In an almost perfect FFXIV, Eorzea would be...

[Gennosuke]

This is also my post from another thread, moving here. This is as reasonably perfect as i can think of (Apologize for not following the format, just copy pasting):


Redesign Eorzea
================
Redesign Eorzea completely, redo the zones so they feel much more adventurous:
varied in landscape - have a huge variety in landscape, waterfalls, sea, sand, desert, islands, jungles, marsh-lands, rocky lands. Not have one massive zone which is literally the same landscape from beginning to end.
Make sure players have a unique experience in every rank range, eg. 1-10 very different experience than 10-20, etc and each require you to venture. eg as in XI: Sandoria -> La Theine Plateau -> Valkurm Dunes -> Qufim -> Yuhtunga/Yhoater jungle, etc .. each area would feel rewarding and unique, adventurous and an accomplishment.
Caves and mines are very bland and dull, they need to be bigger, more open, more creativity and more life in them. As for eg. Ordelle's cave.
Nuke Gridania, redo from ground up, instead of a very boring and depressingly dark green repetitive maze, have it a brighter lively vast and open luscious forest, like Sanctuary of Zitah and Jugner forest, with waterfalls, have it transform in landscape from one area to other, reach a cliff, a seashore, an interesting cave that perhaps is a passage to seashore on the other side, etc.
Beast encampments need to be bigger and cover full regions, feel you're going into a dark danger zone, not just a small hut with 30 mobs surrounding it.


Abilities
================
Abolish complete list of abilities now, revamped from the ground up - too many redundant abilities which add little significance to the job.
Remove tier II of skills too as again they feel very redundant and waste of an ability.
Have a short simple clear yet effective list of abilities for each job, each very unique and they completely differ in animation/damage/style/importance.
10 meaningful and useful abilities better than 40 redundant abilities which take up space and hype.
Make sure players look forward to abilities when ranking up 'cause they're worth it.
Also make abilities job specific instead of having a mage and archer perform a concussive blow -.-
Have abilities pre-loaded into jobs when switching.

Job/Subjob system
================
Replace Armoury system with Job/Subjob system - Bring back the classical job based FF's. Only utilize 2 jobs at a time max so each player has something unique and limited in what they can offer and can feel pride in their job, instead of the salad roles we have now.

Animations
================
Make the weapon skills much more wild and thrilling instead of mostly duplicate animations with different color effects as with pug for eg. Each skill offer a different animation, somethin like light strike, pummel and flurry should each bring some new and different noticable animations. Bring some kicks in, more jumping, more creativity.
Also, somehow make each player the focus of the screen when they do their skills so each player can shine separately,have their 1-2 seconds of fame, instead of each executing without others taking much notice as it now. Makes it more rewarding, engaging and fun.

Sound Effects
================
These go hand in hand with the animations. Fists get a stronger painful blunt sound, swords slashing, polearm piercing, emphasize the sounds, it just completes the experience of the animations in a much nicer way.

Mobs
================
Less rats and more beastmen.
As there were, Gobs, orcs, yagudos. Would bring in some new beastmen and have them roaming around, each city has it's own unique beastmen. Instead of being infested with mice, mushrooms and fat dodo's.
Also, even the more aggresive mobs we currently have need a redesign, i can't help but feel they're skinny and wimpy looking, like the wolves. Make the aggresive mobs bigger in size and fatter. Amalj'aa are a positive example.
Other important point is having variety amongst the same species, would have a rank 30 look different and inferior to a rank 50 or 60 of the same species. Be it the form, body shape, size, horns, spikes, colors, movement, abilities. Should feel you're fighting something stronger and you gained that privilege by ranking up.
Better and more varied distribution, bring new shapes and forms of mobs and not have them duplicated all over Eorzea.


SKillchains
================
Bring the skillchains and bursts in, make the battle system more fun instead of button bashing. Perhaps have a new skillchain system, not sure how feasible it is, but somethin similar to what we have in console rpg's. Would be nice to see 2 players sync and have a unique animation and an aura around them to show they're performing a skillchain instead of just one person performing another skill after the other. Maybe introduce a whole new list of Skillchain abilities alongside the normal abilities, like in Chrono Trigger (2 and 3 person skillchains). Something new, cool and fun.

Transportation
================
Bring the various transportation methods, chocobos, airships, heck even flying dragons, bikes and other forms. Remove Anima system completely, still have teleportation available but not through Anima system. Through crystals, scrolls, magic. Have it make sense and a privilege to be able to teleport, not every tom, dick and harry.

Aetheryte camps
================
Completely redesign these camps. Have each camp different and unique based on the area it's in. increase the size of the camp, make it a nice unique experience. The crystal should increase in size to become a landmark , make players see it and it's Aura from far away and feel awe when around it. Make it a teleportation center and what ever else.

Missions
================
Abolish Leves and replace completely with missions. Have casuals gain their SP but in a fun manner, not a dull boring repetitive leve system. Make FF more mission and quest oriented instead of leves. Make people go out and see what Eorzea has to offer while gaining their SP.
Also make missions and quests more entertaining and challenging, tie them more with story and lore, not dull boring quests.

Music
================
Redo the music for alot, probably most areas.
Some tracks are quite good and need to stay but others are horrid. La Noscea has a nice theme and my favourite track which FFXIV excelled in is "Nail of the heavens" the battle theme of La Noscea, that's one beautifully composed track. More of this stuff.
Would bring in music similar to Sanctuary of Zitah, that was a masterpiece.
Many tracks here plain suck and feel like ancient squeaky atari style music, like behest and the r30 dungeon. There is this old-school atari theme happening and its rather annoying. Bring the drums, the bass, the flutes and destroy the midi style music. All previous FF's had beautiful music, can learn lot from them.

Auction House
================
Nuke the wards and put an Auction House.

Gear/Weapons
================
Make gear and weapons job specific. Remove optimal gear and make gear rank specific so players have a bigger incentive to work for. Also have way less generic gear and more job specific gear to set players apart. Have unique looks for all jobs.
Introduce significantly more gear and weapons.

Party
================
Enhance and simplify party search, make it much easier to party up so people start enjoying game together and meeting other people. Make it easy enough that even casuals can quickly get a party sorted and on their way to engage in battle and easily gain sp this way rather than leves. Casual play should be convenient but fun, party play should be encouraged for all.

UI
================
Completely redo the UI design. the gear, inventory, windows, icons. Looks ancient style now, make it more appealing, bigger size.
Make it very light-weight, easy to navigate, no lag.
Redo the chat window, something that works, similar to XI. it's too laggy and obscuring now. Have one easily type and navigate chat.

Content
================
Add much more content, exploration/adventure and fun activities.

Optimize
================
Optimize the game so it runs more efficiently and less hogging of resources and overheating.

[Archadius]

Some great ideas, do whatever you can do get this before the eyes of the devs!

Some of these things are obviously projects to be tackled over say a 3 or 5-year plan, but they could start now

[Skuld]

As posted elsewhere, by other players:

Hamlets defence
Now: none.
Improved: Introduce Hamlet defence as promised many months ago. Hamlets defence would require players to defend Hamlets from waves of beastmen attacks or bandits. Reports from growing enemy forces would flow throw Eorzea through NPCs in cities and camps as rumours, hinting toward the time and which hamlet is going to be attacked next. Failure in defending the hamlet could result in NPC being missing and need to be rescued at the enemy camps, as well as damages done to the hamlet (giving repair tasks for Discipline of the Hand and tasks to clear the mess to Discipline of the Land).

Hamlets provisioning
Now: none.
Improved: Introduce task boards for hamlets too. Players doing the tasks reinforce the hamlets' economy, defence and more. Hamlets with lots of tasks completed would offer more items for sale, Discipline of the Hand guilds would be available to players (we can see alchemist guild icon, etc. over some doors in hamlets), there would mercenaries to help protect the hamlet during hamlet defence if the number of players enlisted is too low (helping to prevent a failure in hamlet defence). And more, giving more purpose to hamlets.

This reminds me a lit the campaing in FFXI. Would be nice that if the hamlet defence fails, people need to reconquer it.

[Archadius]

This reminds me a lit the campaing in FFXI. Would be nice that if the hamlet defence fails, people need to reconquer it.

Lose the Hamlet and it becomes a beastman stronghold. Take it back and the settlers return.

[tymora]

Redesign Eorzea completely, redo the zones so they feel much more adventurous:
varied in landscape - have a huge variety in landscape, waterfalls, sea, sand, desert, islands, jungles, marsh-lands, rocky lands. Not have one massive zone which is literally the same landscape from beginning to end.

Take this with a grain of salt. Terrain change every 5 min doesn't help immersion either. Climates don't go from Forest to Desert in a 5 min walk.

[Gennosuke]

Take this with a grain of salt. Terrain change every 5 min doesn't help immersion either. Climates don't go from Forest to Desert in a 5 min walk.

Who said anything about changing from forest to desert within 5 minutes? The zones we have now are massive and take you from rank 1 to 50 within the same terrain, climate and landscape. Surely they could split it up into several zones, each having it's own climate and have a logical transformation. No need to nitpick

[Silvyaniss]

How many years did it take them to finish FFXI oh man we have a long way too go.

[Nakiamiie]

This is also my post from another thread, moving here. This is as reasonably perfect as i can think of (Apologize for not following the format, just copy pasting):


Redesign Eorzea
================
Redesign Eorzea completely, redo the zones so they feel much more adventurous:
varied in landscape - have a huge variety in landscape, waterfalls, sea, sand, desert, islands, jungles, marsh-lands, rocky lands. Not have one massive zone which is literally the same landscape from beginning to end.
Make sure players have a unique experience in every rank range, eg. 1-10 very different experience than 10-20, etc and each require you to venture. eg as in XI: Sandoria -> La Theine Plateau -> Valkurm Dunes -> Qufim -> Yuhtunga/Yhoater jungle, etc .. each area would feel rewarding and unique, adventurous and an accomplishment.
Caves and mines are very bland and dull, they need to be bigger, more open, more creativity and more life in them. As for eg. Ordelle's cave.
Nuke Gridania, redo from ground up, instead of a very boring and depressingly dark green repetitive maze, have it a brighter lively vast and open luscious forest, like Sanctuary of Zitah and Jugner forest, with waterfalls, have it transform in landscape from one area to other, reach a cliff, a seashore, an interesting cave that perhaps is a passage to seashore on the other side, etc.
Beast encampments need to be bigger and cover full regions, feel you're going into a dark danger zone, not just a small hut with 30 mobs surrounding it.

As long as the transition is seamless, I agree with you. Otherwise, they could just add other huge regions, but many of them (Eorzea would definitely feel vast and more complete, i.e. having another huge region between Thanalan and the Black Shroud, for example, to make the transition from desert to a mature forest, it would make Eorzea seem a lot bigger and add transition).

Abilities
================
Abolish complete list of abilities now, revamped from the ground up - too many redundant abilities which add little significance to the job.
Remove tier II of skills too as again they feel very redundant and waste of an ability.
Have a short simple clear yet effective list of abilities for each job, each very unique and they completely differ in animation/damage/style/importance.
10 meaningful and useful abilities better than 40 redundant abilities which take up space and hype.
Make sure players look forward to abilities when ranking up 'cause they're worth it.
Also make abilities job specific instead of having a mage and archer perform a concussive blow -.-
Have abilities pre-loaded into jobs when switching.

Definitely redundant, something must be done. (And now, they are taking away the magics' AOE toggle to add the same spell but AOE [before: cure; after: cure + curaga]. It's also becoming redundant with spells and a waste of action space. I really liked the AOE toggle for spells, all of them.)

Job/Subjob system
================
Replace Armoury system with Job/Subjob system - Bring back the classical job based FF's. Only utilize 2 jobs at a time max so each player has something unique and limited in what they can offer and can feel pride in their job, instead of the salad roles we have now.

I really enjoy the armoury system (cross-class actions can be equipped from more than 1 other class, for example: gladiator with second wind from pugilist and stoneskin from conjurer), so I have to vote against this one.

Animations
================
Make the weapon skills much more wild and thrilling instead of mostly duplicate animations with different color effects as with pug for eg. Each skill offer a different animation, somethin like light strike, pummel and flurry should each bring some new and different noticable animations. Bring some kicks in, more jumping, more creativity.
Also, somehow make each player the focus of the screen when they do their skills so each player can shine separately,have their 1-2 seconds of fame, instead of each executing without others taking much notice as it now. Makes it more rewarding, engaging and fun.

Sound Effects
================
These go hand in hand with the animations. Fists get a stronger painful blunt sound, swords slashing, polearm piercing, emphasize the sounds, it just completes the experience of the animations in a much nicer way.

Sounds nice!

Mobs
================
Less rats and more beastmen.
As there were, Gobs, orcs, yagudos. Would bring in some new beastmen and have them roaming around, each city has it's own unique beastmen. Instead of being infested with mice, mushrooms and fat dodo's.
Also, even the more aggresive mobs we currently have need a redesign, i can't help but feel they're skinny and wimpy looking, like the wolves. Make the aggresive mobs bigger in size and fatter. Amalj'aa are a positive example.
Other important point is having variety amongst the same species, would have a rank 30 look different and inferior to a rank 50 or 60 of the same species. Be it the form, body shape, size, horns, spikes, colors, movement, abilities. Should feel you're fighting something stronger and you gained that privilege by ranking up.
Better and more varied distribution, bring new shapes and forms of mobs and not have them duplicated all over Eorzea.

Not necessarily more free roaming beastmen, but more organized beastmen action (or bandits, criminals, Imperials). And yes for the rest, higher ranked monsters definitely should look more fearsome.

SKillchains
================
Bring the skillchains and bursts in, make the battle system more fun instead of button bashing. Perhaps have a new skillchain system, not sure how feasible it is, but somethin similar to what we have in console rpg's. Would be nice to see 2 players sync and have a unique animation and an aura around them to show they're performing a skillchain instead of just one person performing another skill after the other. Maybe introduce a whole new list of Skillchain abilities alongside the normal abilities, like in Chrono Trigger (2 and 3 person skillchains). Something new, cool and fun.

I don't understand, can you explain?

Transportation
================
Bring the various transportation methods, chocobos, airships, heck even flying dragons, bikes and other forms. Remove Anima system completely, still have teleportation available but not through Anima system. Through crystals, scrolls, magic. Have it make sense and a privilege to be able to teleport, not every tom, dick and harry.

I, too, feels that anima is a poor replacement for other transportation methods. I understand that casual players needs to be able to move quickly from a point to another, but I believe other transportation methods would be as efficient and fits more in the world (Hell, why arent' the Garlean Empire teleporting to city-states for their invasion? Or, why aren't we doing it to invade Garlemald?)

Aetheryte camps
================
Completely redesign these camps. Have each camp different and unique based on the area it's in. increase the size of the camp, make it a nice unique experience. The crystal should increase in size to become a landmark , make players see it and it's Aura from far away and feel awe when around it. Make it a teleportation center and what ever else.

Bigger camps, yes! They are supposed to be outpost to protect the land after all.

Missions
================
Abolish Leves and replace completely with missions. Have casuals gain their SP but in a fun manner, not a dull boring repetitive leve system. Make FF more mission and quest oriented instead of leves. Make people go out and see what Eorzea has to offer while gaining their SP.
Also make missions and quests more entertaining and challenging, tie them more with story and lore, not dull boring quests.

Abolishing leves is not necessary for that to be true. Quests already aim to do that.

Music
================
Redo the music for alot, probably most areas.
Some tracks are quite good and need to stay but others are horrid. La Noscea has a nice theme and my favourite track which FFXIV excelled in is "Nail of the heavens" the battle theme of La Noscea, that's one beautifully composed track. More of this stuff.
Would bring in music similar to Sanctuary of Zitah, that was a masterpiece.
Many tracks here plain suck and feel like ancient squeaky atari style music, like behest and the r30 dungeon. There is this old-school atari theme happening and its rather annoying. Bring the drums, the bass, the flutes and destroy the midi style music. All previous FF's had beautiful music, can learn lot from them.

Can you explain why they are "horrid" (besides personal tastes in music)?

Auction House
================
Nuke the wards and put an Auction House.

Do you really feel like it is necessary? What about improvement to the market wards like I proposed in the first post? Delivery from the market wards could become possible, for a fee, when the mailboxes comes into the game.

Gear/Weapons
================
Make gear and weapons job specific. Remove optimal gear and make gear rank specific so players have a bigger incentive to work for. Also have way less generic gear and more job specific gear to set players apart. Have unique looks for all jobs.
Introduce significantly more gear and weapons.

No. There are a lot of players, like me, who enjoy wearing anything and everything without having to switch class (just for fun or because we are in a hurry -- and don't want to be naked). I agree that a small percentages of gear should be entirely class and rank specific, those are what the elitists should aim for, while the majority of gear should remain for everyone and anyone, at any time (non class and rank specific). It's that small percentage of elitist gear that will give it increased worth to the eyes of hardcore players, not if all the gear is like that.

Party
================
Enhance and simplify party search, make it much easier to party up so people start enjoying game together and meeting other people. Make it easy enough that even casuals can quickly get a party sorted and on their way to engage in battle and easily gain sp this way rather than leves. Casual play should be convenient but fun, party play should be encouraged for all.

UI
================
Completely redo the UI design. the gear, inventory, windows, icons. Looks ancient style now, make it more appealing, bigger size.
Make it very light-weight, easy to navigate, no lag.
Redo the chat window, something that works, similar to XI. it's too laggy and obscuring now. Have one easily type and navigate chat.

Any ideas on how to do that? The more details, the more chances your ideas will get through (and will be implemented as you wanted them).

Content
================
Add much more content, exploration/adventure and fun activities.

Of course! But, such as... ?

Optimize
================
Optimize the game so it runs more efficiently and less hogging of resources and overheating.

Support DirectX10 and 11 as well, haha.

[Galliano]

love the idea of npcs walking around in town, npcs should act like they do in the intro movies for each city, talking to each other and running/walking around.

[Geesus]

This reminds me a lit the campaing in FFXI. Would be nice that if the hamlet defence fails, people need to reconquer it.

LOL Damn you Skuld I was gonna say something similar. How about adding in as well; as the Hamlet has more tasks completed those Hamlets become larger? Adding new stores or a Tavern? Almost as if the Hamlet becomes a small village then a city? Not TOO big just a little something. And then as Skuld mentioned, if players cannot defend the Hamlet during a raid or it's equvilent, the newest buildings are damaged or destroyed?