This line of reasoning always bothers me. The majority of RPGs on the market by a significant margin dedicate more word-count and special rules to combat than to non-combat - not because the game is meant to focus on combat more than other aspects, but because combat is the portion of the game in which more detail is needed to reach an equitable and enjoyable experience for the folks playing the game.
Even Call of Cthulhu, a game in which being in combat usually means you've seriously screwed up, fits this false evidence that it is "geared more toward combat."
D&D has always dropped into "bullet time" for combat. Where unlike the majority of actions that are solved by RP/inventiveness/creativity plus none/one/few die rolls, combat was very detailed. Makes sense given it's origin. This also makes it eat up a lot of wall clock time in a session (as opposed to in-game time). If this is going to be a major focus of time spent, it should have that much rules around it.
Even more importantly, all characters are designed to be able to contribute meaningfully to it. So everyone needs to take a turn at it, unlike the party face doing a good cop/bad cop or the ranger finding the pass over the mountain.
But that's self-perpetuating. It has a lot of rules, it takes time and focus, so it gets made more interesting with more rules. And because it's expected, new action RPGs perpetrate this.
If sneaking the whole party past a orc patrol, talking your way past the patrol, or killing the patrol all took the same amount of wall time, with the same mechanical neeeds (a few die rolls, whatever), and didn't require everyone to be able to participate equally in all scenes (like all characters now are expected in combat), it would be a different ballgame.
It wouldn't be D&D IMO, but that's okay, because there are plenty RP itches out there and the more variety the better you can find something that matches your table.
