Mark my words - this will lead to endless cycles of a 12-24 hours at high difficulty (e.g., 30 minute block time x 36 = 18 hours), followed by very easy difficulty for less than an hour (e.g., 1 minute block time x 36 = 36 minutes) during which time miner-dumpers will put massive hashing power to get cheap catcoins and dump on the markets, followed again by 12-24 hours at high difficulty when loyal miners suffer, and repeat over and over again. Just a speeded up version of the same problem. Coin prices languish. The problem is the oscillation with the inherent temporary high hash power combined with dumping of the cheaply mined coins, at the expense of loyal miners - and not just the particular unrealistically high difficulty phase / slow confirm times. High difficulty is merely a symptom.
And why reset to difficulty=16? We had too much mining going on (like 1 per minute or faster) when the difficulty was at 64. Faster confirm times means more coins being mined and dumped. This may temporarily pump up the coin value from the excitement, but look at the past week of DOGE prices, for a taste of what this excitement leads to. And what's with the "poll" that was open for only 4 hours? I go to sleep, wake up, and find my vote isn't counted. This smells like consensus manipulation.
I agree with the sentiment that changing block readjust parameter is changing the rules of the game after starting. My proposal for adding a Loyalty Credit is at least designed to restore normality, where under most circumstances 2016 blocks for readjusting, and 50 blocks per block solved, (and all the other parameters), would continue, minus the crazy difficulty swings.
But if the original developer has bought in, very well, I expect the coin prices to recover somewhat, and we will go from an underperforming coin (I believe based on FUD) with at least an intact soul, to a yet-another-mine-and-dump-altcoin, which in some particular sense is an improvement. Prices will probably go up somewhat, I will not dump CATs right now for this reason - a purely economic reason. But the decision to address only the symptoms is disappointing, in that now there is no particular reason why CAT is special anymore. It's like an artist selling out his soul, to get a respectable entry level job in middle management, giving up music, because his family harraged him about his slow rate of earning income, but at the cost of his potential to become a star.
Etblvu1
Exactly true, this is what is being done with Zetacoin difficulty.