(Usually male) Adventure-gamers have argued for this since the 80'ies. When Sierra started to implement horrible action sequences in their games things started to get really sour.
The mechanism is like ... a vocal group of people (I consciously don't say "minority", because it could be a really big group as well) is invading any kind of games and game genres, wanting what *they* like to be implemented.
We see this mechanism work with the plea for Multiplayer, which is invading even the most anti-multiplayer game forums for the last decade. There are people out there who *want* multiplayer in non-action Adventure games !
And they have won. "Steter Tropfen höhlt den Stein", like a German proverb goes - "constant dripping wears away the stone". Nowadays almost *everything* contains multiplayer !
And so, the same mechanism is working for combat now, too : A vocal group is wanting action & combat in games. In ALL games. Even in those which are non-action games.
And the game industry responds to them : We have ONLY action games nowadays - adventure games (non-action ones) don't exist in some markets anymore, LucasArts did rather shooters than Adventure games in the past (think of Fracture and of RTX Red Rock, not to mention the "destruction game" of The Force Unleashed).
Non-action games rather come either from Europe, or from East Europe (HOMM reboot, King's Bounty, The Book Of Unwritten Tales etc.), with exceptions like Tell-Tale (Sam & Max, Wallace & Gromit).
The only place where non-action games exist world-wide are online games, like the infamous face book games.