SE never gave reasoning. They nerfed something called offensive campaign. Campaign has two parts, defend your own forts and attack the beastmen ones, and both used to give the same exp. They nerfed the offensive ones, making them useless since beating on the fort was the most time spent, and exp from it was destroyed. It was pure “what the hell?” since there was no player problem with it and it really wasn’t overbalanced.

A lot of the negativity is warranted. Devs need to realize that while we do snipe at times, we really care about the game, and caretakers will just as easily get behind an awesome update as criticize a weaker one

Instead I think designers should draw on a pool of experienced players whose design feedback they have grown to trust and make design decisions based on that… The tards will still whine (but tards are wont to do this no matter what) but at least the game will be fun.

I imagine the thought is that angry complaints are taken more seriously. If someone is merely politely concerned, the game designer might conclude that it’s not a real problem yet.

As a consequence the forums were completely, utterly hostile to game designers. Anyone who showed their face and admitted to having design control would get flamed within an inch of their digital life.

With this sort of toxic environment, it doesn’t surprise me that designers attempt to minimize their communication about game-balance issues.

In the meantime, the Caretakers are a very small fraction of the player base. It must be easy for the designers to convince themselves that the folks on the forums are just the loudest, least grateful 1% of users, and that they can safely be ignored.