The Graphics update was unnecessary

[Malthir]

Which is what we got.

This sort of movement has always been standard in an MMORPG for some reason. Nevertheless, we will be able to affect grass physics by running through it now and we already do that in water.

Not having the most realistic movement isn't a "barrier to entry". Obviously the MSQ's length is more of a barrier than anything.

Maybe you mean the invisible walls? Those are extremely annoying, but this stops being much of a problem at level 50 when you unlock flying and the expansion areas are bigger and more square-ish with invisible walls in logical places like mountains. Invisible walls have always been normal in almost every game ever except ones that generate or overlap it or stay in a closed environment.

It's not been standard in MMO's, WOW since it's start used hitboxes on the character to collide with the ground plane which is what gives the character a fluid and impactful movement. ff14 went for the movement system where your character is standing on a plane, that plane is on the ground as you press w that plane slides along the terrain and your movement animation plays, because of this they are not capable of fine movement. Movement and responsiveness are far more barrier to entry braking than a long MSQ, I would argue also more important that graphics, because quite frankly alot of players will give up when they find movement janky. FF14's movement system is the weakest in any modern mmo and is not really competitive with any of it's market competitors.

Creating a new shader system is time consuming and this would have taken a lot of dev hours, even if they didn't pick to fix the movement, that time could have been better spent in other places is my point. Say fixing the new player experience by allowing all jobs to be unlockable at level 30 and adding in low level storylines for them, or create more feeder classes that evolve into the jobs so that a new player doesn't have to spend 50 hours of game time playing a class they don't want to play just so they can play something they like. Class fantasy is a huge part of this game so it's really detrimental to new players.