Really... where does one draw the line?
I don't know. It's a hard question, and I won't even try to deny it.
But when you've got significant chunks of the playerbase, including major figures on the dev team, telling you, repeatedly, over the space of RL years, that your actions are detrimental, you need to change them, and you're going to ruin/are ruining the fun of many people,
then maybe that should mean something.