I have no doubt at all that the Patreon staff are working hard, day in and day out. And focusing on the top of the funnel makes sense, too. Yet, you still managed to build the entire Patreon merch system, which must have taken months of hard work and planning, and I struggle to see the point to it - on-demand merchandise based stores are trivial for us (as creators) to set-up these days. I appreciate the way it can be hooked into tiers, but it’s not something I’ll ever use, and it must have taken so many dev resources away from issues that bug me and my patrons daily, all of which have been listed already.
Although I guess that fixing the comment system, or the post interface, or the emails, doesn’t actually generate Patreon any revenue in the way merch does. Perhaps this feature was driven by investors rather than creators.