Your thoughts on the direction of this game?

[Mcshiggs]

IIRC, FFXIV 1.0 had something similar called "combos".

The 1.0 had a battle regimen system, and this was taken out either right before or right after Yoshi took over, and a system similar to it was promised, but never came through, unless that's what they say the limit break is. Combos were individual rotations that were used to maximize TP/MP, you started fights with 0 TP autoattack to raise, and certain moves cost TP, unless you combo'd them, then only the first took TP, and the rest of the chain was free. The elemental wheel was scrapped when they split the elemental spells, half given to conjurer, half to thaumaturge, they used to all belong to conjurer and thaumaturge dealt in astral/umbral, life/death, or light/dark spells. If they kept the elemental wheel in, then stuff like primal fights it would cause groups to favor certain classes over others, taking only the classes that had abilities they were weak too. This might be fine in some games, but again, they have their simplistic mindset, so everything has to be newbie friendly.

the gripes and alot of people quitting is because of the responses and Yoshida's vision statements.

Don't forget the one where he was talking about rare drops, he said by making rare drops (not vanity stuff), that it drives players to either quit or cheat, if it is rare and unsellable it frustrates players to the point where they quit, and if they make it rare and sellable, players will just buy gil. He treats the playerbase as if they have a 5 year old mind with stuff like this, but then he tosses out stuff like hunts and a ready check you can spam during combat and his response was that he though players would be more mature than that.