Players who upgrade early on won't get materials refunded, they never have done that for soul, unless of course you use the ticket system and ask them to. Players who choose to upgrade now will be in the same boat, you get nothing in return. Those who wait to upgrade after patch may potentially get screwed over by their "rebalance" "adjustment" whatever you wanna call it. It's a lose-lose situation for all players. There is no such thing as "reduction" anymore, it has long vanished off of their vocab many patches ago.