To give a second opinion, this Day 1 FTP player still loves the game but doesn't enjoy arena at all really. Getting in my 3 free arena battles every day is likely what i forget until the last minute - thought, thanks to having to do two for a quest every day, I don't think I've ever completely forgotten. For comparison I keep fluctuating between ranks 17 and 19, so even without much effort, it's not a hassle to be good at it and reap some rewards.
What I do enjoy however is that they seem to give players a constant flow of content now. There is a good amount of quests and challenges you can do every day, week and month. Then there is tempest and voting gauntlets which keep you occupied for as much as you want to put into them. And if really nothings going on, I just enjoy picking up a new team of 4 and training them to level 40, and/or building up a new 5 star - which is easy with how many feathers and orbs there are around now - i got close to 300 orbs just from ignoring the newest banner and I'm at about 150000 feathers, just from being very sparing with them.
Tempest has gotten a lot easier and more fun since it's first incarnation, too, so if you didn't enjoy that, it might very well have changed. Thought, really, a lot of little things have changed all over the app to make it more enjoyable - like refreshing the enemy teams in the training tower until the highest difficulty team is something my bad armor team can beat for the related monthly quest.
---
Speaking of things that changed, I have a question about something that hasn't. What I'm wondering is if anyone actually uses the level up items? Because I feel like using them would make me loose out on most of the game play and about all of the easy level up SP? I don't think I've used a single one so far, and am wondering if I missed something about them.