What would make you feel connected to your character?

[Isanien]

Mora character customization options, residence areas, and the ability to interact with the world in general (e.g. being able to sit down in one of the bar chairs at the inn and have a drink or something)

[Chezen]

I missed that thread. I like my character, I don't feel disconnected at all.

[Rentahamster]

Have your actions in the world have a consequence. Let them give you a positive or negative reputation in the world. Individualize reputation as well: be nice to one NPC or group of NPCs, and they will treat you favorably. Be mean to a particular NPC or group of NPCs, and they will treat you unfavorably. Have various rewards based on either such behavior so as the player an make choices as to what he wants to do.

Let the player own more things. Mog house, chocobo, pet, etc. The more things a player owns and can customize and rank up, the more invested he can be in the game.

Let other players know of your achievements in Eorzea. Have leaderboards showing the relative achievements of different individuals or linkshells. Have a top ten listing of who was able to complete certain quests or leves the fastest. Foster more player to player competition and interaction, and have it leave an impact so players will want to be come famous on their server.

[Luhy]

I have zero attachment to my character. The only thing keeping me from deleting her is the fact that I love the Final Fantasy name... I don't even have hope in the new team since they keep changing silly unimportant things.

How to make players attached to their characters?

First, we need that sense of uniqueness for our jobs. Every WS animation looks the same. WSs happen so often and do so little damage that they dont feel special either. Every job is exactly the same. Communism doesnt work because there is no sense of individuality, thus everyone flees or rebels.

PvE + side content > we need a sense of community- working together against difficult challenges. We need NMs that drop pop items for other NMs and so on. Drops also need value. Drops with STR, VIT, DEF are all useless since they dont really affect gameplay at this point. Players have no value for anything they own or have killed.

Reputation- No one makes parties. No one fights world NMs any more since everyone has everything or just doesnt even want the lackluster items. No ones name means a thing and there is no way to party or interact with people outside of your own LS in a productive way.

*I'm supposed to log in tonight for the first time in a week to fight NMs, but my entire LS has every drop they need. It's just an attempt to force us to do something together, but I have absolutely no desire to join them. What does that tell you? 10,000,000 doblyns and 1,000 Uraeus mashing nothing but one button is not very fun... How CAN I be attached?