Seriously, FFXI's battle system was almost perfect. I don't understand why SE thought it would be a good idea to change it so drastically for FFXIV. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

FFXIV's addition of an Action Bar with icons and timers is certainly a welcome improvement over FFXI's bland, text-only Macro Pallet, but other than that FFXI's battle system was vastly superior in every other way.

I find it especially annoying how there's often a very noticeable delay between hitting the button for an ability and the ability actually executing. In FFXI, abilities would execute immediately as soon as you hit the button for them, while in FFXIV there's frequently a delay of at least a few seconds. This not only slows down the action and makes combat frustrating, but also makes it unnecessarily difficult to time your attacks or use any sort of real battle tactics and strategies, thus essentially turning almost every single battle into a mindless button mashing game, which isn't fun.

So please SE, make FFXIV's combat more like FFXI's. The combat system in FFXI was much more enjoyable.