With the upcoming changes I know there will be Airships and Chocobos to come, and while I'm excited about this, I'm also rather unsettled about Anima. Again, a touchy subject, people like having it the way it is and others think it ruins the game. Now I know Anima will be seeing some changes in the next few patches too, but I will still suggest a few things, so here goes!
We need to be able to quest to get an airship pass, otherwise, no ride! it's not to late for this. That pretty much my only suggestion for airships. :P
Chocobos! I think rent-a-chocos should be there, but so should the ability to raise your own, similar to FFXI, so here are some points to make, again, numbers are just theoretical, so don't take them literally.
Rented chocos should kick you off after a certain time of riding them, in which case you start walking or just go to the next closest rent-a-choco stand (from now on known as choco stand) or airship or whatever you wanna do.
Raising a chocobo should be the "quest" that you need to do before you can rent one. Sounds silly, but if dunno how to ride one, why would they let you rent one? They need to know you're a safe person to lend you their chocobos!
Raising a chocobo's quest should involve looking after the chocobo from egg to adult, gaining it's trust and strengthening it's stats, working out it's personality and eventually gaining the chocobo's trust in you. Once you gain it's trust, you will gain the choco whistle that lets you ride it, and also finishes the quest, granting you the ability to rent chocos too!
Chocobo whistles will have charges on it, you will need to do [something] in order to get these charges back once you run out. I dunno what yet, a quest? maybe pay someone to repair it for you? I dunno, you guys can suggest?
Now it's probably too late for this but you guys are redesigning the zones so I can only hope I'm not too late with this. Lets say you rent a chocobo and after 30 minutes of riding you get kicked off. How about adding zones where you need a chocobo to get to through long, thick grass, slightly deep water or high cliff edges that only chocobos are able to traverse. The best part is that some of these zones can be more than a 30 minute chocobo ride away, so in order to get into some of these zones you will need to call your own chocobo when you get closer to the zone's entrance (or whatever's blocking your way that you need a chocobo to get past). These zones will be now known as ChocoZones, just for now..
ChocoZones can be anything, secret zones to explore, beastman encampments, perhaps even a zone for chocobo digging! (hot or cold anyone?)
Renting chocobos will cost more if renting from an encampment than it would in the cities.
Well now we have my chocobo ideas out of the way.. how about we talk about the Ferry. Now it's so boring compared to barges and ferries in FFXI.. You had mobs and sometimes NM's spawning on board, sometimes even pirates! give us this fun back.. And while you're add it, add some damn scenery. Maybe dolphin type things at the front of the Ferry, or a whale or something. It needs to be fun to travel.
Now it's time for the Anima talk. Sorry to bring this up, I do not want another heated thread about this, but with other transports coming in, Anima becomes more obsolete so it shouldn't matter too much what I say.
Anima takes the fun out of the game, sure it's fast and everything, but it's not an accomplishment using it, how can you call yourselves adventurers if you don't even do that. Here is what I suggest;
Anima should cost points earned by Behest, quests and levequests alongside gil.
You can only have a maximum of 25 to start off. to go above this, you need to quest for it.
Each quest you do to raise the max Anima will get progressively harder.
Each quest will raise Anima a certain amount, for example "Quest 1 raises to 40, Quest 2 raises to 55, Quest 3 raises to 70, Quest 4 raises to 85, Quest 5 raises to 100".
In the future, more quests should become available to get more maximum Anima.
To get the ability to use anima, there should be a basic starting quest from starting the game (maybe challenging to rank 5 and almost impossible for rank 1).
Do not make it possible to be able to get teleported by someone else using Anima to a place that you have never been! Otherwise you would not have earned that area yourself. I do not know if this is fixed now but it used to be possible from my knowledge.
Well, that's my Anima ideas, and as you know, numbers are theoretical and and whole concept needs ironing out but I think I explained it well enough. And remember, airships and chocobos will be added so Anima will matter less. The reason I suggest this system be in place is because being able to teleport anywhere is a massive gift and at the time is the only transport, but with more transport options this should be an ability that you need to work for, just like riding chocobos or getting the airship pass. Auto-regen anima points is something that you aren't working for, and thus is free transport, something that needs to change. This also means that I will have a harder time getting around, so like I said, it's a system that may not sound good to you, but it's a system that is there for the good of all players, not myself.