Yeah your right we do speak through our wallets but we do that knowing the game and it's inconsistencys before we spend don't we..?
I believe there was a shift in the way the sac event presented itself to us as the customer, drop rates changed, overnight there seemed to be a great change in how much gold it cost, in the first 24 to 48 hours you could virtually sacrifice and leave your gold stack even, what I mean is whatever you spent you got back through winnings and drops etc..
Then later the gold drops decreased and there was a noticeable decrease in the gold stack..

Skill shards and heart drops didn't change but the likely hood of getting a quality soul drop or gold drop was far decreased.
So for such a noticeable change to happen during an event would mean a mistake was made or at very least an amendment was made when someone noticed how easily people were acquiring quality items..