the grind is way too long.
can you readjust the champion status so it could give more xp? preferably twice as much but it can be lower if you so wish. the current 25% is way too low and makes the game unbearably slow.
i have another suggestion, if you can't readjust the champion status for some reason, can you give the players ability to have bots as their "friends"? these bots (like Purrf3ctkatz for example) wouldn't need to have any other function than just boost your xp gain.
there are still 16 characters (IIRC) in this game and reaching rep 40 with all of them would still take pretty long time.