I'm not going to address your entire post, however I personally enjoy the combat system in FFXIV and loved the combat in FFXI. I have broken 2 keyboards playing WoW just due to having fill every single global cooldown with an ability and thus wearing my keyboards out. As far as the combo system not having the teamwork of skillchains, they are intending to rework the battle regimen system and put that back in the game improved, so that should help with more teamwork in battles. I feel that positioning is a good idea to activate additional effects, but that the combo should go through whether you got the additional effect positioning right or not.