This game is just way to hard...

[lxSch]

it requires a small amount of memorization and the ability to pay attention at least half the time. not that hard. people are just bad

Not really: people value their time not to waste on a mindless platformer like many fights are. It has nothing to do with RPG skill since basically all you do is repeat a certain set of actions until your muscle memory have it memorized. Builds - none, gear grind - none, team composition - none, dancing - yes, muscle memory - yes. Many people are bad at wasting time on creating a muscle memory for some useless stuff that is supposed to make them feel good and important - true.

[alhandra]

Not really: people value their time not to waste on a mindless platformer like many fights are. It has nothing to do with RPG skill since basically all you do is repeat a certain set of actions until your muscle memory have it memorized. Builds - none, gear grind - none, team composition - none, dancing - yes, muscle memory - yes. Many people are bad at wasting time on creating a muscle memory for some useless stuff that is supposed to make them feel good and important - true.

the only truly difficult fight in this game that is purely muscle memory is titan x. if you think builds, team comp, and gear arent important for stuff like coil or the other x primals then you just proved my point. people are bad

also, if the atma/animus + myth/solidiery armor isnt a gear grind, then wtf is your definition of grind?? 0.o

[lxSch]

the only truly difficult fight in this game that is purely muscle memory is titan x. if you think builds, team comp, and gear arent important for stuff like coil or the other x primals then you just proved my point. people are bad

also, if the atma/animus + myth/solidiery armor isnt a gear grind, then wtf is your definition of grind?? 0.o

I think you lack the perspective of what builds, buffs and grind were in older games. While ffxiv has a small space for character and team customization, it is so small - many people do not notice it. Regarding repeating battles - consider that in older games bosses spawned on the open maps (like fates) while loot box was only one and those were open pvp games, with exp penalty on death and gear drop. Buffs were like +100% crit chance, +100% crit damage, +50% max health, +30% attack speed, etc - there were several dedicated classes meant to buff different damage dealing classes.
Atma is a masked by grind attempt to make fates useful. Not my definition, but in other mmos it takes half to full year before you enter the high level tier (1 year for endgame), by playing every day for 2-4 hours - this is what people called grind before and it served it's purpose. In FFXIV it takes somewhere around 4 weeks to enter high levels and 6-8 weeks to enter the endgame - it's not a grind, just keep subbed and do some fates for new players.

[lxSch]

Is the result of removing the need to work for gear and levels: people form statics to separate good players from bad - grind did the same but on a much larger scale. No matter how much times devs will try to remove the gear/exp wall - it is needed and thus will be recreated again and again in various forms by players themselves.