The 40% EK change was done specifically to combat whisper king meta is a problem when on day 2 people can see nothing but a wall of purple. It’s boring, the game isn’t interactive, and people want to do away with it.
The issue is that there is an attempt to make whisper king meta less prevalent by making it less rewarding to communicate to king doesn’t necessarily make people communicate more. They can just decide not to communicate at all. People are being incentivized to try strategies like never claiming as butler, nightshading King d4 and partying, and becoming a confirmed BD King that way. I have seen a significant drop in the amount of communication BD is actually doing.
I get a sense the game is moving in a direction where players often don’t want to communicate at all. Which is a bad thing. If you want to encourage people to say communicate with players other than kings make this communicating more rewarding by making it so players are less likely to die by doing this.
Don’t try to fix King Whisper meta by making communicating with the King worse. Make other forms of communication feel more rewarding.