Soooooo, let's say I disliked living in my country or some systems in my country, or my school, or my workplace. The real answer is just to walk away and not display my grievances, in a hope that things change to a more reasonable path? This is the fight phase, people being disgruntled and not leaving. I give the game a lot of flack, but I want it to be better.

Its clear they don't listen to nice feedback, so now people are giving them mean / sometimes toxic feedback, if that doesn't bite, people will start leaving because thats when "vote with your wallet" comes in.

Yoshi P saying "Go play other games while you wait" is EXTREMELY INSULTING, because he keeps charging us a sub. In an MMO where you build communities around hanging IN THE GAME. He is extremely tone deaf and I think all the goodwill for him is starting to run dry. The whimsy and chillaxed game dev facade is starting to fall because he is not talking about any of the backlash honestly, nor is he really giving us anything to "look forward to" in his own words. The patch cycles are extremely stretched, unreasonably so.

I'm gonna say it, they need to hire a new director, someone who has "innovation" in their CV, instead of "follow the formula"

Playing FFXIV is like watching your favorite sports team settle for mediocre and not chasing the championship with everything they got.