Not everyone parties with only their linkshell. You know, some of us actually like taking advantage of the MMO aspect of a MMORPG....
i never stated i only partied with my ls. i'm sorry i have friends i talk to so i play with them mostly, but that does not mean that i do not party with others alot also. my statement about voice communication is drastically better than typing inside a chat box stands. if we are in a battle side by side i can promise you a voice message gets across to the other players faster than any speed you can type and them read.
if you are playing with multiple nationalities like the japanese groups that is different, but then you are better to discuss things before and after the battle so you can make the most use out of auto-translation. then you still have no need of talking inside of a battle besides calling a macro that uses auto-translation so everyone understands.
Where are you getting this delusion from that everyone in the game uses voice chat... call me old fashion but i don't mind typing rather than hearing 15 voices in a group yelling, like happened too frequently in WoW. Majority of players I come in contact with don't use voice chat, and i currently have no IRL (due to this game being crap right now) friends playing FF XIV so majority of people i party with are either LS, or randoms and my LS dose not even use voice chat.
Like i said earlier, what is the point of manually typing 1111 when you can have AA do that so you can focus on your actual tactical abilities and chat functions?
There is immersion and then there is tedious.
IMO? Your opinion doesn't matter, that's because it's not me. Had it been me who started this thread it would be instant awesome. Seeing how I approve of auto-attack means that this thread if full of fail, that's because my opinion outweighs ANYBODY else who has an opinion. My 1 gil is worth more than your 1 gil.
Providing SE doesn't focus as much on auto-attack as they did in FFXI, your "immersion" in the battle will remain. If you've ever played a game like WoW or its clones, you'd know auto-attack is hardly a factor in battle. Those battle rely much more heavily on abilities. If you have played WoW and have relied on auto-attack more than your abilities to fight your battles, then you're doing it wrong.
The player should always be engaged in the battle and doing meaningful things instead of arbitrary tasks. Hammering on a single button is an arbitrary task that takes very little skill. And hell, even if auto-attack is relied on as heavily as it is in FFXI, it's still a leap foward compared to the clunky mess we have now.