Update on DirectX 11 client?

[Tupsi]

I remember the days when the Final Fantasy devs went that extra mile for those minor minor details.

This.

The reasoning for that is simple, think about how many animations there are, now think how many races/genders there are, not think how many animations it would require to match one for every-single-race/gender combination

I did think about it - I then thought about how many animations are in FFXI and how they mostly mimicked the same "base" animation and added flair ontop of it which is how they managed to do varied animations.

Anything that was removed, was removed for a reason

Not always true and definitely not true for FFXIV ARR in a lot of areas - I understand what you mean especially if you consider "because we want to" as a reason, honestly, as I've said before while it feels they took steps forward they took many steps backwards.