I agree - FFXI had a great seek party system that could only be further enhanced now. What I liked about the FFXI system that this system is very much lacking:

1) Easy, clear way to search for party members for numerous types of tasks in any class/rank/faction etc - what we have now is neither easy nor clear
2) seek flags made it visibly obvious that someone wanted to party with you - you could see it if you were in range of the player or on a search - this was great!!! (The flag feature perhaps could be enhanced here by allowing players to toggle on/off the flag's appearance, if they felt it was obtrusive to their immersion in the game.)
3) you could leave a search comment explaining certain details that were very helpful to a party leader such as which role the player was willing/unwilling to fill, how close the player is to the next rank, whether or not the player had access to certain areas (such as already having dungeon access here... or still needing it), or any reason

Areas that FFXI's system could have used some help:
1) auto group was clunky - it sure would be nice to be able to auto group in areas where you really need to, such as behest camps
2) some additional search options would be nice - such as a checklist of roles to fill, "front line" "sideline" "back line" so party leaders can search for all players willing to play a "back line" job for example. Just searching by class doesn't always accomplish this, especially with hybrid classes and player customization/playing style

While I understand that not everything we had in FFXI needs to be copied over to this game, that particular seek party system really worked well and still holds up today against other games.