Simplicity over complexity, time to change.

[Felessan]

I don't care about the success of the game, we are discussing here the quality.

I care, because it is the only really objective measurement whether game good or bad. EQ was good, FF11 was good, WoW was good because they had (for their respective times) large and stable population base. And something like AoC where population just falls off the cliff - was not good.
And besides - the more successful game in terms of people, the more money it gets. This means more content of higher quality.

I'm sure his complete vision for FFXIV would have been a blast and not only for FFXI loves, but for everyone. If you look back for his interviews and the info we got before release, he was aiming to do something different to XI, and he wanted to made it accessible

FF14 needed a completely redo to make it "accessible". We were in WoW era when 1.0 came out and it was total mess not in regards of copypaste and lack of content, but overall mechanics was just straight from 90s.

not everything has to be clogged up, there can be wild areas with dangerous monsters that are not civilized

You want a world how you like it. It's understandable. But from core design perspective making some area a difficult and dangerous is a bad choice. You are locking some of the crowd out of content, and it is bad as it creates "elitism" for some and frustration for some others.
I still hate all those "sky"/"sea" locked out zones concept, because if you are casual - you don't have a chance to look at them. And those "die 20 times to explore" zone are as bad, because when i play casually - I still want to see everything at some point of time.

Also, SE has the money and the artists.

SE is a commercial company, so it wants return on investment.

I don't recall Yoshida ever saying this game was made for casuals, ever, and I've spent more than enough time looking at interviews and producer letters. What he did say was that he wanted to cater to both the casuals and the hardcore, oh and also that he was and still is a hardcore mmorpg player himself, so of course he doesn't want ARR to just be a casual game.

And he do, casuals have their own fun, hardcore have theirs. And only people who wants to go back to FF11 still want to mess everyone else game.

He also said that he intentionally created the combat and content to be simple in the game, and how I interpret he meant this is that if you start out with a solid foundation then it will be easier to build off of it in any direction, and in that sense the game is full of potential!

Maybe you should not interpret others words how you like and just get them as is? Simple doesn't mean bad, it's a common sense that you should not overcomplicate things when it's not necessary.

It may be basic now, but I'd say it has great potential, and that's how you could sum up most of what's in the game right now.

Combat is already quite complex to properly master to give headaches. To unleash a full potential it requires a constant attention, very good knowledge of mechanic and some dedication. Together with "theme park" style, where boss structured in the same way (although I would agree that less strictness rotation would be better) gives you a hard time even with its "simplicity"

I doubt SE would be too unhappy if FF14 managed to have 500k subscribers in 2023. Especially considering that the last time SE even told us how many subscribers this game had, it was 600k only a few months after release.

We have 2 million players banner just on the main page. And FF14 will have more than 500k subscribers in 2023, you can just take a look at graph for any more or less successful MMO like eq, ff11 or wow - just how much they have players compared to their peak numbers at 10 years point of time.