They're probably aware of how well participated it was, honestly. -- and what people thought about it

But even then, you still don't really want that to stifle approaching newer or different projects regardless of their outcome afterward. e.g., you don't want to always develop exploratory and nothing but that... Usually, this wouldn't be too bad, or even the case for that matter... If this were an ideal world then you would develop newer systems on top of this. e.g., exploratory in addition to Variant/Criterion and/or Island Sanctuary - since you wouldn't need to have x coming at the expense of y. But... This is not an ideal world, unfortunately.

I don't think the issue was not that we didn't get exploratory content, just that the replacement didn't hold the same replay value. If Island Sanctuary were more developed then this discussion might not even be happening.