Quote Originally Posted by Taliriah View Post
That's because all fights follow simple scripts that we have done a thousand times over. The number of different buttons we have to press can't possibly change that, the game's very design philosophy renders it unable to present any engaging combat gameplay.
No, having more things to practice and master is something they can do to stop things getting stale. A gameplay loop that asks for softskill practice and decision-making makes even faceroll content more interesting.

It's specifically the FF14 developers that don't realize this -- every other bigtime MMO from WoW to GW2 to Warframe figured out that you can shore up weak combat content by making the kits themselves fun to operate, whether that be done through skill interactions or great-feeling movement or in-depth upgrade crafting or satisfying weapon play, and that these hooks can start working on the player from level one.

FF14 just... doesn't attempt any of that sort of fun and instead relies on its MSQ, visual spectacle, and encounter design to sustain interest, so when that content falters, the game falters.

Yeah, and FFXIV is pretty bad at creating artificial systems that are interesting to navigate.
That's because interesting systems aren't the product of repeatable mechanical templates like Limit Cut, but rather arise from the interplay of many little optimizable elements like resource management and positioning that have been ruthlessly purged from FF14 over the last decade.