Exactly - the main type of addictive nature RPGs have is to cater to our OCD senses as gamers.
Give us things to collect, things to level up, things to customize, and we'll go crazy over it. Add in the social aspect of an MMO, and the ability for people to compete with each other and show off their achievements, and it gets very addictive.
Give the player a "scan" ability to scan every mob and build a "pokedex" of all the mobs, their traits, and their spawn points. The more complete your list is, the more you get rewarded somehow -
BAM exploring is awesome.
Give the retainers the ability to level up based on how much they sold, or whatever to increase item capacity and achieve more tax reductions -
BAM retainers are awesome
Implement Chocobo Breeding, let us breed our own personal chocobo with stats and everything, make it hands on and skill based. Let us craft cool armor and accessories to put on our personal chocobo and let us ride it and race it if we want to, like those addictive SEGA horse racing games. Let our Chocobo level up according to its abilities
- BAM chocobos are awesome
Implement Beastmaster and monster battles
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ll=1#post11130
Give it an additional ability to catch and train monsters just like Pokemon. Then, let them battle other players, or other beastmasters' pets in the Uldah coliseum like in Dragon Quest 8.
let the player customize and tweak the enemy AI and behavior patterns and keep a ranking to see who has the most wins. Let the player set aside a player-determined amount of money as a reward, and then set an entrance fee that other players can pay to fight the custom pet.
- BAM exploring the world and interacting with it and alternative forms of PvP is awesome