Call me optimistic but this also wouldn't have as much traction if people didn't hate Dawntrail. Whether it be the story, the content, or whatever offends these Bluesky trannys theres a lot to be unhappy about this xpac. Outside of the forced positivity and white knights players are realizing that post-Endwalker (or even Endwalker depending, on who you ask) was no mistake, the game is declining and is stuck on this path for the time being.
I am being snide here, but it once again shows: only catering to hardcore raider is not the way to go. As far as I can tell, that is the only demographic that is somewhat happy with Dawntrail, since skipping cutscenes won't lose them much and they tend to get some cool toy in every patch. Every other demographic has been kind of left to die:
Story content has been fairly bad, MSQ speaks for itsself, side content is forgettable (XI raid) to awful (beast tribe quests).
The graphic update has disgruntled a lot of dollhouse players who didn't like the changes to their characters. Dye channels are incredibly bad for certain gear options at times.
Casuals thought they would get something fun with OC, but somehow they didn't deliver.
People who generally vibe with whatever content are put off because patch cycles are getting longer and longer.
Slightly related to that: There has been a famitsu interview with the battle designers of Arcadion.
It is fairly boring imo, I am just absolutely amazed that they have so many people working at a single piece of content. Either it is their main focus (which I can believe) or they are absolutely overrun with designers and can just put one per fight. Yes, I can see designing these fights being a lot of work (kinda..) but having 5 people for 4 fights (and this is not accounting for their teams who actually put the things together, those are only the designers) that release every 8 months seems rather excessive.