If you feel it required a full 21 days of several hours a day it always did.
No, it didn’t. You could easily obtain it by just doing a couple (or a few, so we don’t get into nit pick territory) of cities over the course of the event, buy all the boxes at the end of the city and not stress over it. As long as you played the event daily and kept things ticking over, you were fine. This year there was an additional upgrade, which you needed to prepare for. Saying that the last upgrade is a whole new building is disingenuous. If there are 10 levels of a building, and the last one is locked behind a paywall or some half impossible game strategy to get, it still is 10 levels and added to your *already existing building’ that you will no longer have. If it was a *whole new building*, you would have both.
Where was that reason given? Since you are so well informed, what was the reason it was removed again? Where is that reason given?
You’re saying there was no reason? They just did it to retain people playing until next event? Forgive me for thinking that devs had listened to players. If you stop being so combative, perhaps consider for a second that the only thing I’m saying is actually a positive, there had been complaints before that was introduced that events were harder. When it was introduced, it made things easier, people could get the last upgrade or even get a start on a next building. Following on what happened within months since it was removed, does it take a lot of deduction to figure out what the reason might be? No. Was either announced, not to my knowledge. I personally liked that box.
Yes, events have changed, you said that. What others have been saying is that it’s become harder (as in changed) to obtain the last level of an event building. That has nothing to do with the event mechanic. You can get the main building, yes, with either full on activity, or by buying the event pass. But can you get them playing like normal, or if you miss a day, or maybe make a mistake a day in an event like the Anniversary one, where if you didn’t rigorously follow the advice given by those people who test and produce guides (NB, volunteers and fans) - absolutely no chance.