I fully agree. I think the ideas that the original devs had announced had a lot of potential, and I feel like this dev team has gone in the wrong direction. Companies -seem- to just be part of the quest line now and i have a strong feeling they will just end up as FFXIV's "fame" system. I really hope I am wrong. However with the announcement of company leaders for each nation it seems almost certain they will no longer be player run.

Also whatever happened to battles in the villages. They were supposed to be implemented in the january patch and I haven't heard anything about them since the new team took over.