Reason is to increase retention and slow down the losses on big clicks. The bar decreasess success rate while increasing the tt on success and on near success. This on the long run greatly decreasing the 'loot events'. More loot events should better normalize one's return, giving more clicks for same ped.
The multiplier algorithm can also be changed to keep the same or close frequency of hofs and aths.
Quite interesting ideas and debate so far for sure.
That part should be better explained from MA imo, so those who can afford "full throttle" do so, but for those who are interested in
how to best use it should learn or at least get better hints on how to figure it out. Less losses that way and longer gameplay for
the depo will keep interst up as you mentioned.
After reading all answers from the AMA it's obvious MA have quite low interest in increasing amount things we can do per category
of gameplay e.g space, estates and so on. As a sandbox game it must have a rich featured gameplay per category, it can't be
a box of concrete looking like sand.... with this mindset, that it need to be rich featured per category, interest to keep playing and
get new players would increase. Reasons why they don't develop things more can be many though anything from low intererst
to do so to their license keep them back (I guess they have a quite limited license otherwise they had probably been forced to pay
a lot more if they had access and right to modify engine as they want).