continued:

The reason why Lauren Faust didn't have problems as big as the ones the current showrunners are having is because she was adamant about holding the show to consistently high standards, which meant not things wouldn't get that bad in the first place. Unfortunately, trying to manage the show proved to be way too stressful, having to work remotely between multiple offices in two different countries. It got worse when Hasbro decided that the show was popular enough to warrant more "direct" attention from them, and rumor has it that was the straw that broke the camel's back.

At least Lauren got to leave knowing that she got to make 2 seasons of a show pretty much the way she wanted to, and those will always be around for us all to enjoy no matter what the future holds.

Therein seems to lie the problem-- the people who currently work on MLP just see it as a cartoon that happens to be unusually popular. The person most directly responsible for why the cartoon is popular isn't there anymore (Lauren Faust), and she cared so much about the project that she worked herself to physical illness trying to keep up with the demands of running the show.

Now that it's in other hands, they are just following Hasbro's original directive, and they think it's pretty neat that adults like it too. When we start pointing out problems, they get annoyed with us, and tell us we aren't being fair. It's not that we don't appreciate the work that goes into making the show-- however, I think we are certainly noticing a distinct schism between what Lauren Faust believed would make the show accessible to adults (good writing, storytelling and characterization), and what the current showrunners think will (shout outs and base humor).

While I appreciate how involved the show's staff remains with the fandom, we are already seeing that the wider the schism between Seasons 1 and 2 and the newer stuff gets, the more frustrated they are going to get with the fandom. A lot of the staff (particularly M.A. Larson and Meghan McCarthy) doesn't seem to like getting asked tough questions about the show's problems, and Sibsy is supposedly even thinking about moving on to a different project due to the backlash over Equestria Girls.