NPCs should talk amongst themselves.

[AsterBarnivere]

NPCs should walk around the town instead of stand in place, and turn slightly when they see you and have a MGS style "!" above their heads when they have a quest for you or valuable information on a quest you are currently doing.

[Sypherblade]

Anyone remember The Legend of Zelda Majora's Mask? Each Npc in that game had their own lives. The game consisted of only 3 game days that repeated over and over and an Npc had somewhere to be or something to do during the flow of time.

Be nice if FFXIV did something close to this, give a good number of npcs actual lives. The cook spends hours x-y baking something for the adventure's guild...then during hour z....he sends someone to walk to the guild and deliver it...then the guild...serves it...and maybe a npc linkshell is there throwing some kinda party...

Get creative! can easily link 20 npcs to this simple 2 second idea.

[Rexes]

Majora mask was my favourite zelda game for a lot of reaosns one being as the poster above me mentioned, the interactivity between the residents of Clock town, they don't stand in one place but walk around and give valuable information, depending on the time of day and I can see FFXIV have the same feature where NPCs would walk around town say at noon, and the leves reset, and two of them would go "Have you seen the new batch of Leves at the guild?" and the other would just reply "New batch? Tis what I've been waiting for for days".

and this is just an example of something, a lot of places could be more lively, Class guilds could have people talking among themselves about Class moves and such, while say Cooks could discuss a new recipe and that would benefit the player that over hears the conversation.

You may get information about unusual stuff at DoL guilds, say you walk into the miners guild, and you see two miners run in through the door and walk to the counter while talking about a rare ore at (X,Y) location, that would benefit people who are looking for rare stuff.

Just a couple of suggestion off the top of the my head, wanted to contribute.

[Sypherblade]

To further develop into the above poster....

Maybe make some rare items become available during npc events!

ex. Some pro leather crafter walks into Grid from the gates...the guards welcome him back...he explains he just got done hunting some beast and skinned its rare hide....he then makes his march to a certain point in town and begins tanning the hide....then after so much time...you can buy the leather off him for a certain period of time then he closes shop and head back into the wilds.

Adventure's Guild has some famous rich man's son walk in with his groupies and he buys everyone in the house drinks to show off his wealth and whatever. During this event players can receive a free drink from the bartender and get a buff that lasts for an hour or two...

imagine your in one of the capitals and you see shouts of people saying THE RICH GUY IS IN TOWN!! HURRY TO THE ADVENTURE'S GUILD!

Make this random...and in all cities.

[Scherwiz]

I think a good example of this are the gunners in the musketeer guild in Limsa.

[quantumsaint]

Just wanted to say thanks to everybody for their contributions and support so far.

[MariyaShidou]

No to quest-giving/shopkeeping NPC moving around, especially if those have day/night cycle. This is not off-line RPG, in other MMO it's annoying to follow the NPC to get reward, especially when they have a very large patrol route that has nothing to do with the location of their own quest >_> unlike Behest. Thankfully only a very small portion of them move and they are not main quests. You think it's fun to pick lock the NPC house at night to dump your inventory junk? We don't have a wait 12 hours button FYI.

[Anapingofness]

I'm glad we see eye to eye Quantumsaint.

I know I've mentioned the lack of life in the game, a few times actually. One of the biggest things that contribute to that problem is that the NPC's are silent and stationary.

I approve of the suggestions and I hope SE decides to act on some of them.
I'd love to be able to see NPC's engaging with each other, the player, and the world.

I realize FFXII wasn't liked by many people but Rabanastre(for example) was so full of life and one of the biggest reasons why was because the NPC's behaved like real people. FFXIV being an MMO doesn't mean that the NPC's have to be statues basically.

In addition to having NPC"s actually behave like living people they need to dirty up the cities. I mean really, all of the cities are stupidly, freakishly clean. Even in areas where there the poorest of the poor live. D=!!

Attention to detail!

But you know what a really nice addition to all of this would be? If the NPC's actually remembered you.

I remember I tried out LOTRO when FFXI went down cause of the unfortunate events in Japan last March. The game was more or less fun, but what I really liked was that when you started the game the NPC's didn't think much of you. Then as you did more quests and the like they would greet you and remember you if you left. I thought something like that was cool because it felt like the player was somewhat important to the game world. o o;

Anyway! Thanks everyone for your great suggestions and to Quantumsaint for making this thread! I hope SE listens to some of these suggestions!

[Anapingofness]

To further develop into the above poster....

Maybe make some rare items become available during npc events!

ex. Some pro leather crafter walks into Grid from the gates...the guards welcome him back...he explains he just got done hunting some beast and skinned its rare hide....he then makes his march to a certain point in town and begins tanning the hide....then after so much time...you can buy the leather off him for a certain period of time then he closes shop and head back into the wilds.

Adventure's Guild has some famous rich man's son walk in with his groupies and he buys everyone in the house drinks to show off his wealth and whatever. During this event players can receive a free drink from the bartender and get a buff that lasts for an hour or two...

imagine your in one of the capitals and you see shouts of people saying THE RICH GUY IS IN TOWN!! HURRY TO THE ADVENTURE'S GUILD!

Make this random...and in all cities.

Wow... That would be really cool. O O; +1's and if I could I'd +1k you lol.

I know console games will have merchants do that but this way is much more cooler. Maybe he can even train people in a specific skill in their craft (adding on to suggestion 1)

and maybe the rich patron could give you some special drink or whatever that you wouldn't be able to get anywhere else, and you could get a pretty sweet buff. If he recognized you of being worthy? (fame based type of a thing?)

Anyway, great idea! /gold star

[Razor]

Back when I played Fable II I remembered that when it turned nighttime all the NPCs would walk away to random houses and be unnavailable until morning. When they would leave their homes and return to their post (and you could speak to them along the way).

I thought this was really awesome and gave much needed depth to the came, I would love if they implemented something similar here. As stupid as this is going to sound... having that NPC in XI's Sandy that walked across the way to deliver packages to the other NPC was amazing. Even though I obviously knew what they were going to say, it still made that particular area seem so much more alive even after 5 years of playing.