FFXIV is not a failure, never was.

[Benjaman]

They need to fix things up, and in some cases, major overhauls to the system, but there's a solid bedrock...it's just the top layer which needs a bit of churning and refinement. It'll be a success once it gets its problems fixed.

You are contradicting yourself, providing premises that may never come to pass, and making baseless assumptions. Allow me to elaborate. You are contradicting yourself by saying that both "major overhauls to the system" need to be made and "it's just the top layer which needs a bit of churning and refinement". These are extremely different viewpoints that are in direct violation with each other. You are providing a false premise by saying "once it gets its problems fixed" which is likely to never happen. You are making a baseless assumption that the game will "be a success" as there is extremely little evidence to suggest that that will ever happen.

As for what is actually wrong with the game? I'll say it before and I guess I'll say it again. The UI takes up way too much space on a screen that is supposed to be showing battle animations (those of your character and your allies), the controls are clunky and leave much to be desired from both mouse/keyboard and keyboard-only users, the key-pressing reaction times of the system are incredibly slow by today's gaming standards, the battle/casting animations themselves are so lackluster and boring to execute and watch its laughable, the battle system itself is incredibly boring with battle regimen being an extremely dumbed down version of weaponskill chains, the fact that all content is soloable(taking out the MMO from MMORPG, the dull-as-rocks quests and storyline pale in comparison to those of any other MMORPG (taking out the RPG from MMORPG), and the overall lack of content creates a lack of reason to play. How are they doing the game wrong? Take your pick and send it over to SE if you want. They won't listen to experienced MMORPG players. Beta-testers cried for changes before release and you know what they did? Not a damn thing. This game has already failed and there is nothing anyone can do to revive it. The sooner SE realizes this, the sooner they can scrap the project and build something else.

[MiNuN]

You are contradicting yourself, providing premises that may never come to pass, and making baseless assumptions. Allow me to elaborate. You are contradicting yourself by saying that both "major overhauls to the system" need to be made and "it's just the top layer which needs a bit of churning and refinement". These are extremely different viewpoints that are in direct violation with each other. You are providing a false premise by saying "once it gets its problems fixed" which is likely to never happen. You are making a baseless assumption that the game will "be a success" as there is extremely little evidence to suggest that that will ever happen.

As for what is actually wrong with the game? I'll say it before and I guess I'll say it again. The UI takes up way too much space on a screen that is supposed to be showing battle animations (those of your character and your allies), the controls are clunky and leave much to be desired from both mouse/keyboard and keyboard-only users, the key-pressing reaction times of the system are incredibly slow by today's gaming standards, the battle/casting animations themselves are so lackluster and boring to execute and watch its laughable, the battle system itself is incredibly boring with battle regimen being an extremely dumbed down version of weaponskill chains, the fact that all content is soloable(taking out the MMO from MMORPG, the dull-as-rocks quests and storyline pale in comparison to those of any other MMORPG (taking out the RPG from MMORPG), and the overall lack of content creates a lack of reason to play. How are they doing the game wrong? Take your pick and send it over to SE if you want. They won't listen to experienced MMORPG players. Beta-testers cried for changes before release and you know what they did? Not a damn thing. This game has already failed and there is nothing anyone can do to revive it. The sooner SE realizes this, the sooner they can scrap the project and build something else.

Wow negativity all around, but most of what you said are personal preferences, while the rest are still in development, if you have been following the news, all those things you mentioned, yeah, all those things, are being over-viewed by the current production team that actually takes in suggestions and idea and scrap the ones that won't work.