The intent of the buffs may be to make it more of a contest, but I think we both know it really won't.
The lack of contest over pillars is due to the fact that of the 8 players with 7 planets, 5 of them are in one galaxy and 3 of them are in another. As long as that continues to be the case, the current #1 Trolling stones, # 2 Pax sanctum trend will continue ad nauseum. King's field will likely continue to have a fairly decent lock on #3 as well, because as a locked galaxy, they have 40 active players, who probably also work together more. In contrast, unlocked galaxies are bound to have at most 10-15 active players, most of whom are probably operating independently. And I can respect King's Field for doing what they can to get a leg up in a game that is currently balanced pretty heavily against them (based on your $$$, followed by time, followed by configuration formula, probably because they aren't paying the piper as readily), although I wouldn't join them if asked (due to my mildly irrational distaste for locked galaxies).
But significantly lowering hp of pillars would mean it takes less damage to get a lock on higher ranks. And while I'm fairly sure trolling stones could knock them off in minutes, I suspect they would be more likely to just do 51 mil, and let the other galaxies fight it out for the lower ranks. After all, Trolling stones could knock the pillars down in minutes as things stand, but they don't. They do about 100 some odd mil damage, wait for a while, then do some more, and then complain about how they have to do all the damage to the pillar (which might have something to do with the fact that they're pretty much the only galaxy that can do that much damage to every pillar).
Also, sometimes Pax Sanctum or King's Field would get a shot at doing that 51 mil themselves before trolling stones get's to it. Anyway, the point is this does give a chance to other galaxies to squeeze out 25 or 26 mil and make 2nd.
Maybe not. Maybe you'll just crush pillars out of spite. In which case I find it highly entertaining to know I can evoke that kind of emotional response in someone who isn't even playing the same game as me (I would put in quotes but don't feel like looking up exactly what you said).
Also if the pillar falls in 5 minutes but some weak player who just got to chapter 7 happens to have tapped it while that's happening, they just scored 2nd place for their galaxy. Now that's the little guy making a difference.
I will concede that you could be right about it turning into just two or three galaxies hitting the pillar and then it's dead. Although I'd imagine that with the amount other things to do, most players would rather just assure their galaxy's rank and then move on to chapter missions, or arena, or PvPing, or the Collect missions, or whatever else I might not of thought of, or whatever might be introduced in the future.
As for shortening protection time, honestly, do you really care that much about the buffs from the pillar? Do you really think that if pillar's only had protection for 6 hours (which is still a fairly decent window of time to do any story missions you might want to do), anybody would care? I mean, you can get any of the buffs that have an actual impact on battle outcome from those little buff items you can get in the mall (only 1 hr if you're using coupons, but I don't see it as super likely that I'd need more than a hour to use up my ap doing story missions).
And I'll acknowledge that the mini-mission buffs idea might help, if it's done in such a way that a player who just hit chap 7 gets the same buff as the players who are in chap 16 or 17 or whichever one it is that you guys are currently working on (but I doubt that's how it would be). So actually, I'm reversing my stance on that and saying, sure, give it a try, just make it so player's level doesn't have any bearing on the buffs given.
I don't think it'll make a real difference because the real reason there's no contest is that some players are a little bit too attached to getting an extra 500 coupons per pillar to leave their galaxy and start making it a real contest (ironic, considering how meaningless those 500 coupons must actually be to those players, who in all likelihood have spent somewhere in the area of 5k gold to promote one of their heros to gold).
And no, I probably won't ever be able to attack you and win, but there's also arena (where you really don't need a 40 card deck to have a competietive deck), and at some point (assuming the damage cap isn't raised) I'll be able to hit that damage cap. Then every once in a long while, I'll be able to get enough damage in to knock you guys off your perch for just one pillar. And that, my friend, will be a more glorious day than you could ever fathom.
And finally, just so we do have an actual bug reported somewhere in this thread, I'd like to point out that when fighting "War of Heroes" battles, it is very common for heroes on the bottom row to obscure the life remaining in heroes on the top row.