Quote Originally Posted by Indon View Post
Exalted's combat mechanics also involve a degree of abstraction.

But not regarding the mechanics you clearly want to change. Your proposed ideal fix would remove, as game concepts, some of the kind of stuff that Urpriest is talking about (as an example, perfect attacks/defenses). Not all of it, probably, I suppose it'd depend on the details of your idea implementation. But some.

Which is where I clarify his point that the options would be to lose that 'gaming-y' feel, or to change the setting, for instance to remove perfect attacks and defenses.
I'm not sure where you're going with this. Yes, for the system to change, then the system would have to change. However, I disagree that the setting would have to change or the setting-mechanic transparency would have to change.

Exalted is not 100% transparent. Characters don't typically say "I have 5 Dots in the Past Life Background, so I can add 5 dice to my Charisma plus Performance check, which is not constrained by the dice-adder cap for Charms, and I'll still have 4 uses left this session." or "I have two 'minus 4' health levels remaining".

By altering things that are not transparent, you can preserve the Exalted setting while also adding some much-needed abstraction.

What?
This was a reference to this:

Quote Originally Posted by Urpriest View Post
Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of systems like Mouse Guard. It sounds excellent for telling a story, excellent for bringing the feel of improv into game mechanics, and those are definitely things I want out of a game. But not Exalted.
It seemed like his sentiment was that for some reason you would have to sacrifice freedom in storytelling to get the Exalted feeling.