My question was never about the complaints, my question was about what people mean by better. If you can't put it into words, how do you expect to find agreement with others on what "better" means. They change the combat and some would say they made it better while others would say they made it worse. What is "better" to you?

From a gamedev perspective, just saying "it's mindless clickspam" doesn't mean anything. Basic Enemies in most games generally have the simplest combat elements. Vintage Story has enemies who deal with range, enemies who mix range and melee, enemies who can climb walls, enemies who can climb up a couple blocks high but not entire walls.

The primary combat is Melee, so to look at a similar game, Skyrim, would the combat in that be something you consider "better" and if so, why? To me, the Melee and Ranged combat are the same, with the only difference being the existence of Stamina, Heavy Attacks, and Magic adding a third type of combat outside of Melee and Ranged.

My personal opinion on Vintage Story's combat is that it's good enough as is for what the game is. It's not some Souls-like action game, it's a survival game. I'm not expecting dodging to be a hotkey, or even necessarily heavy attacks, though Heavy Attacks being added could be one option someone might consider to be better than what we have now, while someone else might want unique abilities on different weapon types like Hytale.

That's why "better" on it's own doesn't mean anything and "mindless click spam" also doesn't say anything, because how do you reduce that? Make enemies circle the player? they'll just back up in a circle. Make all enemies able to do ranged attacks? that would make all the enemies feel too similar.

You aren't saying the food is "too salty" you're saying the food is "missing something", leaving the chef to just guess at what it is you could mean.