If you think about FF games at every point in time, their gameplay mechanics were never really THAT novel. Most other rpg companies had something similar, maybe even better. What made the FF's shine, however, was the intricate characters and stories the creators gave us.

Let's face it, rehauling the game mechanics is going to take a long time to do. Even with a talented and well meaning team, it's going to take several months. New NM's/dungeons, at least one month.

But SE can deliver something engaging right now with the current flawed battle system and no additional zones. Give us quests with truly interesting sidestories. Even if they're not super challenging, even if the battle is not that fun, I'd stick around for that. I'm not talking about some stupid quest where I have to retrieve cursed lenses to help out some no name NPC. Remember in Chrono Trigger, those sidequests you'd do to get uberweapons for the characters where you'd learn the mystery behind Sir Toad's past. That's what I'm talking about.

Think about manga or comic books. One writer can come up with like 10 pages that engages a reader to the point where that reader is hooked for years. That story takes time to draw. FFXIV has a premade canvas. Imagine if they hired 4 writers to just write stuff on the premade canvas. A couple good stories per week. If these were good enough, people would stay around for sure until the rest of the stuff was ready for launch.

The thing I hate about MMO's is the story is generally garbage. Chains of Promathia was the first one I played that was really satisfying. And it wasn't the gameplay (as good as that was). It was really the story. Don't you remember looking to the next quest to figure out what was going on? They can do it again. They can do it now.