Oooh Christmas in July.

OP had some really great ideas so I'd like to comment on them.

1. Housing: Please Yoshi P. this is the very top of my list. Every adventurer worth his or her salt needs a good place to lay their heads at night and to display all the wonderful rewards you're going to be offering for events
I also want housing, along with an array of crafted furnishings to decorate it with. I hope for housing to be a bit more than the basement studio apartment in FFXI.

2. Job Specific Equipment: While the equipment we have is visually stunning it's stylistically a little vanilla. I want something only my class can have, and more rank required gear, awesome 1.18 addition
My ultimate wish would be for them to put rank and class restrictions on the original gear sets that currently do not have them. It feels awkward to have them remain the way they are when the rest of the game is going forward in a different direction. Sure, it may aggravate a few newly nude players after a change, but most of us have an abundance of gil and the game offers several free ways to obtain new armor.

3. Mob Ranged Attack: Is it really realistic that every mob in the game has some sort of ranged attack?? In America it's considered offensive to throw nuts at someone, even among enemies
I've never had someone throw a nut at me in reality, so I can't say I've been offended or would be. More like startled and confused? The ranged mob thing really does have to go though, it makes exploring and party battle exceptionally difficult for no true benefit to the game itself. Why, so we can't pull mobs to a camp? Why not? What's wrong with camping? Instead, I think they should program a little bit of AI to their mobs which if the mob cannot attack a player due to some geographical exploit, then the mob could and would use a ranged. But just merely passing through an area with an aggressive mob in it shouldn't allow for it to range attack you from yards away.

4. Japanese Influence: I would love to see a city or even a settlement with Japanese styling. It's a beautiful country and culture I would love to get to know more about through the best MMO produced in Japan
I love this idea! A city with traditional Japanese architecture, gardens, garb and music would be so welcomed. I'm not entirely certain how the Japanese player base would feel about it though. Might not be fantasy enough? There was a ninja town with heavy asian vibe in FFVII so it's somewhat cannon.


And yes, as you have also mentioned I do realize most of these things are being worked on or are in a planning phase. Doesn't hurt to reiterate what excites us though.

For my wish list, aside from my agreeance with yours:

1) Dragoon to have FFXI style wyvern and pet classes in general. I understand there are a few people who want to see a classic FF dragoon with just jump and a spear to it's name, but to me that's rather simple and dull for a MMO. I kinda see the class to job system as a unique opportunity for players to decide which variety of the lance wielder they want (with or without wyvern), if dev plays their cards right.

Pets in general are what I'm most anticipating.

2) Piggy-backing off the previous, I wish for dynamic chocobo rearing. I want to be able to breed, raise and outfit my chocobo. Also, have alternative uses for them such as digging, racing, travel, battle, etc. I hope for a rearing system that's far less punishing than what was in FFXI. I don't want to have to throw out a chocobo because one day the random number generator gods decided some ailment would inflict it and basically forever ruin it's stats.

I would like for armor or riding gear to be availble to display on your chocobo. I envision a world where a high ranked gladiator could have a knightly looking steed, or a traveling crafter could have a work horse looking chocobo, or a lady botanist could have one with flowers flowing from its reigns.

3) Ultimate weapons that aren't impossible to obtain, just extremely time consuming. I'd like to see some sort of upgradeable ultimate weapon made for each of the jobs that requires turning in meanial tasks that are randomized. I believe FFXI eventually created something similar to this but made it extremely too difficult requireing rare nm battles and drops and the sort. I envision something more in line with lu shang's wherein the npc once a day or week requests a random number of a random item to be turned into that npc. Like 40 rat tails, or 1 willow wand. It would remove a lot of items that are usually just npc vendored from the game and stimulate the economy by selling more consumed products. The idea being not to alienate players whom don't have a lot of friends in high places, but reward people for being dedicated to it. Maybe toss in an NM boss that has to be beaten at the end of each stage, but once again, not making it rediculously hard.