Quote Originally Posted by Nemy View Post
Personally i'd rather have an amazing experience with how a character looks and moves through a well designed world, than worry about how exactly i'm going to kill x wolves to get to x level, to get x weapon.

MMO's have been the same in terms of almost anything really, except the experience and the feel of your character being in a fantasy world.

I don't play FFXIV to experience the oh so awesome way we all run around and kill a certain amount of mobs. I play it for the amazing world and character design, the animation, the music, the aesthetics.
Quoting this in rebuttal to your statement about my limited definition of gameplay, as this proves my point more. The various definitions of gameplay out there generally talk about how the player interacts with the environment, how the game is interacted with in regards to the game rules, and will occasionally encompass more of the elements that separate the game from any form of non-interactive media. The things you listed are all characteristics of media, both interactive and non.

Heck, my five-second google found a few places basically using gameplay and game-mechanics as synonyms. This movement change is not one of them.

I'm not trying to knock what you find interesting in the game, and if this is something you'll miss, I'm sorry to hear it is going. I don't really care either way, though. But as someone who loves to argue semantics, please know that this has nothing to do with gameplay.