Things that FF14 needs to improve upon

[Shurrikhan]

To start with, they need to at least catch up with modders in regard to basic QoL:

• An animation lock procedure that doesn't (doubly) punish players for their ping.
• Additional option to only automatically face targets for actions that require you to face target, to hide your EXP bar at max level, and similarly obvious choices.
• Showing shield (and predicted DoT) values on any and all HP bars.
• Chat messages timing out and fading separately.
• Consolidating abilities that would not (or, especially, cannot) be options at the same time anyways.
• Improved targeting (especially, being still able to target enemies who are too tall for their nameplates to fit on your screen when playing in Ultrawide aspect ratio without having to back out the camera to max and aim up from the floor...)
• Other UI improvements, including improved retainer and inventory interface, better world map, status effect filtering and prioritization, conditional UI elements, etc.
• Job-specific, auto-swappable UI layouts.
• Queuable macros (at least to their first usable action), so we can set up targeting schemes as we like.
• ...so on and so forth....

Thereafter, the big stuff:

• Put in the time to develop systems to save time later (else we'll just end up with longer and longer delays between patch cycles). Challenge modes and developing a means of syncing old content up, for instance, could be huge -- as could be, say, player-made (obstacle/combat) courses.
• Seriously reconsider avenues of time-gating and gear-treadmills as compared to just letting people do whatever's fun for them. (I realize gear progression can be a factor in that 'fun', but it's rarely the sole one.)
• Take more risks, but only where willing to put in the full effort to flesh them out. Additionally, build those new things with an endgoal in mind (Step A prototyping for Step B, which acts in turn for Step C, etc.), but always in the interest of greater ambition, not to trickle out an initial plan over a longer amount of time.