I'm confused how this would fix any issues? You are saying get rid of initiative and combat rounds completely? Just have the DM handwave the results somehow? Something different? What do you mean specifically? I'm curious as to your idea on this.
The key problem with cyclic initiative is that it forces N-1 of the N players to sit around doing nothing until their own turn comes around.
Nothing else in the game works this way. Normally, the DM describes a situation, the players say what they want to do, and the DM tells them what happens. (DM: there aren't any guards in sight right now. Bob: I climb the tree. Arel: While he's climbing the tree, I sneak under the bush. Kevin: I lean on a fence post and look casual. DM: Okay, you do that, then here's what happens...)
That's the way combat works at my table too, with a twist: higher Int means faster thinking means shorter OODA loops, so I tell them the declared actions of low-Int monsters first, and then ask players to declare their actions in order of Int from lowest to highest. (High-Int monsters are relatively few, and get slotted in where appropriate.) Although in practice what that actually means is that I let players of high-Int characters change their action declarations based on declarations from lower-Int characters, again because of the OODA loop. Then we all resolve actions simultaneously, rolling initiative if it's necessary to resolve near-simultaneous actions. Frequently it's not--if I miss you and then you hit me for 7 points of damage, it doesn't matter which came first.
This is exactly how we used to play AD&D. There are a couple of other little wrinkles related to durations and delayed actions, but that's the gist of it.
Key properties: it avoids any artificial modal distinction between combat and non-combat; it allows smooth flow back and forth between combat and noncombat as necessary, which encourages players to consider nonviolent solutions to certain problems (like "how do we surrender when overmatched?"); it provides a natural precedent for resolving other near-simultaneous actions such as two people both waiting with readied actions on the same trigger; it neatly solves the problem of action declarations that will take longer than one turn to resolve ("I sneak around the encampment" while other PCs are fighting orcs just means you have the other PCs roll several rounds of attacks against the orcs and then tell the sneaking PC when he's in position); and most importantly, it prevents the DM from having to ask players to sit around in enforced inactivity while it's "not your turn". The pacing stays dynamic and cooperative.
