Ah, but ffxiv was created for a console interface and rollout which is a good portion of why it sucks too.
I remember going up to a quest crystal, which is a giant 6 feet tall object in this game world, and not being able to click on it. We had to walk up to it and click on menu options in a drop down menu that appears. Me and my friend were laughing in disbelief. Obviously was designed to be played on a controller even though 90% of that gaming population will be playing on mouse and keyboard (I give that 10% to folks in Japan who still don't understand a computer can be used to play games).
But it's obvious there's much bigger problems with that game than interface design issues. The quest system, battle design, horrible party system, unclear definitions of what stats affect what, bland level design, unintuitive combat, the fact they're making an Everquest style of game (in terms of entry level) in a post WoW world, etc. Don't mean to generalize but I definitely got the Japanese style of game development from the game. The, "We know what the user's want so just be quiet and accept it." Funny after it bombed all the core staff got fired and the first thing the new guy's said amounted to "We're listening now."
I'm not saying the "console-fication" isn't a big factor, just that it's one of many.
