What features from other games would you enjoy in FFXIV?

[Shurrikhan]

1. (Open world) upward level scaling and bonus difficulties.

The idea behind upward, as compared to downward, scaling, is that you never lose your abilities. You can enter a FATE and start participating straightaway, rather than needing to rebuff. Two players of different levels looking at the same mob see two different mob levels, each at or whatever amount above or below their own. In synced content, skills above the content's level receive decreased effect, but are still usable. The remainder of balance is covered by increased mob defense or defensive abilities visible only to and effective against the higher level player in proportion to the increased theoretical non-stacked potency-per-second gains over that of their toolkit at at-content-level, keeping their damage much more balanced. Additional balance is covered via repeatable (rested, if already capped) experience bonuses per intended true player level in addition to their first completion experience bonuses, encouraging the taking of players who actually need the content despite allowing higher level characters their full range of skills.

Bonus difficulties refers to manually or progressively set scaling caps and mechanical additions in the vein of Legion's Mythic + system, whereby dungeon content could be accessible at a challenging level to literally every type of player, from casual but competent to the best or most cohesive few of a World First raid team, and perhaps a third difficulty to somewhat cut the difference between the roll-over-dead Normal and the Savage difficulties, in roughly the style of ARR's raids.

2. Soft phasing and world dynamics.

Soft phasing refers to any time you enter an overlaid instance (e.g. one placed atop the original terrain merely by adding mobs, objective points, weather effects, or the like) without any loading screen, and generally without an interaction bar. Imagine, for instance, a wintry or desert zone with constant obscuring blizzards or sandstorms. This would be a means to separate different parties so that they can have altogether different experiences over the same ground, connecting only as they please, such as by entering the eye of the storm or getting clear of the sandstorm, or lighting a fire or signal that would then be visible to others and would allow for a merging of groups. More frequently, though, it would just mean that given x quest progress, you can see things that others can't, beyond simple sparkling "destinations", items, or purple zones. For instance, rather than having destinations for sighting Bismarck, Bismarck himself would be visible to you, and you would be trying to keep up with those actual sightings, adding a sense of urgency to the quest.

3. Field/Craft/Enemy Logs (in a more significant and integral manner, alike to cross-experience).

This is by far the most elaborate of the suggestions. This is like the combination of a Bestiary, an improved Gathering Log, improved Hunting Log, and your Recipe Books, allowing for what might be called Lateral Experience. To be honest, it would not work in the current versions of crafting and gathering, and would require additional factors to be added to affect a given player's combat against specific mob types. Ideally, however, it could end up as a beautifully comprehensive collection of one's findings that can add player-unique possibilities for content, such as elite mobs, incapacitation drops, rare nodes, cross-overs such as by mining or gathering from mineral or plantkin mobs, and combat bonuses against such based on your mining and botony experience against their included types of resources. Similarly, gaining experience using weapons of your own making can grant addition experience to the professions with which you made them, etc., etc.

4. Combat Manual

This is your spellbook, but with a crucial difference: it previews the skills in actions, aids in theorycrafting and CD alignment, makes recommendations, and allows the saving of rotations to be progressively displayed on screen when practicing in a dojo, training ground, proving ground, or against a striking dummy, and records how you varied from the given rotation, even allowing you to compare your parsed (ability-by-ability) rotation against your theoretical. It's a massive training tool, essentially. While aided by universal and consistent access to parsing, it does not require such, and can be used solely at player convenience.

5. Glamour Log and To-Slot Glamour Binding

Simple as that. Once you've worn something, within whatever additional limitations, you can overlay your memory of that item atop your current gear from a stored list of simple 0s or 1s -- you either have access to the glamour or you do not.

Additionally, you bind the glamour appearance to the given job's gear slot, not the item itself, and you can toggle the overlying appearance on or off at will. This means it's maintainable even when trading out the real gear frequently.

6. Proving Grounds and Training Grounds (Premade and FC-made, respectively).

Proving Grounds are simply far more useful and in-depth SSS encounters, essentially, meant to test your understanding of nearly all facets of your role, including CD stacking, recognizing the need for burst, crowd control, mobility, coverage, etc.

Training Grounds are player-made Proving Grounds, making use of whatever assets, objectives, and trackers its designers see fit to use.

7. Smart Camera and Chase Camera.

The basic idea of a Smart Camera is that you can set bounds and equations for what and how things are bound or voided within your screen. Should boss casts cause your screen to focus on it if it will one-shot you without a defensive? If you're a healer? Only if you can interrupt it? Should the leaves of trees be hidden from further out, as not to slide into the way of what you're actually trying to view? The original settings should suit most players considerably better than the nonadaptive camera.

The Chase Camera is essentially just an optional extended form of the Smart Camera, usually key bound, allowing you during a quest to spy on an enemy, for instance, to look all the way over to the enemy, or to focus on a boss during a phase transition of a raid, or even to highlight your incoming Fire IV critical strike. Essentially, it ends up a storytelling and scouting tool outside of combat, and a cinematic and a sort of focus-panning tool in combat.

8. Personal Loot.

You each get your own chance at loot, based on what you can actually use. Already did your clear for the week? So be it, that was your one chance at that loot. Does not guarantee drops, but merely means that anything that drops can be used. (May include additional loot targeting or filtering systems.)

9. Lateral Inventory.

If near to any bank of items for which you have permissions, you can use said items (in crafting, etc.) directly from their holders, be that a retainer, chest, or crafting table, without moving them first into your inventory. This is best attached to additional permissions control and the idea of crafting tables, whereby multiple players can pool their resources at will for combined crafts.