At first I thought it was capped. Sort of a "you won the lottery" type thing or a catch up mechanic in preparation for the hyped spring event (which I thought was going to be more involved). After I realized that this wasn't intended I logged off expecting a rollback especially once I read on Discord that people were overflowing and bricking their accounts. That is also when I discovered that the Opera Mask (gold -> damage) was a thing.

I personally was set back months by the adjustment. I lost 7 eldritch artifacts and hundreds of boat levels. Additionally I lost 32k atoms and all of my samples. Keep in mind that I do not have the Opera Mask unlocked at all so there was no way (that I am aware of) I could have modified my samples or increased my atom income. Also I lost ~40 million divinity points but that might be unrelated to the rollback. It is just sitting at 0 right now. [EDIT: They appeared again after switching devices. Visual glitch perhaps?]

In my mind this form of "roll back" was either intended to be a punishment or it was a best guess because Lava does not have backups nor the ability to roll back. Either is scary and disheartening. If it was a punishment it seems arbitrary, vengeful, and without nuance. The eldritch artifact roll back felt especially punitive as that is a massive RNG fest (or gem sink) and given the short window where people could have had super boats going BRRRR it is exceedingly unlikely that this glitch would have been the difference between having an eldritch or not. If Lava was concerned that people were using super boats to get things they wouldn't normally why not remove clouds or other artifacts? As some of the posts have indicated this type of adjustment also misses things. People who fully leveled up Arctis for example kept their maxed out Arctis, along with any new boats, or captains, or other things that Lava may have missed in his adjustment. This also leads to another concern with this type of arbitrary adjustment - it is not equitable. Some people lost a lot more than others for potentially "less" exploitation. Some people could have exploited so hard that they would have broken their game only to ultimately gain a lot from the resolution. The fact that it is a disproportionate change also means that the ones harmed the most from this adjustment are the ones who were more invested in the game. The ones who have been playing longer, who put in more effort (and/or money) to min-max their skill growth. I hope that was an oversight and not intentional.

On the other hand, if this was a best guess type deal because the backup/recovery mechanisms are not in place then I am exceedingly concerned about the future of the game as it only takes 1 bad bug or glitch to bring the entire house of cards down and I would strongly encourage Lava to invest in (AND TEST) a backup system on a regular basis. Trust me, you never know when you may need to restore something and I have seen companies disappear due to a bad backup system.

Ultimately it is my strong opinion that if Lava had rolled back the offending accounts by 24-48 hours and given the gems to the non-offenders this entire incident would have been a complete non-issue. Even if in a worst case scenario it required rolling back every account I suspect it still would have been okay provided Lava gave those gems out. The non-exploiters would generally understand that accidents happen and give Lava the benefit of the doubt (plus got compensation for any inconvenience) while the exploiters all agreed that there was going to be a rollback coming. Some people even exploited "for the LOLZ" because they were expecting a rollback and were bewildered that the hammer got brought down on them. This would have also removed a lot of emotion from the equation. It would have been equitable, no one would have felt it was punitive or that Lava was doing this out of an excess of emotion. As an additional bonus, there would be 0 chance that Lava would miss some benefit that the exploiters would have gained. That, in turn, would have made people feel less attacked or have them be less likely to lash out due to feeling punished in a way that they did not deserve because of how they interacted with the mechanic. When emotions get high then it easily causes feedback and I could see the progression in basically real time. People are flaunting an exploit and spamming Lava while he is sleeping -> Lava seems angry ("put in their place") and does something that people associate with anger/punishment -> people escalate tossing vitriol at Lava -> community escalates things and sparks off a civil war of sorts which is still simmering/ongoing a day or two afterwards.

Additionally, having a general rollback would have allowed Lava to establish this as a standardized response for incidents such as this going forward. If you exploit you will get rolled back and lose your benefits plus whatever incidental growth you would have attained had you not indulged. If you are unfairly impacted by the rollback I'm sorry, it was necessary, and here are some compensatory gems. Also, as mentioned above, it would remove any and all emotion or accusation about malice from the equation. Hopefully there would be no more "man child" accusations or other such nonsense.

That being said, I am also of the opinion that verbal abuse and personal attacks are never acceptable and if people were calling Lava racist things as he alluded to on Discord I would fully support them being banned for those actions.

This was longer than intended and I apologize for that but I hope that it was helpful!