Well, Tandoku is making it so you have to help Trill to get ONE of the hats (Unless you are a leader of either, then you most likely get both)

So this is a step in the direction of what you say.

BUT 1k hours is 1k hours, and unless you can keep 4 towers all the time and say you don't want a hat just to tick people off, then you can't really do anything about it...