WTF Kixeye?!?

I said I wouldn't be able to write any more about this event, but I can't let this go.

I tried to hit the raid pretty hard early.  I did quite a few elites, and found that Kix had made a couple tweaks to make them more challenging, but they were still "doable" in a reasonable fashion.  

Last night I got on since I had a bit of time to do another Elite, and I noticed that prepping the ships which used to give me about 3 coins of repair.. instead  killed about half my fleet for about 9 coins repair. Then turrets which i used to be able to kill with 2 arbalest salvos took 6 salvos.  And I died in the elite right around the Hades, where I used to be able to kill the whole thing.  

I was communicating with xnih from darkalliance - I grabbed the downloaded data to compare and it looked the same (in terms of ship / turret HP & resistance) but clearly our eyes are correct.  Many other people had posted or commented on the forums with similar experiences to mine.  This happens just about every raid, where people post that the raid damage has been turned up, but I usually don't believe it or experience it for myself.

I assumed that Kixeye screwed something up when they deployed the change to the Borbas (another screwup - good job giving us a no-skill required nuclear bomb there), and accidentally turned up the damage.  I tend to believe incompetence over conspiracy with Kixeye - I've commented on their atrocious configuration management before. 

Today on the forums we see this:

So Kixeye has said.. "Yes we turned up the damage because a few people were doing really well."

One would think that either - these people were cheating and should be banned, or they have found a way to play the game that the designers didn't think of.  It's happened before, and Kixeye has always either eaten the problem or directly fixed the problem.  Previous raids where you could maneuver off the screen come to mind...

But between the layoff and now this, I can not think anything else but that this game's days are numbered, and Kixeye is taking the short term view.   They seem to be attempting to extract every dime possible before it closes the doors.  A company taking the long view would suck it up, eat their losses for this issue, and not upset what should be their core players - those who are working their way through this raid, paying (probably) 10-20 coins per Elite campaign, because those are the players who get hurt by this change the most.

So this is an open invitation to DOOMROOSTER, WILL HARBIN, or anyone else in between at Kixeye.  Let's talk.  Tell me I'm wrong.  Explain yourselves.  Let's talk via phone, email, Hangouts, or the carrier of your choice.

I'll be pretty much unavailable through Tuesday, but I'm sure we can find some time soon.  Doomrooster knows how to reach me, but just in case....

Doxy Player ID: 403129  aka "The BP Professor"