I haven't experienced animation lock yet. but there's a catch 22 there. I'd like to have epic looking abilities and skills. if animation lock becomes a part of that, it's something i'll have to work around.

to alleviate it, i would suggest adding in something similar to a 'roman cancel' that is used in some fighting games. have it consume remaining TP, cancel your current animation (and consequently any damage you would have done), and/or remove any combo effect that is active.

however i feel this would be incredibly difficult to implement, since the main server is in Japan. and i'm assuming most calculation are done when the button press is recognized. so if server lag is the inherent issue it wont' help that much.

still a roman cancel would help in certain situations i'm sure.

of course they could always allow you to move during the animation. i don't know how it compares to FFXI's animation lock , but based on the frequency of complaints i've seen i imagine it is a bit worse. there are a couple of things that could be done to alleviate this, but that's really up to the devs if they think it is worthwhile. they may be expecting us to strategically work around animation lock.

I think most FF fans are more inclined to intense strategic combat, regardless of pace. you can have a fine middle ground. I thought XI managed this fairly well, but i was primarily tank. And i have to admit being a DD was a bit more monotonous. there was just less to worry about. (of course being a tank main, that meant i knew how to manage my hate line and never really pulled hate unless i wanted to)

i'm not sure what the big deal is with people having down time on combos. i think that's more player management. I typically don't have a lot of downtime when i'm on MNK when i'm comboing. if i do have down time, i've strategically placed it on my spinning heel CD. by the time this wears off i'm usually in line to do my combos again. I know about how long it takes to execute a combo, so CD management is really what i focus on, and not just spam willy-nilly. but this may be different for other classes.