The problem now is that Sixteen Tons is owned by a publisher whose only real interest in the company is the potential for profit, something that is the downfall of most small game studios. Why spend a bunch of money making something great when you can make something okay that returns a huge profit? Though our community here keeps the game alive some 17 years after its release, our opinion matters much less in the eyes of the developer than that of the people who will casually play whatever free-to-play EMHQ style game they release next. EMHQ was released in 2008 and is still running strong today. It is clearly a revenue generator, and Phoenix Games (who bought 16T in 2020) is only concerned with continuing to improve the cash flow coming out of the game.
Because I have no life, I went digging around while reading this thread and stumbled upon a case study on Phoenix Games' website and reads like so:
So, to kinda come back and non-rhetorically answer your question (and this is really just my two cents)...
Sixteen Tons hasn't made a better game since 2006/2014 because they haven't needed to. Unfortunately, they'll most likely be swept up in the "free to play/gacha game that makes tons in microtransactions" hysteria and devote all of their development time to this premise, and you can't even say that they were forced into it by the publisher because the CEO of 16T himself is on board with it. I don't like to be a pessimist, however.. I'd say this will be 16T's business practice until they get acquired by another studio, or go under.
Who knows, when the game releases it may not be that bad. However... I've seen a lot of studios sacrifice their passionate fanbase in exchange for easy money, so I'm on the fence.