'As a creative person, as a creator, I always want to be creating something different, something new, something fresh. When I was first designing Karryn's Prison, I told Sachinama that I don't want to create a Meltys Quest 2, but something completely different design-wise. I extremely dislike retrending the same ground, doing the same things and not taking any risks.'
That's from Rem's last SubscribeStar post, and I feel like it explains quite a lot, in particular I believe it explains why the gloryhole minigame and now the gym basically abandoned the battle formula, which would be because they consider reapplying that formula to be 'retrending the same ground' (I assume 'retrending' is supposed to be retreading). If that really is the philosophy they were following, then I can't disagree more strongly, and I'm sure absolutely no-one is surprised that the gym failed to land with the audience.
'However, this is where vision as the creator clashed with the expectations of fans. What is the point of a fanservice DLC if no fan actually wants or likes it? Who is happy from a fanservice that services no fans?'
The good part is that it seems that they're aware of it. Let's hope they abandon the aforementioned, extremely flawed line of thinking.