I get your point here, but if people don't complain there won't be a change. People are just afraid that the game won't evolve, they want the game to be better they are not whinging because of the sake of complaining. Criticism is for improvement, criticism is not an attack tool against the devs, they WANT people to suggest new things to them. And I think the good ol' "Go play other games and have fun" argument flows out the window when you have an FC house and personal house under demolition threat so you need to keep paying the sub.
In essence, if the devs suddenly say they don't want to improve the game at all, then that's that. But they DO want to improve the game judging by their actions and the feedback, so there is nothing wrong in giving them more suggestions or signaling discontent with things that people don't like. A plan for the 10 next years doesn't sound like "Yeh, we don't care, we wanna stay mid, play what you want." The game gives a possibility for freedom and lack of FOMO, it's great for that, but let's not pretend that housing demolition isn't there to fight against this in it's core, but content wise you are right. The game lacks a lot of QoL and needs to be oompfed up to that "next 10 years" state. Simple facts if this MMO wants to compete, and SE wants to compete, it's a company that wants money after all, that's what all companies do. Let's just hope the money garnered from this game goes to actually developing this game, because it is the best MMO out there overall, while some MMO's do stuff better in other aspects. My opinion only naturally.