1. It looks ugly? What is this.. a beauty pageant? Ya blinking is annoying... when you're trying to target them to cure them but they keep blinking (lol SE why you do diz blinking crap??!?! it's 2012, get the with program!!!)
2. you have 200 slots of inventory.. I'm gonna assume you just do a lot of crafting specially culinary? Or a mixture of different crafts? This is a lot more than what FFXI had.
3. You're a dev? So I guess... FFXI is a lot more advanced than you can fathom, eh? Problem is... SE is mixing up a lot of numbers to keep us confused and making it difficult for people to fully master a job and the stats.. this is not beneficial, imo. Instead they want us to all be unique, not just the jobs themselves, but the uniqueness in guessing games as to what stats are best for their character and their job.
4. Casual players have linkshells, linkshells tend to do everything together.. if not find another linkshell that is productive. I find casual players to be those people who just use the game for socializing more so than game play, the game play is just an added bonus. Thus they don't have crap leveled and they sit around in Ul'dah all day just because they're a so-called casual player. That's what a casual player is, imo.
5. The game isn't gear dependent... it is stat dependent just like every other RPG.. that is part of the RPG DNA... without it.. the game is just another fighting action game like Ninja Gaiden and Street Fighter and and Mortal Kombat. THAT is for people who just don't have the processing capability to think and observe and apply mathematics and theories to their game.
I dunno what game you played (if FFXI, your server sucked... I'm from Titan and there was no party nightmare, nor did I face elitism when I refused to buy expensive haste gear) where you had such a horrible time with parties because you were either too casual or too poor (possibly?) to join them... gear swapping is purely for enhancing game play, specifically your char... especially vs high level mobs / NMs.
There's two different stats alone between fire and thunder. Then there's a whole other stat just for mobs that are higher level.. ugh.. the variables are just... crazy when you're stuck with one set of gear.