1) I feel the battle system works for the most part for what the game is and how it is supposed to function. A lot of people seem to want a no GCD, faster, no enforced Trinity setup like GW2. While I enjoyed GW2's open world leveling content, its end game and dungeons were terrible. It was a zerg everything mess with no real strategy or synergy in which everyone just ran around spamming their abilities as if they were soloing and other people just happened to be there. Actually that is kind of how the whole game felt. I am all for more intense, interesting and complex, random or what have you battles, but that can be accomplished through content design and not redoing the battle system itself. While not by noticeable leaps and bounds, I feel that the boss and dungeon design has gotten somewhat better and more interesting.
2) I will agree with you that this game world feels more restricted and closed off than certain other MMO's, however not to quite the extent that many people seem to make out to be. Many other MMO's have had at least one expansion under its belt before players in the Americas or Europe even got their hands on them, with the exceptions of course of EQ and WoW but those do not represent the entirety of all MMO's. Also, the Dev team has taken this feedback into account and Yoshida has expressed that for the expansion, they are trying to have a more open world.
3) Hunts, Treasure Chests/Maps, Sightseeing Log, Moogle Mail Delivery, that questline where you have to solve the ancient riddle, other random bits of content I don't remember off the top of my head. Point being, they have, are, and will be adding new and varied types of gameplay content that are quite different than a lot of the existing content. Problem is most people either don't do this ancillary content, don't know it exists, or don't appreciate it. On this note, I can't wait to see the Golden Saucer once it is released.



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