Thanks for making this tread - in parts I agree with you. Clearly the perk system is not working out and I don't have the feeling it's motivating anyone to donate more. (And do not worry, I don't feel disrespected in any way. Sometimes you put effort into something, but it still isn't working. That's life.)
However, I must say that I feel like this is motly people's perception. Let's take a look at the 20FC perks:
And now let's look at some past Queen's gifts:
Comparing these, do you really believe the past queen's gifts were more "queenly" or "fancier"? Or are they not "disjointed" in the same way? Because I don't. They were gold, but they certainly were not more detailed or elaborated. I can assure you at least, that I certainly do not put less effort into the new perk items. (It's more the opposite, as I have to come up with completely new items, while the old queen gifts were just past items with tweaks. But you would be surprised: At the very beginning the Queen Gifts were also new items and they even were not always gold (Trumpet Vine Tattoo for example) and when I changed them to re-designing old items, some peopel said they were disappointed and the items did not feel special to them anymore! So it was pretty much the other way around.)
Though, in the end it probably does not matter whether it is just people's perception or really like this, the outcome is the same.
So, in my opinion, this is not the problem. Maybe the color is really the main difference, though why leaves me baffled, as I never had the impression that gold was one of the most popular items here. At least gold sets in for example the Treasure Trove never rank among the best-selling.
I am open to suggestions, I really am as I agree with you - People don't seem to like the items much and this needs to be reconsidered.
But right now I can't fully wrap my head around what exactly to change about them, because other than the color I am not really making anything different than before, so I don't understand the "not fancy", "not queenly" or "disjointed" aspect that people are feeling. So is it just details you think they are lacking?