What would you like to see (differently) in the next Final Fantasy MMO?

[dinnertime]

I'm not too familiar with MHW but from what I've seen of it, it looks good.

I often dislike action combat games for two reasons - 1) too much staggering, which makes the combat feel dull and little more than button mashing against target dummies and 2) spellcasting is poorly integrated into it. Tales of Berseria was an example of 2), and I absolutely hated its combat system for that reason, even if it was a deliberate design choice. I'm not too familiar with Dragon's Dogma, but from the limited amount I played of it, BDO seemed to handle spellcasting quite well. An action combat system could be more fun, but they'd need to re-think the design of several jobs if they were to follow through with it. From what I saw of the VII remake they seem to have the right idea. Spellcasters would need to focus on swift casts, teleports, dodging, shield spells and the like.

MHW has its moments especially right now with the new mechanics on the MHW expansion making it easier to cheese fights, but it's one of the more well-polished action combat games out there. The enemies or rather monsters/wyverns are totally not target dummies, especially the endgame monsters. You will be dealt with ruthlessly, especially when they're enraged. Another thing about Monster Hunter is that enemies are pretty complex and challenging. The gameplay involves a lot of enemy movement reading/predicting unlike FFXIV where everything is so scripted, which takes away fights having unexpected surprises. Behemoth in that game is an absolute pain in the butt to fight, even with better gear.

Spellcasting in Dragon's Dogma and BDO are kind of similar, but Dragon's Dogma is slower, while BDO is faster and feels less outdated. Though, I've never seen any other game with so much impact on the magic presentation other than Dragon's Dogma. It also has an MMO that shut down (unfortunately), the casting gimmick is pretty bad but other than that it's the same as the single player game.

Also Dragon's Dogma Online has a class named High Scepter and it's a good take on a spell fencer, and has all of those things you mentioned that a spellcaster would need.