While I kinda agree with you with the fact that is kinda fucked up for some regions to need less tokens (and would love to understand what led Riot to do it), I like how you acutally need to know how to play a champion instead of just spamming them on games.
Any idiot can get to mastery 5. Spam the champion, wait and you're done. Sure, if you're good, you can get to 5 faster, but even if you feed every single game you can get to mastery 5. The game that got me to mastery 5 Shaco was a complete disaster. I failed almost all my ganks, I got counter jungled, I couldn't even fight their support Sona. I think I ended that game as 1/12 or something like that. Yet, I got my mastery 5. It left a bad taste in my mouth. Kinda like getting second place instead of first. Yes, it's great, but you still lost to another guy.
Getting mastery 6 or 7 however require both you being good at your champion as well as investing your resources to just for the simple bragging rights of having a different badge. My mastery 6 and 7 meant a lot more to me than my mastery 5. Getting to 5 took me a lot longer, but it also didn't showed how good I was, only that I dedicated myself to the champion for long enough. I went from Mastery 5 to Mastery 7 in 6 games, all with S- or more (only failed to get it in 5 because my first game as mastery 6 I got only an S-). For me this was fucking amazing and part of the experience.
I immediatly sold my Jhin shard (who's a champion I truly want to buy), just to unlock the new Token. It made it so the token actually meant something. I had to play to the best of my abilities. I had to give up on something I actually wanted and grinded for. Because showing off the Mastery 7 badge in the day after it was implemented was worth it.
In my opinion getting the new mastery grades that are yet to come should be even harder and more rewarding.
