Third-party addons

[Stan64]

I know this would be very hard to implement but the need is surely out there.

It's not uncommon to let the players change the UI to some extent or write graphical tidbits that collects and display information on the screen. It would help players to redesign parts as they would like for a more fluid experience without the need to ask the dev team to do it.

Graphical spellbar with timers? Yup. DPS-statistics. Yup. Overlaying timers on buffs and add debuffs on players. Yup.

The system don't need to be perfect, it can be a bit hard to use. Players will manage after all. Take a look how other programs implement it.
* You can mostly only pull information from the API, not send information to it.

Other MMO's have implemented this and it's a sought after in FFXIV. So why not in FFXI?

I understand that this will take time to implement and would need a lot of adjustment, and hopefully FFXI is still here when this can be introduced!

[dasva]

Hell they wouldn't even really need to impliment it. They could just put out the word that it's ok and basically decriminalize the programs out there that already do that. Maybe put in a sub forum for them in the OF

[Demonjustin]

They could just put out the word that it's ok and basically decriminalize the programs out there that already do that.

This is basically it, and if they wanted to make it truly great, they could also open a kind of channel with those who do these things already and try to work together in some form such as not breaking them with updates and so on, or giving them extra access to the updated information so that fixes could be implemented at the same time.