Fundamental Changes You'd Like to See for 7.x and onward

[NorthernLadMSP]

My biggest thing is to make healing fun again. Because it is not, and it used to be.

[midnitdragoon]

Combat system overhaul, like final fantasy xiv 1.0 giant dragon explosion treatment... Get rid of the 2.5 second cool down... Make special attacks slower but more impactful.... Make things so that I can actually chat and stuff during combat. Bring back small parties for exp....make the world feel dangerous.

[Midareyukki]

Character Customization - Expand the character creation and customization options the following ways, especially now that graphics are going to be improved:
+ Addition of missing options for the two latest races
+ Addition of more options for existing races overall
+ Options that reflect a wider global presence in your videogame. As an european white man, I point out how Eurocentric the majority of the choices we have are. There's very little in terms of other cultures and ethnicities being explored, and the only other major addition so far has been far eastern fashion in Stormblood. Not that there isn't any, just that it's quite rare, and the "typical neutral hollywood hairstyle" is what you see the most.
+ Have Jandelaine be able to change more to people's appearances, save Fantasias for race/clan changes
+ Improve on existing races (Higlander eyebrows, where they at?)
All without the removal of racial features.

Glamour
- Remove the job limit on non-unique gear pieces
+ In the event unique gear pieces are re-released, make them global as well (example: Virtu gear which is a re-release of classes' Memoria Misera/AF gear)

Old Content
+ More content options for Blue Mage
+ More options for the Chocobo Companion
+ More on the GC Rank system (or simplify the darn thing, as it's too long with very little progression in the past years)
+ More options for GC Squadron. As well as additions to the NPCs we can recruit (the latest two races are under-represented. Lore is not an excuse. If lore doesn't stop Au Ra and some Miqo'te from appearing, it shouldn't prevent Hrothgar and Viera after 6.0 either)
+ More/Better incentives to run old content than forcing them to remain alive for Relics.

Story (Main and Sidequests)
+ Less "chipper" characters that break sobriety and cause mood whiplash (Loporrits. Even for my friends who say they're fine and enjoyable, them being so dissonant to the mood established by us killing Zodiark and a new threat arising was awful)
+ Less death fake-outs.
+ Finish the Ivalice/Bozja story and respect the characters you add in them
+ Better lore. Hrothgar lore being watered down to "LOL Sharlayan Misconception" is not just dismissing Hrothgars, it made me not trust Sharlayan's image as a bastion of knowledge. Especially now that they are a lot free-er than ever before.
+ Make more use of your already-established lore. The only time I saw a proper use of existing racial lore was in Stormblood, and that was that. Eorzea feels less and less true to the books you published on it. And make it more interactive if possible (like having Astros be able to divine for RP purposes!)

General Content
+ Housing needs to be rethought. Island Sanctuary proved instanced housing works. The two systems can 100% coexist.
+ Better Housing Decoration system. The grid is a lie.
+ HUD improvements. I feel like there is an old-fashioned faux-medieval HUD from ARR and a more modern HUD in the latest menus added. Consolidate and standardize
+ Level Synch shouldn't revert your skills, only your stats and damage. If not, then rethink your approach skills and class flow, as the initial levels of any job are a bit tedious
+ Variant Dungeons are a good addition if anything for the lore they bring. Some normal dungeons appear barren hallways. Adding those snippets we find to our notebook would make them more interesting.

[vanaii]

a lot of good suggestions and a casual namedrop of the aesthetician

I mean you posted a lot of great suggestions and a lot of stuff I'd love to see, but I can't get over how anyone mentioned Jandelaine by name.

[Midareyukki]

I mean you posted a lot of great suggestions and a lot of stuff I'd love to see, but I can't get over how anyone mentioned Jandelaine by name.

...it's stupid but...

I have a hard time writing "Aeshtetician". It's honestly easier for me to call him Jandelaine ^^;

[ASkellington]

Job Design

• Healer Overhaul
• P.Range retake/overhaul (more support like)
• Resource management (NOT just job gauge - ex: MP/TP)

UI

• PARTY BUFF TIMERS FFS!
• Allow us to change buff/CD timer colors*
• Better customization of what buffs we want to track
• Optional locking system for HUD so its easier to line up elements you want
• HUD saver across characters

Housing

• Make lofts ACTUAL TOOLS we can use instead of having to glitch items we want on to them
• Give apartments various sizes from S to M to L so they actually CAN compete with housing

Glamour

• Remove role glamour restrictions already
• Viera/Hrothgar hats

Character Customization

• More faces for races other than Midlander
• Beards
• More hair styles
• Sliders (shoulder/butt/more height etc)
• Remove gender restricted poses; let us choose
• Remove horns locked to face for Au Ra
• Allow us to have more than one make up/face paint option
• Color wheel for EVERYTHING

* Can you see that number on Draw? Yeah me neither

[Recon1o6]

1. Job design improvement especially in the healer role. Heavy emphasis on job identity and diversity of playstyles, undo the 2m burst, undo the mass homogenisation, scrap the pure healer bs etc. Build jobs to be front loaded. Make multi classing beneficial but not required. Low skill floor, high skill ceiling
I want these addressed https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-healer-issues at an absolute minimum. An entire role should not be crippled like this.

2. Content shake up
Move replayability and longevity in content that's not time gated for its worth like savage and extremes are. Get the relics started at the same time as savage. More party size scaling content like variant dungeon. More duels and CEs without the time gating to get back into them after a wipe. Scrap dungeons and break out of the formula somewhat.

3. Battle design
Higher difficulty across the board that requires actual healing and punishes mechanic failure. Things like slow or paralysis or even twice come ruin so the onus is on the player not the healer to fix a mistake. Return of status effects, mp management and enmity. More randomness so skill is more than just "execute rotation on this jump rope"

4. Gearing
Role based loot in savage with a system like notoriety for pugs. More meaningful horizontal progression or alternatives for stats (pso2ngs is a good example of this, you can get BIS for dps, but its worthwhile to have defensive or utility augments on your equipment too otherwise you will die in a single hit)
Seasonal lockouts and limits scale with time passed. Didn't get an alliance raid coin in week 1? Dont worry you can get 2 coins in week 2. Week 3 you can have earned a total of 3 coins.

5. System changes
Get rid of that artificial doubling of ping. players should not be required to seek out 3rd party tools in order to double or even single weave.
Change error 2002 so you aren't booted out the game
Adjust the load in priority so the boss, heals and party members and overworld npcs/interactables are first and other players last.
Improve hit detection. Snapshots are still a problem
Overhaul the glam dresser data so its only loaded when the player opens the relevant menus.
Move all materia and fishing tackle into their own inventories.

6. Glamour
Remove restrictions on class glamour. Make more armour for none tanks. Unify variants so they can be swapped between.
COLOUR WHEEL

7. Housing
Instanced housing, ditch those damn pillars. Move stairs. Allow none fc access to submarine/airship without a house. Make a damn Z axis already

8. Character customisation
Draconic au ra and increased female height. Decouple horns from faces, hrothgar hair from faces etc. Give viera their actual digitgrade feet. Increase bust and butt sizes so they aren't looking flat as a board. Increased muscle definition. Increase hand and foot definition. Give highlanders eyebrows. Adjust the previewer to show different weather and get rid of the blue filter.

9. Story
A more realistic story. Permadeaths, no more kids in our gang and better villains not "bored yandere prince" and "moping creator and his space probe". More variety of races. Explanations for if/when villains defeat us. I find it incredibly jarring how Zenos beat us when we were fresh off of defeating the likes of Alexander.

[ASkellington]

Oh and I forgot this one too:

Glamour

• Enough with the non-dyeable sets outside of raids

No more alliance raids/leveling dungeons/level cap dungeons with nondyeable gear.

Its 2022. We can have dyeable dungeon gear. Raids can remain locked as an incentive to savage, but if I as a healer am going to be stuck with white robes for the next 10 years, even with lifted glamour restrictions LET ME DYE THE DAMN WHITE OUT

[TheMightyMollusk]

Raise the minimum running specs up to at least PS4 level, or PS5 if enough actually make it to market any time soon. Sorry, potato PCs, you're dragging us all down.

Expanded character creation. Of course.

Give character creation and fantasia use a 24-hour window to adjust things that don't work out in game as well as they did in the creation menu.

Expand the armoir. At the least, all of the glamour gear from the main story should be able to be stored in it. Or, alternately (and preferably), just a straight-up glamour log like WoW.

[AmpelioB]

1. Character creation preset
   
   
   There is a lot of stuff that you can't just rightfully choose when you make a character because everything is sold as a "package" rather than we "buy what we can" something that saddens me very much is that Au'ra horns are tied to their faces and the same happens with Hrothgar hairs and Viera bunny ears. making it that that a face preset is a "suggestion" rather than a package would be marvelous.
   
   
2. Classes
   
   Make thief a Starting job. that's it, I think its just really annoying to have a arr class gatekeep by level 10 10 years after it's implementation just because it was released a little late.
   
   Fully Separate Scholar and Summoner.
   That's it, just fully flesh out Scholar from Arcanist/Summoner so you don't have any worries when balancing both jobs just because they share a few skills, make it so scholar can be unlocked at MSQ 30 or ACN job quest but separate their roots in the gameplay aspect.
   
   
3. Cristal Tower
   
   On labyrinth of the Ancients and World of Darkness there one specific fight each where all three parties are separated, when you get late and is pulled to the job people always go to A spot as default, make specific spots for each party group so everyone isn't lumped out in a single spot (and you can do it since Mhachi and Ivalice feature duties that rightfully separate alliances)
   
   
4. Healers
   
   The separation of Pure healers and Shield healer didn't really affect much the healers job overall and being a healer is still quite bland, playing it didn't used to be like this during Heavensward or Stormblood but the dev team took this direction neverthless, AST and SCH used to have more interesting gameplay (cards where more diverse, energy drain lowered Aetherflow cooldown) but all this was butchered out from the healers and left them with a very stale gameplay that focus solely on healing.