There is no redemption arc to be had.

This would require the developers to at least acknowledge the issues that people are having instead of wondering where everyone is going this late into the games development.

Now, I don't really want to single out Yoshida or any single person for that matter, as I do think it's a wider problem, but they're more concerned with filling a gameplay quota than they are in actually making that gameplay interesting or interactive, and even of those that were once interactive and engaging have been reduced to their most basic form, it's quite extensive in this game as well.

For a long while I have not really viewed this game as an MMO, it has tried going the avenue of single-player friendly, but it has ultimately come to be that it has all the downsides of a single-player experience and none of the upsides. RuneScape is probably an example of where this is utilized well since the large single-player experience of that game allows for longer-form experiences, rather than short form.

Now obviously MMOs have their own target audience but for a game that is aiming to go another 8-10 years at this point according to their plan, then I actually do dread it in many respects. We have very serial-like cutscenes, with generally poor animation and story-telling, everything and everyone largely just feels like a prop when it comes to the next person talking or the next segment of the cutscene starting. The sad part here is that they have demonstrated they can do it with Hildibrand, but they're more concerned with running what effectively feels like a minimum viable product versus something that actually aims to improve and innovate.