What coherent creative visions are we talking about here? The fact that Nintendo added all of this stuff to FE shows that they really don't care about fan's romanticized views about a video game series.
Reading stuff like "Fire Emblem shouldn't be this" and "I don't like the way the series is going" gets old.
I honestly feel like this is a lazy post. The process of creating a game is always going to some combination of the following:
1.) A central person or persons in charge who serves as the main visionary(ies).
2.) A committee of corporate higher-ups with the ability to override and suggest goals and changes.
3.) People on the development team whose ideas may or may not work their way up to the director.
4.) Anyone from groups 1 - 3 looking at community feedback in an attempt to understand what will and won't make the product more commercially successful.
Mind you, I get that it can be egocentric for any one person who is not actually working on the game to pretend that their desires have to be placated above all else. It would be delusional of me to declare that petting has no place in Fire Emblem because I -- Steve Youngblood -- think it doesn't fit. I'm not an authority. There are far bigger Fire Emblem fans than me on the forum that are probably more deserving to have their voice heard than me.
But nevertheless, I'm a consumer of this product. They don't care about me as one consumer. But where my opinion falls in line with the various demographics that they
can identify? They most definitely care. Ultimately, it's their call. You're right. Some speculation right now seems to indicate that even internally in Japan, this wasn't a runaway success of an idea. The dev teams were split on how far to take it. Reaction was mixed at best. Maybe they would have cut this type of feature from the next game anyway without needing my hot take on the issue.
But I think it's important to understand where the divide is. To me, what this mini-game represents is a further slide into making Fire Emblem more and more about relationships and romance because presumably they took from Awakenings success that people wanted this. As a consumer? All I can do is voice "no. I do not want this." That's not me having delusions of grandeur stating "I know what Fire Emblem is supposed to be and this isn't it." That's me saying "as a potential consumer of your next game, further moves to satiate the desires of people seeking relationship stuff in this series are going to alienate me."
And maybe they go down that path anyway. That's fine. I'm not important. People can want things I don't. It might lead to a more successful and arguably better product. But as long as we're having this discussion, people are going to voice their views.