To be fair:
We complained about making too many short badges (treant/brew)
-They reduced those, and added spell badges, and more long badges
We complained about too many long badges (Blacksmith/necklace/statue)
-They reduced those and added "Gain troops", "Gain coins", "Spend KP on wonders"
We complained about having too many badges
-They reduced the amount by 40%, but added in some "Pay" quests
We complained about the TM being a poor prize and asked for a good culture&pop prize
-They gave us a good culture&pop prize
We complained about fellowships cheating by swapping in alt accounts
-they made it so you can't do that
The developers seem to have an idea about how hard the FA should be, and I don't think they will budge from that. They will give us different challenges, but not make it easier.
There are some players complaining about how difficult the goods and relics "pay" quests are for small fellowships, or fellowships with fewer members. I think the question we need to ask is "Should those fellowships be able to get the top(non-rank) prize easily?"
The other Fellowship based part of the game is tournaments, and to get the top prize there(non-rank) requires a lot of effort, and is also not attainable for small fellowships with fewer players.
It seems to me that Fellowship Adventures and Fellowship Tournaments both give incentive for building a full, powerful fellowship.
As an example my Winyandor FS that has members with scores between 23,000 and 200,000 (with one 400K new member) we are very close to becoming a "10 chest" FS. We started out as a 4-chest, and have slowly grown, improved and learned until now we are getting 9-10 each week.
There is a great feeling of accomplishment in making progress as a team that wouldn't be there if they had just scaled down the tournament for us back when we had ~20 members.
There are 98 spots open in the top 100 fellowships on Winy, and many of those fellowships will take newer players that are active and willing to learn.
Being in a fellowship of all small players that isn't full is a choice. It can be fun to start small together and slowly grow as a team, but it will also be harder.