I just watched the new video about darkhold and stuff. I was truly amazed by the scenario, the enemies, the little cinematic and musics too. But when battle scenes came I was a little confused and I finally realized what was that wierd feeling I had watching ffxiv battles. I can't get a hold of what's going on... I can barely follow distinguish skills thrown at enemy because too much is going on at the same time... and that's just for an 8 people party. I also noticed that every single skill animation happens either and only on the caster or the target or both so that's nearly impossible to backtrace an animation to understand which player threw it.

So here is my suggestion: On some skills add an animated link between caster and target. For example an Archer's skill could draw the entire trajectory instead of just the begining and ending part. Conjurers elemental spells like fire, blizzard, thunder may as well be rendered as something actually threw by the caster.

Also you could work more on vertical axes, from what I saw up till now is not very used. All animations are developed at the same height. Nearly nothing comes from above and really few things from below the target. Basically all the skills animations are the same in terms of space (besides scale).

I hope I managed to gave you the idea of what I'm feeling about animations. Don't take my examples as something I want to be done as I said because I'm sure there are even better solutions. I just wanted to better define the issue I can see about that.

Thanks for the time you spent reading