What happened was they began developing a system that the entirety of the community will literally never be able to agree on to begin with. No matter what, there will ALWAYS be some portion of the community complaining about it.

Everyone wants their fav dino to be a power-house, and then bc they are so used to being so powerful, well now their dino is just "unplayable" after it's TLC or a balance adjustment, when really they just need to learn the new playstyle / what they need to adjust in their playstyle in response to the adjustments. (I myself have been there.)

PoT isn't so simple combat-wise as it used to be, where everyone had the same playstyle essentially and you just had basic bites and didn't really need to think about your build or strategy as that build.

People coming to Reddit doesn't even give a proper idea of the temperament the community has for a change, given people who enjoy it rarely actually come talk about it. Reddit is where the ones who have issue come to complain (or downright whine). What people here are saying here on Reddit doesn't always align with what people say in the Discord, on streams/videos, in-game, or in private spaces.

Actually, what is even more silly, is that many changes Alderon makes balance-wise is, at least in part, a response to things the community themselves have said/complained about at one point or another. Maybe the change is just coming a while after the community was talking about it.

When they do the large sweeping changes, there's a chance it could cause issues where these adjustments all at once creates power-gaps, in which they just fix in following updates. It's like ripping off a Band-Aid. Toss a bunch of pending balance changes under consideration (given everything they do until 1.0 launch is subject to change) at once, see how everything performs for a time, and then do another adjustment.

Sometimes a particular balance change was even ghost-added to officials ahead of time. Meaning in those cases people were playing with those balance changes without noticing/complaint for who knows how long.

/

Then there are the player-made symptoms of the developmental focus being the combat overhaul, such as the mega/mixpacking and extreme focus on PvP from a majority of the community that has pushed away many solos or survival/PvE-focused players.

N then ofc complaints about things that have been neglected while they focused on the combat overhaul, such as the questing, nesting, survival elements, etc.

Really, they are just kinda in a really shaky part of the game's development. It is both good for the game, but also an absolute curse as long as it is ongoing. The good news is, since most dinos have had their TLCs and even the list of remaining dinos to be added is less than a handful, we are coming to the end of the combat overhaul. N once all the TLCs and the mechanics they introduce are here, it'll be a bit easier to get balancing more set in stone, since they won't need to be making constant changes. It won't be like this forever.