Party SP penalty and Bank tab

Party SP penalty............... WHY?! SE gimped solo play by adding bonus sp to party and linking so it's almost useless to solo on FFXIV to level DoW/M jobs and then they went step further and penalized large parties saying "We want you to group, but we don't want you to group", my LS during every leve reset between 11 to 12 people gather to do the leve run. We like to do leve together and we can't even break the party up because of obvious reasons (it wouldn't be fair). Because of the large number of people every leve run takes long time and sometimes I do want to solo leve but it's not worth soloing leve because sp sucks horribly and behest is worthless after r40. SE really should do something about solo play and stop penalizing everything. It's feels like SE is saying "we want your money, but we don't want you to level too fast and if you are going to lvl do it in a group that's not too big"

Guild Bank.............. WHY isn't there plan for ONE?! There should be guild bank along with mail system with COD and at least (if SE isn't going to add AH since they never said they were actully adding one) easier way to price check and search items on maket ward from all 3 cities

Transportation........ SUCKS in this game. Anima regen is horrible, when you run out of anima you can't do anything but to wait or beg..... why not add NPC that charges anima with gil? or add some method of auto transportation system that goes from node to node

Mass Synthesis...... please.... add mass synthesis.... preselect quanity of crafting and press button and just wait for game to finish crafting. there are already enough crafting bot out there who do that already and SE can't even catch every single one of botters. So why not make crafting bit easier? it's not like getting all the necessary mat is easier by any choice.

*It's just my opinion on the game.

In regards to your first point, I assume you never noticed that the plans for the reasonably near future are for maximum party sizes of eight members, with 'small' parties of four members. These changes to the Skill Point gain at the moment are the first thing to try and get people used to the idea of an eight man party. Expect the changes within the next couple of months, if some of the interviews with Naoki Yoshida (Yoshi-P) are anything to go by.

As for Solo play it is important to note that solo should never, never be better than Party play if you ever want people to actually party up with others outside of purely Linkshell, or heck, even party up within Linkshells. People are driven by numbers - this is obvious by the way people flocked to the Coblyns for easy Skill Points before the recent change. Don't get me wrong, I play almost exclusively Solo, be it Botany, Lancer or whatever, but I see no reason why I should be entitled to more Skill than those putting the time and effort into grouping up with others. You gain the choice of whatever, whenever, you lose the chance for more Skill. Seems like a decent trade off to me.

To the Guild Bank, I think we should wait and see what Public Companies have in store before we get into that kind of discussion, as the original team stated them to be the actual idea of a 'Guild' from other games. Linkshells are the baseline group of communication at the moment, I don't think they have ever been intended to be the proper Guild focus itself. Of course, the implementation may be radically different now - but one of the things mentioned about Companies way back was the construction of Company ships and the like. We shall see.

Also, I disagree that you should be able to check the prices across the different cities. Part of what drives buying and selling in areas is not knowing how much you could get it for elsewhere. For example, I can sell Pine for a heck of a lot more in Gridania, than I can in Limsa Lominsa due to the abundance of Pine in La Noscea compared to the trip to Coerthas as the closest to Gridania.

I'll agree that transportation is bad, however, I have managed to avoid going below 80 Anima since I started playing, by walking. It takes time, yes, but it does save that Anima for if/when you really need it. If you have enough time to be blowing through the Anima, I'm sure you can deal with walking for 10-15 minutes.

Hopefully the future addition of Chocobos and Airships aids out in the transport department - it is obvious it should be there, what with the airship docks and Chocobos standing about. Heck, there is even an Airship dock underneath the Gridanian Adventurers Guild if you go down the stairs.

Crafting I have to disagree with, entirely. I don't mind if you have mass synthesis in that once you complete one item, it automatically starts the next one, but to remove the player input into the crafting would just immediately kill off one big section of the game, leaving it as dull as other crafting systems. If someone were to suggest that Botany should just be an automatic gather - as you suggest for synthesis - I'd be most displeased. Were it automatically gathered I'd have been bored of it after the first five minutes - like most other games were you can gather resources. These aren't side Classes, they are a main part of the game in which many people will spend most, if not all of their time. Also, just because some people are botting doesn't mean that the people out there who don't, and enjoy the crafting process - be it dealing with the sparks, gearing up, or merely being capable - should have something they enjoy stripped from them because of people ignoring the terms of use.

Personally, I don't enjoy crafting, at all. Nor am I much of one for fighting - that doesn't mean that I'd kick them down so I can make things easier for me to Gather. Remember, while many people seem to think that you do everything, one of the reasons I enjoy the game is because I don't *need* to fight, I don't *need* to craft. Crafting and Gathering are choices, that require time and dedication in the same way as any Fighting class does, with gearing, repairs, and general advancement.

This strikes me as one of the biggest issues, and something I hope doesn't happen to the game, where in fighters become the be all, end all, and anyone wishing to purely be a gatherer or crafter is missing out on more than battle content. Many of the more...strongly worded opinions I have read over the time since the game launched, have definitely been from those mainly focused on fighting, and dabble in crafting, sometimes gathering, if really needed. What you don't seem to understand is the impact that this could have on those who enjoy the style of gameplay involved with those two other branches of the game.

This, as yourself, is just my opinion. This is of course where the problem lies, as I disagree with some of your statements, if not fully, then at least in part. It is up to the developers to make the decisions in the end, and have to make do with the general feeling they get from people. However, Star Wars Galaxies made the mistake of kicking crafters and other non-combat people right in the gut (particularly crafters, who they made worthless with the implementation of loot basically always better than what crafters could create) and the game took a massive nose dive, from a population that was 'ok' and fairly stable, to depths unknown. It has slowly recovered, but I never want to see something like that happen to Final Fantasy XIV. Improvements, yes, things that kill off interesting differences such as the crafting and gathering, no.

It's a common mistake where party exp should always be better than solo exp.
Party exp is better than solo exp because it is harder to form party. In ideal form overall payout for party exp or solo exp should be equal in a sense in a large party you still have to wait other people dealing with real life, getting together and etc.
In a static these issues can be ironed out so having static party leveling faster than solo play is understandable. However at this point in time in FFXIV solo playing is so gimped it's painful. Sure you can do behest, but technically behest is also partying. Also solo players do get penalized from item drops as well. What I hope for FFXIV to do in future with solo play would be that it's still viable way to hit the necessary lvl with soloing to benefit from the subjob skills. Solo player shouldn't be penalized at the cost of group play, and large group shouldn't be penalized for their extra members for socializing through LS leve run.

On to transportation, 10 to 15min run isn't bad. What's bad is city to city transport + to node. From LL to Uldah is 3 anima then from uldah to BW is 2 anima, then back to LL is another 3 anima from LL to IL is 2 anima. That's 10anima per leve reset. Not everyone has time to run everywhere, some people are on limited time to play. That's on normal leve reset day which is every 36hours. In group of 12 you can't expect everyone to wait for the boat, run to the camp. Anima is shared in group but there are other time issues. Which is why anima recharging NPC would be helpful using GIL.

On to crafting, yes some people enjoy mini game, but not everyone does. Some people craft so that they can fix the item they use because finding repairer are pain sometimes. Adding option of mass production doesn't mean stripping what's important to some crafter. What they could do is reduce sp gain from mass produced item. Like hasty hand and reduce success rate. Even then some people would still go w/ mass production option

Again it's my opion on the game and it's opion based on my time allotment.