Mm, yes, I agree the games are too different fundamentally to compare, but I'm not really comparing them. I'm just saying there can be a happy medium, one with the best of both worlds, which I also think could be applied to a non-"action combat" MMO.
That one is an action mmo and the other is a target based mmo isn't what I was claiming to be non comparable. That is a separate point. Is is that the skills and animations in one (tera) were balanced with risk reward tied to how long they were and what they did, while in FFXIV, they are not.
Basically to me it boils down to this: why animate skills if the animations don't really mean anything? If they're going with non-locking skill usage then the animations should match. That is, they shouldn't exist, or shouldn't be unique. Which is boring, to match a boring button-mash WS spam system. Because otherwise there is this constant feeling of "what I'm seeing is not what is happening" or "I'm not seeing what is really happening" (however you want to look at it) that never goes away.
It is a design difference with style in mind, as you touched on with the part of your post I didn't quote. The flashy animations are how this game (and ff11) rewarded high levels, and one of the few things that separates how a class feels in the game. They are unlikely to be removed (and in the case of the one I mentioned in the previous post, chaos thrust, was even made to look more flashy since it didn't "fit" the look of a top skill), and it is doubtful that the system will be balanced around the length of them. So we are left with either disregarding balance and game play issues to make the game look nicer, or having to deal with seeing people slide across the ground while using a skill from time to time. I've made it clear why I go with the latter. It isn't only that game play always trumps visuals (it normally does, same reason why I can deal with the sliding animation at the start and stopping of running), but also because skill lock for the most part effects melee more then range. Guess we can also hope that they add more independent animations to the lower half of the body, but that brings in a whole other level of weird looking animation flaws.
Oh God...oh God....that post....holy shit....and so many likes?
I would say that most of the people that got in, and are giving feed back, are legacy players. That should tell you right there. People that were willing to stick with and pay for a game so broken that it needed a complete rework.
The most I'm scared of is A Realm Reborn turning into a regular boring WoW-clone with fetch quests and a boring battle system.
I would rather the game keep the same world feel and importance to the story that XI did, but I can only hope that it gains at least some sort of comparable uniqueness to each of the classes play style that WoW's combat had. To take an analogy from someone else, every class in FFXIV feels like they are all part of the same class on wow, but different talent specs. As in they all play the same way, using the same mechanics with nothing to make them feel unique other then how the skills look. Of course it is a little early to proclaim something like that about the final product.
As an unrelated side note, anyone find it odd that the Dragoon AF armor looks more like it should be a Dark Knight armor, but with purple tint?