Going to play the devil's advocate here, but the main reason might be (not saying it is, but it might be) that the dev team worked on it for, say, 4-6 months (random number, I don't know how long these things take), were paid accordingly, etc. You don't cancel 6 months of global efforts from a whole team because the website is a bit glitchy. You work to improve on what you've built.
Imagine the message sent to their dev team if they just rolled back to the old version asap: "sorry guys, 50 users complained on the forum so we have to cancel 6 months of efforts on your part, as well as toss all the funds we put into this to the trashcan." It'd be a social, professional, and economical suicide, in a sense. They wouldn't go bankrupt but would lose trust of funders and workers, I guess.
Again, I don't know what the true reasons are. But if it falls close to this, then it makes sense they did not want to expand on it for it has no bearing in regards to the "getting feedback" discussion. "Saving a team's efforts" is no argument in the face of "it's not really working!" and would probably trigger more tension. Do you see what I mean?
We won't get the old version back, 99% sure of that. However, they seem okay with getting feedback and improving from there, so this version surely is going to improve toward something functioning imo. We should just keep on sending suggestions and wait for them to do their magic, I guess. 
If I was a delivery man and have an old functional car. If I was driving the old car to a car sale, buying a new car with no wheels (italic tex) then I will take my old car back to deliver my stuff to the costumers and let the car sales man call me when the wheels are back on the new car.
Fair, but here the car has wheels. Technically, it functions for the most part, and one may argue that italics, paragraph layout, glitchy popup menu, and all that are but minor adjustments that need to be made.
Your car has wheels. Perhaps it has no light. All is fine while you're still driving during daytime, but as night cripples in your driving will have to slow down and down and down until you stop by the side of the road, waiting for the sun to go up again. That will happen when most people leave, if the "minor" adjustments don't get solved.
It is no harsh exodus that will leave tapas blank and livid all of sudden. If anything happens, it'll come gradually, much like Deviantart when the porn (among other blatant issues) started to grow bold, and all they did to solve it was to color the car blue and call it a brand new name. It'll die slowly, super slowly, and when people notice the damage, it'll be too late.
Someone need to write a book about this.
no joke, when i noticed the banners were gone, the first thing i did was go thrrough several Premium comics to see if they had banners, i swore to god if i saw they had banners i would shit
I mean, they could try reaching the best of both worlds by having the banner fill up the colored bar, but slightly blurred out like when we used to reach the "liked (comic)? subscribe to see new episodes!" area. Though that might still be pretty bad for most of them.
@michaelson
I also dont want to be the start of rumours, but this whole thing is bugging me and leads me to one big question.
It's almost the start of a new tax year and suddenly tapas turns into a webtoons clone? and when asked by 80% of us why it cannot be scrolled back the answer cannot be given???
I might be totally wrong here but my conclusion is one company has bought the other?
if this is so how secure is our comics as i dont want to waste more time on something that might be scrapped at the whim's of others.
hate to be a debbie downer... again but this is not any better >:l
again with the extra clicking and the hiding, this is bullshit, just say you hate us already!
Exactly, exactly. you used to be able to get to the new pages in a recently updated comic in a single click; now it takes three--and the last two are one at the top and one at the bottom of the screen. I follow a lot of comics and it all add up to a lot of tedium very fast. . . .
Edit: Just wanted to add that this is just as much bad design for mobile as it is for web. . . .
Some people are saying that they did not learn the lesson of Smackjeeves.. well, I'm starting to wonder if they did not actually learnt it very well!
It's indeed possible that something similar is happening, but they hope that by not doing an annoucement and changing relatively gradually, people won't leave massively.
I think it's time to start looking seriously for alternatives, although if I'm wrong and Tapas keeps its identity and principles, I will stay, because Tapas is home for me.
My sentiment, too. I won't leave until this site goes under, but I'm definitely having flashbacks to the Inkblazers disaster that brought me here in the first place. . . .
If the worst comes to the worst, is there a way to mass download all one's past work? I don't relish the task of having to screencap all the comics I don't have copies of anymore.
@michaelson please just put the Subscribe button and support button right next to that giant heart they have.
The user then can easily do all three at the end of each episode!
First of all, thanks @michaelson for putting in the time and effort to reply to a largely upset community, it's not easy being the face of the team in this situation. It's appreciated, however it's frustrating that it's even necessary.
I logged into Tapas yesterday and thought I'd accidentally typed webtoon instead. I've been on Tapas since 2014-ish, and I've been on webtoon almost as long because I HAD to, but when given the choice I came back to Tapas and its superior interface, navigation and user experience.
I'm just one of many creators here and I've been lucky to have enjoyed the benefits of posting work to Tapas up until now, choosing this place and its community as a home for my comics. To say I'm disappointed is an understatement, and many have already reached out with specific concerns regarding this update that I agree with so I'll avoid repeating them.
Tapas has done a lot for the creative community, and has historically been more supportive than not. Which is why this 'revamp' is so bewildering to me...it feels rushed, shoe-horned and very unlike Tapas which has me thinking that the team no longer has the power to make the kind of executive decisions it used to. "Missed the mark" is absolutely accurate, it's shooting at a bullseye and hitting yourself.
Why wasn't this redesign contemplated in previous communications with users? (And not just a vague sentence in an email a scant week or so before). Why weren't there polls or surveys to gain insight into user needs? Why weren't the changes beta tested? The fact that the update was rolled out despite this, and that you're now having to scramble around fixing bugs and other critical issues just adds to the frustration.
It may not have been your intention to hurt us with this change, and it's expected to have the dip in activity product of technical issues, but you did hurt us. We certainly appreciate the explanations, the apologies and promises to make things right to the best of your ability, most places don't even care, but there has been a woeful lack of communication leading up to this point and now we all have to suffer the consequences.
If it ain't broken, fix it 'til it is 
I know that on the internet it seems as a million years have passed since the site's update has gone live, but I would like to remind everyone that it has been barely 24 hours since the launch.
The dev team likely already worked overtime and focused on the most urgent issues first and found some quick solutions for some of the other problems. I don't expect things to stay as they are or feedback to be ignored. There is no magical wand that does these things instantly - Web design is hard work & time consuming.
The Tapas team can't, nor would I expect them to, simply stop sleeping and eating because of minor bugs that overall don't break the site. Changes do take time and some patience will be necessary on our end as users.
Or in other words, turning off my mom voice:
Jeez guys, give em a break XD
Can we get an update on when the novel bugs will be fixed? I posted an update yesterday to 40% fewer views than normal, and I have a different novel updating tonight. I don't want new readers to start at the beginning and have entire chunks of text missing, but I don't want to reschedule the update for my current followers either :\
Is there an ETA for novel fixes?
As much as I agree with you that I don’t want people to have to work over time- the clock started ticking when they launched this. It only takes five days for the world to end when the farmers stop farming and the planes stop flying.
The simple solution is to revert back till glitches are solved but they don’t want to do that, if you’d like to point us to someone above mike so we can give >them< hell for doing this to the tapas team. I’d be up for that.