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There is a lot of meat on this bone. One of the things CF is, is a fighting game. Specifically exactly the kind of incomprehensible wall of text information overload kind of fighting game outline here. The complexity of CF means you need to understand both what your character can do in intimate complexity (like what does bash actually do other than a small amount of damage?) and what your opponent can do (why can't I bash this shaman!). In order to get this knowledge, you are pointed at help files, which are vague and a ton of information. There also isn't a way in game (AFAIK) to find out what is on another classes skills list, or what your skills really do. The video suggests that not solving this problem will lead to fighting games becoming ever more niche, which CF is already, so anything to break out of that really doesn't help.

I mentioned I played a CF clone recently, and the helpfiles and descriptions of the various class abilities I wasn't familiar with were.. to put it mildly, terrible. Even with experimentation I wasn't able to determine what, if anything, some abilities of mind did, and some had drawbacks that weren't outlined and that I was totally unprepared for. I thought hunger/thirst was just really aggressive and happened every 5 minutes because one of my abilities enhanced hunger/thirst.

The video goes on to suggest that a good single player campaign should lead you to discovery, and we already have the built in leveling system that unlocks abilities as your character grows. This leads me to several thoughts:

1) Affects should be very explicit. Instead of Skill: 'sleep' for 1 hours., add a real description, like: Skill 'sleep' making you unable to wake naturally for 1 hours.
2) You should be able to toggle something which will tell you the affects, if any, you put on a mob, when using a skill. Like when you c 'sleep' on random NPC, you get an echo back of the affect you just put on them.
3) No more hidden affects. Ever.

As ranking is essentially the solo experience, Mobs should all have a class, and use class abilities. Like trolls could be rangers (of appropriate level) and camo, ambush, etc. In fact only mobs that behave in this way should be worth anything meaningful XP wise. I also think this would encourage engagement while ranking while also discouraging solo ranking (because it is just too damn hard when everything has class abilities they're using on you). Ranking areas should be something where you determine what things your particular group is well equiped to handle. Don't have detect camo, or a way to bring trolls out of camo via area spell or faerie fog, maybe trolls isn't the right place for you. Some NPCs can still be "dumb" like Mausoleum zombies, but that area presents its own challenges.

The trick here, and it would be a shit ton of work to get right, would be making this difficult without being punishing while also teaching new players about the abilities they are going to face from PCs of their level. How many times have you simply skipped the conjurer mobs in Azuremein because flash and magic missile is just a pain to deal with compared to the staff wielders that basically do nothing? How can we make that choice more interesting without making ranking a chore where you have to rest after every fight? Some of this could be by making Mobs behave more consistently like players. Where tripping an NPC actually delays it's next move, or tiger clawing prevents that invoker class from casting. Something where the skills you can bring to bear have a real effect on how the combat goes without making it a situation where the best options is to gang down NPCs and just spam bash so they don't do any moves.

This one is tough, but there is definitely something here for getting a new player engaged and thinking about what their character can do beyond whatever the currently most damaging thing is during ranking. Maybe blinding the NPC so it can't redirect off your tank. Maybe you really want to disarm so they can't do spec moves. Maybe faerie fire prevents them from fleeing, hiding, and knifing you when you pursue. I think there are a limited number of things you could program in to NPC AI that would make them behave much closer to a player without making leveling up a complete chore and would also teach people how to use their abilities in PK during the "solo" campaign of ranking, even if that really means ranking in a group.