Immersive and deep, or archaic and annoying?

[Jocko]

I've personally come to find the world of Eorzea very sterile and honestly kind of dull. Don't get me wrong, the world design is absolutely stunning, but at the same time it feels about as shallow as damp grass.

However, a lot of the features I enjoy seem to come across completely different to other people. There's nothing wrong with that of course, everyone has preferences, but I thought it would be interesting to see not only where you stand, but why you feel the way you do about certain things.

Things like:

Numerous, unique aggro mechanics (Sight, sound, smell, blood, magic sensitive etc)
Timed travel (physical airship and boat rides)
Mob characteristics (In 1.0 certain mobs had unique features; Aldgoats were curious and would follow behind you, crabs would raise their claws and warn you off before aggroing, Does would flee if you drew your weapons, slugs would use their AoE if you stepped on them etc)
Rare mobs with unique spawn conditions (Moon phases, lotto spawns, pop items, weather based etc)
Elemental and damage type weaknesses and strengths (Puddings being all but immune to blunt damage, elementals absorbing their matching elements etc)
Weather types effecting combat (Thunder damage is increased during rain etc)

I know those features can cause certain inconveniences and play a part in class design, but it just feels, personally, that ARR is so sterile and standardized to make class balancing and progression as simplistic and bare bones as possible. Just results in there being nothing to really sink your teeth into. To me, being immersed and appreciative of the game's world is far more important than grinding AK run to get another tier of gear with minor stat upgrades

[Klefth]

This, a thousand times.

[Animation]

Everything you listed should already be in this game, hopefully it'll make it in Final Fantasy: A Realm Remade. 3.0.

[Amberion]

This, a thousand times.

This, +1.

As a BLM in this game, I feel that they can rename my spells to generic magik attack.

[Jynx]

Hundreds of people agree with you, check my previous threads in 1.0 about bringing those things back and adding lore and depth like the camp system.

It was quickly met with resistance from some people as "Archaic" but many others apreciate the depth that is brought from such things. People complained about "Curious" AI and somehow Square Enix decided that EVERYTHING needed to go with one fell swoop with no explination other than the developers promising us they had something in store for us along the lines of making monsters unique again.

...that never happened.

Rep Response from the AI thread.

Originally Posted by Bayohne
Discussed this with monster wrangler Matsui. Firstly, as I'm sure you're all aware, the reason that aldgoats and other monsters stopped coming closer was due to the fact that they would be tagged by player AoEs (and all the frustration that brought with it); we don't have plans to bring that aspect back. However, we would like to add more liveliness to monsters as you have been suggesting.

[Moontide]

I very much agree. Weather effects were the first thing I noticed missing, but there could be so much more. I have no idea why they were removed if they were already there in the first place. Doesn't seem like any of the suggestions there would be a make-or-break annoyance to anyone (well, maybe aside timed travel because people are so impatient. That could be fixed with rebalanced teleport/ship fees and some gameplay content during the travels though).

tl:dr, why can't I even heal skeletons anymore?

[Kitya]

Weather types effecting combat (Thunder damage is increased during rain etc)

I would love this. I already think the immersive weather effects are awesome as is, this would just be icing.

[TaruPower]

Pretty much everything listed is in XI. So..."Make the game more like XI"

Not that I disagree. This game could use some XI-ifying

[WellFooled]

I can't agree that Eorzea comes off as sterile, but I would defiantly love to see almost all of these implemented. The monsters being given personalities seems particularly fun.

That said, I'm not sure some of these would add enough to make it worth it. For example in FFXI the varies ways a monster could aggro you were deathly important to memorize and counter because monsters were so incredibly difficult. To aggro even a single elemental or undead could spell your doom. However in FFXIV most monsters you'll ever encounter in the open world are easily dispatched. Does it really matter how they aggro? Speaking for myself I don't think I would give it a second thought if a particularly monster smelled me or saw me to attack. It wouldn't matter like it did in FFXI.

[Vaen]

These are all great things I would love to see in added back in. Small "inconveniences" that make the game more immersive and interesting aren't actually inconvenient at all if the goal of the game is to be immersive and interesting!