Stats in FFXIV / Base Damage

[Jinko]

At the moment, it's like, you use materia'd weapon to beat Ifrit. Use Ifrit to get Moogle drop. Use that to get Garuda. And before you know it the game is a gear-grind like any other MMO, only with laggy nonsensical combat mechanics, and you might as well be playing WoW.

Yup, thats what MMO's are and have been for over a decade now, sure you can say well lets be different, but you have to think about what current players want, what players who have quit want and what the would be future customers want.

If you centralise this game too much around crafting you are taking away the aspect that most people find enjoyable in these games which is gear progression and fancy loot.