The honest problem seems to be that upper management in these games are stuck in a mindset from 10 years ago or thinking that the mobile gacha element of thinking is sustainable. It's not. People have changed, playstyles have changed. Yet here we are with the same problem's still in the basic presentation of the design that repels people. I can list multiple things that could rectify the current problems. ATM I'm running into the same issues as from several years back finding I cant use my alt's because the AP I have is far too short of the AP the playerbase requires, I get burned out and eventually quit back to FFXIV or another game because I just lose interest from being stonewalled in any sort of way to progress in a reasonable amount of time.
The honest to god problem with Blade and Soul atm is that as soon as you finish the main Epic Quest chain right now your having multiple artificial walls put up in front of you with alot of difficulty in progressing to do any of the content available. You come out with something like 1300 AP on an average new player at the end of it but to do any of the content you need to have 2k AP at least. There's nowhere to reasonably farm the materials required for upgrades.
There is literally dozens of older instances that could be retuned to 60 and should be no more difficult than Naksun in Mushin's Tower. Many of these still drop items from upgrade paths from older weapons and which are redundant in the current game. Hell all it would take here would be to add NPC exchanges that let you buy account bound items by exchanging things like poharans perfume etc at reasonable 5 or so items for an onyx scale.
Have these instances drop lower tier weapon gems in decent numbers so people can upgrade easily and quickly.
Make all account tradable items 1 copper too, why are people paying gold to transfer things between alts, encourage people to play alts by making it easier to gear them up too.
Rebalance the upgrade paths so that it's easy and reasonably quick to upgrade your initial weapon and accessories all the way up to the last 6 to 10 upgrade stages easily, if costs or inflation is an issue rebalance this so that upgrade costs are always front loaded so only the latests and most recent weapon upgrade is a significant grind to update, this also would have the second effect of closing the gear gap to a reasonable gap and allow more people to play the newer dungeons outside of Hard Difficulty, the current gap is ridiculous and reinforces a closed mind mentality in the player base that shuts out newer plays and these eventually get bored and quit in frustration because they cannot participate in any instance due to the required AP needed by players being far higher than most new people have. (eg you come out with 1300 AP but players seem to require 2000 or MORE or they wont let you join).
Change the 6v6 Battlegrounds Training Mode to Equalised Stat mode as well that allows people to complete quests for these places. NOONE uses training mode. Ever. However if it allowed people to complete quests/dailys while offering a fighting chance it would fix a huge problem with the current BG system. Putting newbies in with veterans is not smart or sustainable, it's just an anti competitive mechanic that kills peoples interest in it.
People should also avoid blaming Hime or that too much, they're only community managers they're not the one's who make the decisions as well, the real blame needs to be directed at those who direct and manage the game and who seem to either not realise, not care or are not seemingly interested in the long term growth of the game as well, there's too much reliance on whales in games like this and it's not sustainable because it means a small playerbase as a result.
The game could potentially grow more if there was less a reliance on outdated P2W mechanics and more focus on getting people to subscribe and sustain player growth. Those at NCwest need to seriously look at how FFXIV is growing it's playerbase by drawing people in. There seems to be either no understanding of this here OR executives still dont realise just HOW much player's interest's have changed. People will be more encouraged to part with money if they primarily focus on good balance, cosmetics and reign in the excess p2w elements in favour of offering people consumables and resources simply by playing the game. If they just try to aggressively nickel and dime people are put off or they just quit and go play FFXIV or other games where they feel appreciated and developers value their time. They need to change their approach to how they do buisness otherwise this game will eventually die because it drives off anyone interested with hostile mechanics and insurmountable ingame costs.
No game can sustain itself if it's core designs are unwelcoming and it repels new players.