The current formula of gear progression NEED CHANGE

[Dav2017]

My personal opinion: As much as I enjoyed the horizontal progression in FFXI and originally wished it was in FFXIV, I don't think changing directions ~5 years into the game is a wise idea from a business standpoint. You'll inevitably lose some players who don't like the change. You're not likely to pick up many new subscribers when you have to say "Yeah, you have to get through 2 expansions worth of content (or pay money to boost past it) before that actually takes effect." You're not likely to lose that many subs if you keep the current vertical progression, since anyone still around after this long is at least okay enough with the current system to still be subscribed. And of course, my biggest hangup with it is that FFXIV doesn't allow you to swap gear mid-fight (though admittedly they could change that if they really wanted to). In FFXI at least, that was a critical aspect.

FFXIV has lost 96.5% subs already (sold 14m copies, only 500-600k players keep playing this game)
because they're tired of this formula,

On the other hand, the number of XI players is increasing, XI has no new expansion, development cost is cheap, but the players keep playing it, good business isn't it?