Patch 1.18: Miscellaneous Adjustments (07/14/2011)

[Rhayve]

Trying not to die? Okay. If the basic premise is that it's possible to avoid death almost altogether in any fight, it basically eliminates a lot of potentially cool abilities that might make the game more interesting. FFXI had fairly low Raise recast timers, that allowed SE to add severely punishing, but at the same time also very interesting TP moves to monsters. Tera Flare, Citadel Buster, Spike Flail, Doom, Everyone's Rancor, Meteor, Gates of Hades etc. Avoidable? Sure.
But even if it goes off, you can still recover and after a hard(er) fight, defeat the enemy, which is what made the game's fights more interesting. At least until battle strategies were perfected and the fights became mundane.
In FF14, if a group ends up half-wiping, it's practically immediate game over. Therefore SE will be a lot more hesitant with adding impressive killer moves, taking away from the feeling of danger in the game.
And yes, I know that the Ahriman move in the Darkhold video would be exactly what I described. But from what it looked like, it's just a random mob moving around, occasionally using that ability to destroy everything nearby. So it's closer to a trap, but it's unlikely that it is a mob you battle directly that has a chance of using such a move.

tl;dr - Those people who suggested trying not to die should stop giving ignorant/foolish advice.

PS: Dying in a fantasy game can be fun, as well, realism be damned. Anybody who plays Magicka knows what I'm talking about.