, a player can expect 1 or 2 normal chip drops, and about 3/4 of a full Hero drop; for a one-star hero, which is the majority of heroes now, that’s probably going to average about 10 chips for any one hero. Not exactly a big help when it comes to needing 2000-3000 chips to max a red skill.
But! That doesn’t take into account the fact that red skill costs keep increasing, while the odds of getting any certain hero keep decreasing; the situation is slowly getting worse, instead of getting better.
Personally, I think Diamond Crates are a decent way to supplement one’s supply of Hero Chips in general, but are fundamentally flawed if viewed as a major source of chips to max out red skills of specific heroes. Changing the full Hero chip drop to a flat 20 chips, which is probably the most radical change that can be made to Diamond Crates in terms of chip supply, would help, but not enough to make up for the lack of chips from other sources, mainly Elite Campaign.