Poorly worded title but I have no idea how to say this in one line.

Popular opinion seems to be that elements (which are currently useless) needlessly make combat tedious or complicated or create imbalances between classes/jobs, so we probably won't see these come into play anytime soon.

So how about doing something cool with weather? One of the things I thought was neat about FFXII was how weather could allow access to new parts of a map or cause special enemies to spawn. For example, when it rained, water levels would rise and you would be able to kick down some trees to make bridges. Snowstorms would cause high level ice elementals to spawn around the map. If I remember correctly, certain hunts or special bosses could be found only during certain weather (can't remember names of the mobs or maps off the top of my head since it's been years since I played it, but I vaguely remember a chocobo mark appearing only during snowstorms, a dinosaur boss in a sandstorm, and a dragon (Tiamat?) spawning only during sunny/clear weather).

Currently, the only aspect of gameplay affected by weather is fishing but I'm sure there's open world content that can be added to utilise weather effects. Even treasure hunts could offer different spawns and/or loot based on when the chest is dug up.