The amount of damage dawntrail did to ffxiv need to be study. Yoshida used to be praised by every normie and is now considered a laughing stock. I mean each time a rpg turn based succeed, people keep shitting on him. Anyway all of that would have been okay, if he didnt fuck it up by making the dawntrail story so retarded that people would quit ff14. This is just me saying that ffxiv best days are behind it, and the only thing ahead is just slop and garbage shit.

Yoshida is a washed out hack who doesn't actually understand game design and doesn't give a shit about this game anymore. He's thoroughly traumatized by the fact FFXVI was a total flop that exposed him as incapable of making fun games.
Soken is washed out. He's been declining ever since he ran out of new Uematsu music to riff on, and Smile is the culmination of his decline. He needs to be assigned to a game where he doesn't have to make 50000 MMO slop songs every 2 years.
Ishikawa is gone.
Hiroi is fundamentally incapable of writing a good story. The MSQ (game's main selling point ever since ShB began gutting the gameplay) is now in the hands of the writers of minor, forgettable sidequests.
Koji Fox is gone.
The FFXIV that you grew to love is permanently gone and people need to accept it already.