It hardly is severe, in fact I'd almost say this is working as designed.
Have you ever run an image oriented community?
I would suggest, if you develop for MG new features, you should talk with people who run many different photo communities and know what their users want to have and for what they are willing to pay. See my posting above.
If I can not convince my users to become premium members with MG, I am neither motivated to buy this MG addon. This is why these 2 features together are so important for you and us. It makes money for both of us.
This bug is severe. Trust me on that. It is not confusing, it is conflicting with each other. If you have more than 100 active users who upload many images, MG as it is now does not work IF you use the features you have offered.
If I shall not use these MG features, MG is "worthless" as before because it does not give any significant advantage over XF and uploading/discussing images in the forum only. This is what I am telling since years. People do not discus in both, XF and MG at the same time. That is psychological behavior and we can not fight against it. Therefore if MG shall survive, you need to give a real added value for the forum users.
The combination of mirroring categories and limited disk space was a game changer for MG. Suddenly it was worth something. Suddenly it offeres something, which forum users are interested in, although they want to continue to upload images 95% of the time in the forum.
But seeing now all images of specific subforums in the categories without the threads is a significant added value. Same for the disk space. As an admin, the disk space is necessary to be able to offer premium memberships.
I am sorry, but this certainly isn't a showstopper issue - you will have to wait.
If this is changed it might only be implemented for XFMG 2.3 anyway.
I am sorry but I disagree here. You delivered MG with a feature set which does not work at all together.
The last 10 years MG was never really pushed and I lost my trust in the MG development. As I mentioned earlier, I deleted already in the past at least 5 MG licences, because nothing really happened for MG although I offered always my help for feature ideas with which you can sell more MG licences.
I am running around 40 Xenforo communities, many photo oriented among them. I think I know what the end user wants to see and for what your customers would be willing to pay.
If you do not care to fix a bug which never should have happened if you would have tested your features prior to release it, it shows your (lack of) commitment for MG and only reiterates my lost trust in your products and your commitment.
This is just food for the competition. Sad, very sad....