You obviously haven't played FFXI lately. The second he left, the game got a lot better. A LOT. He brought the same problems to XIV when he came. Sure, a lot of us were expecting an updated version of XI, but those expectations should have started to get dispelled pretty quick. After all, it needed it's own set of features to make it stand out.

Personally, I would have been much more in favor of an Ivalice Online with the Ivalice Lore. But Tanaka only wanted to develop XIV his way. I still remember being offended at some of his twitter posts when people got mad about the surplus system. The fact he ardently defended it, and bashed westerns for being offended by it was proof enough he wouldn't listen to players. It was a bad idea from the start. But he thought it was amazing, and that created a lot of the problems.