I don't even think they're ignorant to the criticism, because you'd have to be blind to not see it. More likely it's what the PC Gamer article was saying: that the studio just can't course correct in a timely manner. And now we're seeing the product of it. It's likely they already wrote this awful script for 7.0, 7.1, 7.2, and 7.3 already, and rather than write up a new scenario and make new cutscenes and new gameplay and new trials and new dungeons for it after learning that the prominent character was disliked, they're stuck in this position where they have to just grit their teeth and white-knuckle through a year+ of crappy msq since it's already written and the gears have been set in motion.

If they just said "look, we're sorry you don't like it, but this is what we have," followed by "we'll make it up to you with good gameplay content" or something, I could vibe with it. But the actual content has been really bare bones once you finish the story stuff, and now the story stuff is bad too. So it's just bad all around, really. The actual battle content (dungeons/raids I mean) have been enjoyable, but the scripted nature of a ff14 encounter means you'll tire of it after a couple of runs unless the job you're playing is just really fun... but all they did for jobs was tack on an extra button to press during one's burst, so that's pretty stale too. It all just feels quite bad right now, and whenever people say they'd like more things to do in the mmo that they pay monthly to play, fans come out of the woodwork telling them that ackshually it's a good thing that dawntrail's a barren wasteland because it gives you the opportunity to quit and play wow instead.