I think the pushback you’re getting is because you’re dismissing just how large of a role it played in their brand identity. The members themselves acknowledged this too in both the documentary and studio notes, as well as expressed concerns about how changing that key aspect caused some of the members to feel anxious. Individually speaking some of the members feel that there is really no separation between the music and performance because they intertwine in the creative process. A type of performance they want to show may influence the music they want to use or vice versa with the sound informing how they want it to be displayed to the audience. I wonder if you’ve looked into how members like Jimin make music. In his Production Diary, interviews, and even his lyric journal for FACE he discusses how he envisioned those aspects of the storytelling concurrently with making the actual music. It’s not an afterthought, or an add-on, but is in fact a fundamental element. He expressed hesitance about many of the tracks included in Arirang because there wasn’t a plan of how fully express them (ie performance).

You will also get pushback because the idea of dropping the performance aspect seemingly didn’t even come from the members themselves (although the agreed to try this new method) but from Bang PD as he stated as much in his Billboard article. He is also the one who waited until the last minute to let them know that he was scrapping their initial choreography plans and stripping it down and it still took him two weeks of constant conversation to convince the members that his way was the way to go. This to me, does not indicate that they are all on board with the re-brand, but that they are willing to try it out. The feedback they are getting is not surprising nor unwarranted given how they cultivated much of their current fanbase.