FFXIV's Systems Ain't That Deep, but They Could Have Been.

[kayll]

Don't get me wrong, in principle it is good, but the cross-class system itself at the time of implementation was heavily criticized and disliked which indicated they didn't like it, and for a good reason, it wasn't one of those systems they just aimlessly went headfirst in and removed for no reason, there was genuine feedback against that system. Edit: I would say given their development or lack thereof in Heavensward shows how they themselves felt about it, even before it was replaced by role abilities.

I'm not entirely hung up on cross-class actions being deleted its just an example, I wouldn't really care if it was replaced with something else meaningful... but it wasn't, it was more a hypothetical that if they kept the system and worked on it, they could have developed something meaningful over time.
Though when I played in ARR I saw no issue with it personally, you wanted your character to be stronger? You played more of the game, that just makes sense to me in an MMO.

Character progression was putting stat points into your main stat. Yay. Could it be expanded to put them into secondary stats? Sure, now they all go into crit. If you have a different idea, please share.

Gear progression, there is going to be a BiS, no matter if it is for every fight, or specific fights, or hypothetical different builds. What do you actually want to see out of gear progression?

What systems are you actually saying they should add? Taking into account how players actually interact with said systems and not necessarily how you want them to interact.

Why would I care about manual stat allocation in this game when stats are about as worthless can be?
You pretty much highlight some of the things wrong with the game yourself as some sort of "gotcha" towards me.
Substats are unbalanced and don't matter, there is no meaningful choice to be made there.
BiS is used to farm the things you got BiS from,Whats the point? it will get replaced by crafted gear next patch.

What systems are you actually saying they should add? Taking into account how players actually interact with said systems and not necessarily how you want them to interact.

I'm sure if I was getting 15$ a month per player I surely could come up with something in at least 10years.