I don’t blame this gentleman or anyone in community relations... if you search Nexon on google you will see a pattern of corporate behavior that fits the mold of what occurred here. Devs don’t make business decisions. If the corporate-types can force alterations of aspects of gameplay to the extent that there is a short-term revenue bump, that might be all their executive boss needs.
Businesses certainly care about long-term viability but maybe there’s an executive timer on this game... a point where the short-term benefits of slightly increased revenue outweigh the long-term detriment of a dwindling player base. It is likely that they have a strategic timeline leading into the release of Dominations 2 or some other game and that the incremental steps towards p2w are part of the business plan. It’s not that they don’t understand the situation or hear you, it’s that the devs are employees of a company that has to be profitable to get financing for their next major projects.
If you want to make money as a dev releasing a f2p game, it makes sense that you would have very little p2w at the beginning of the dev cycle and after you thought your player base peaked, you would start bleeding the turnip. It’s not a lack of understanding, a refusal to hear you, it’s that they’re working a business plan that they’ve honed over the course of several releases.