This is actually a condemnation of Exalted, not a defense. Exalted, as a setting, has been a conscious deliberate rejection of D&D-style murderhoboing and just getting into endless personal fights. The fact that none of its players
are doing that means that it's failed to get those themes and points across very well, and people are largely playing it for contrarian interpretations suggests issues. It'd be like putting me in charge of Mage the Ascension Third Edition and then whispering into my ear to put my pro-Technocracy view into the Traditions-default corebook.
But worse, actually-bias can easily be rewritten, fluff can be ignored, discarded, or changed more easily than rules for the vast majority of STs.
And the funny thing is that Exalted's focus on being large-scale combat is actually correct. Exalted is deliberately designed so peer-level opponents have classically been rare and nearly eternally unavailable (slow travel and a large, uncivilized map). You literally represent, as a player group, something like a half-percent of the peer-level opponents (celestials in general, not just solaroids)
in the entirety of all Creation and everything else. The default combat resolution engine should make it easy to smash 1000 guys rather than single duels, because the vast majority of threats you'll actually face will be more akin to '1000 guys in a blob' rather than 'one invincible sword princess.' Even against peer opponents because of Solar superiority your 'peer opponent' is more likely '1 guy about 90% as badass as you and 500 guys in a blob.'
The point of the suggestion was to make the battle group the
default, with individual characters being exceptions to the battlegroup, rather than vice versa-and with the suggested 'perfect circle' likely having one combatant and four guys who are not nearly as good, this would actually be
better by allowing the circle to form up into voltron versus four guys contributing little and 1 guy doing all the fite.
That is completely backwards, man.
Exalted has always been a deliberate rejection of D&D-style murderhoboing - by emphasizing the consequences of your actions, the difficulties of toppling massive empires with lone individualism, sure.
It's also always, always,
always been a magical kung fu game depicting pitched battles between small group of magical super-warriors and epic duels of peers.
Hell, one of its setting conceit is that if you get too obvious with your powers,
magical kung fu masters will come to fight you. Said magical kung fu masters (which are playable) also frequently go around beating up gods and demons in magical kung fu battles. The masters of Heaven who want you dead prefer to act as manipulators behind the scenes, but once you unveil their plans and confront them, they also
the best at magical kung fu. The 'default' splat is designed as 'the best fighters in whatever combat style you choose,' and the three default antagonist splats for them are quirky elemental miniboss squads that aren't a match for you one on one, your literal evil twin with darkness power, and
magical werewolves.
And that's without getting into the thousand kind of huge monsters from outside the world for your group to tackle in epic Shadow of the Colossus battles.
Your vision of Exalted has just never been what the game intended to be. You are right that the game deliberately rejects some traditional RPG elements, but you're utterly wrong about
how it rejects them. Namely, you are trying to make it a game about how kung fu peer battles don't shape the world, so you don't have those battles and instead act on the scale of armies and nations. Rather, Exalted has always been a game about how kung fu peer battles don't shape the world,
and yet you have them anyway.
Everything - the rules, the fiction, the fluff, the setting material - has always been angled towards making Exalted a game in which your Solars have pitched personal-scale battles - not only battles of arms, but also battles of the mind, social confrontations, individual crafting projects - and these are the main focus of the narrative. Yes, you're supposed to care about the grand scheme of things. Fighting a single deathknight will not make your kingdom prosperous, it will not restore righteousness to Creation.
You still have to do it, because the world comes after you, constantly engaging you in its kung fu logic (again, 'kung fu logic' expands beyond strictly combat, although it puts a heavy focus on it).
The original edition of the game had no War skill.
The game you talk about just never existed.
