Final Fantasy 14's battle designer admits they went a little overboard on streamlining fights, especially for melee: 'Our policy of reducing gameplay-related frustrations was sometimes taken too far'

Honey B Lovely.

Anyone who endured Final Fantasy 14: Endwalker as a melee main will know the pain of that expansion's raids and bosses—gigantic hitboxes, no positionals to hit, and virtually zero downtime to strategise around.

Those things sound like a dream, sure, but in practice they kneecapped any semblance of challenge that makes those classes so fun to play. Every boss was now just a giant, arena-sized punching bag with varying mechanics to learn. At least, that's how it felt, anyway. Those things were already creeping in during Stormblood and Shadowbringers, but it was Endwalker where the oversimplification really came to a head.