It's been common practice for years now for devs to come up with deliberately annoying mechanics (if not downright obstacles) that the players can pay to avoid.
I have thought about this and while I agree with you on principle the changes that have been introduced recently point more towards general lack of capability (or resource drain) and a development lead with more clout than competence:
1. Several development adjustments were very blatant knee-jerk reactions to a sever misjudgment on the development part side. Example: The spontaneous quests added to Stonehenge after it became clear that the majority of players wouldn't be able to complete the event. The added quests were purposefully painful and difficult to achieve. A bit like "well, we added this because you lot were whining" (and not because their initial assessment was wrong).
2. The redesign of the event format was a convoluted case of "dick-measuring". While the entire community gave a clear and succinct assessment of what was wrong with events (T1 factory size inbalance etc.) the development team decided that they,
and only they know how the game is supposed to be played. For the first time in Elvenar's history the devs told people how to play the game and they still haven't understood how fundamentally they changed to dynamic of the game.
3. The development team has not even the most basic understanding of the game mechanics and the players. They were utterly unprepared for people to reach the end of their first "endless quest" experiment, which is not only a sign of laziness but a clear evidence of incapability. Their reaction however ... see (1) and (2)
3. The development team was completely out of their depth to even implement basic parameters of the new event format. Despite having a fully functional beta environment, the existence of such things like a premium workshop seemed to take them completely by surprise. In addition the dev team seemed to be unable to either understand or communicate the exact required level for workshops and factories, despite this being a key factor of the new event format.
4. The development team seems to either not know or not comprehend how the distinct parts of the game interact. The general approach now seems to be throwing things on the wall and looking what sticks (see: Spire of Bad Conceptualization) or implementing things in the hope nothing goes wrong. Which is not only a testament to incompetence but an insult to players as well.
5. Why Inno retains a beta environment is everybody's guess. Normally a beta environment helps to fine-tune changes but Inno devs seem to completely ignore this and only spring into action once the roof is on fire (Event rewards in the last event and many many more embarrassing examples)
For me this is also something I have seen before. Inno's mothership has likely removed any capable and competent resources from Elvenar to other projects (Nowadays you don't buy stakes in a development company for the product, you buy a development company for the resources they have), Players and the game don't play a role in the long term strategy anymore. Elvenar development is now a sounding board for potential talent, likely led by a developer who has more ego than competence. The Elvenar team is likely more worried now about the new KPIs than if players actually like the game.
Not unexpected, Sad nevertheless.