I am in favor of all possible and imaginable improvements... but much less so when it comes to Mike charging us for them.
He has already hinted at it by mentioning that he hasn't increased prices since the game's creation.
Having already moved past the immersion phase and the intensive learning stage, the adjustments that have just been implemented suit me perfectly
Veterans of the game will continue to play because they already have that time invested. The speed-up is nice to see a faster turnaround on projects but are they looking to keep 1 veteran with a roster of projects cus he throws 18 bucks every 3 months at the game or will they prefer potentially 10 new players potentially throwing money at it? The game has only so many veterans to bleed.
New players need to be brought in, and they should be enticed TO stay. The whole thing of "train them for basically a year and then fight with them, then stumble your way around people who have already min-maxed the fighting game to being top players" isn't exactly appealing but it's a true fact of the game. You don't HAVE to play this way, but you wanna at least give them the impression it is a possibility. And speeding things up is a step in the right direction.
Might seem unrelated but tangentially, it's actually why Balatro as a game became so popular so quickly. From the beginning with Tetris to Balatro today, the concept of "Number go up = Dopamine" is a real one and seeing your profile's numbers go up = dopamine. It really is that simple sometimes