It's not realistic to claim a balance decision or feature is a mistake they should own up to imo. Although I do wish there was more responses to threads that garner a lot of feedback.
Different people like different things. Tales of Tribute was always going to be niche and was a response to player requests for more stuff to do in Taverns at a time when they mentioned wanting to add some non-combat features.
Many players that don't like Tales or think there should never be anything major added that catered to niche interests complained. But it served the developer's needs out of a feature as they tackled other bigger features and performance issues behind the scenes, and also allowed them to please a smaller but no less important segment of the playerbase who had been making that request for years. Should they apologize for that? I don't think so and would feel insulted if they did.
Those apologies are reserved for things that are objectively incorrect like mistakes that cause server downtime, as they should be imo. Balance updates is how they address feedback to unpopular changes. I think that's a good thing.