Quote Originally Posted by Shaedhen View Post
Or they can make a single action called "attack" that does everything for you no matter what's going on in the fight.

It's not about giving an illusion of freedom, it's about making fights more tactical and force you to work in team. See what others do, use the appropriate spell or action to gain full benefit of what others did before. What you suggest is just an extreme simplification of battle mechanics
not really. there really is no reason to have multiple tiers of an elemental spell really. Having spells that scale in moderate damage and spells that scale in high damage I am in favor of however. I wouldn't necessarily want a wall, because you wont always need protect and shell at the same time. no reason to have different nas if you can just have esuna. etc etc.