I am looking foward to auto attack as, after about 1-2 hours of fighting, I usually like to strike up a conversation. But I have to choose whether I want to sacrifice my damage to socialize or play well and stay quiet, as the game requires you to use abilities quite frequently.

FFXI allowed socialization & combat to take place simultaeneously due to limited necessary input, and "camping."

FFXIV has the opposite extremes of camping parties/events and limited input: roaming parties and high input requirements.

Enabling auto attack simply applies one of your most basic attacks for you.

While I was at first VEHEMENTLY against auto attack, I am now extremely excited about its addition. I mostly play with a controller and I do not mind the gameplay currently, pressing the button for attack is not so annoying. Yet when I play with keyboard I am instantly agitated and disgusted with the 1 1 1'ing. Although some classes are able to mix it up, I would guess a range from 40-60% (higher for some classes) of all actions are consumed by "Attack". When you finally move on to Notorious Monsters, the amount of TP gained from attacking is diminished greatly; thus, this proportion is only increased more.

I do not see Auto Attack conflicting with any of the points you make, as there are plenty of other Actions to use strategically. Auto Attack simply makes your choice of actions focus on your unique ones instead of 50% Auto Attack 50% Other. Removing Auto Attack also gives you more time to use your more interesting skills as well, as you will not have to spend time building up TP using Attack; instead, you can use these abilities together.