<30 FPS in town actually sounds about right. I'd turn off depth of field maybe?

My specs:

CPU 1055T @ 3.5 GHz
RAM 8G @ 1333 MHz
GFX 5850 1GB OC'd @ 870 MHz core / 1150 MHz memory
HDD 1TB WD Caviar Black

That's about all that's relevant.

I run the game as such:

  • Windowed @ 1080P
  • Multisampling: 8xQ MSAA
  • General Drawing: 8 (Standard)
  • Background Drawing: 5 (High)
  • Shadow: Highest
  • AO: Off
  • DoF: Off
  • Texture Quality: High
  • Texture Filter: Highest
I also capped in game FPS to 30.

In towns I sometimes get below 30, more so when it's Ul'derp where everyone gathers.
Loading times you can't do much about. Unless you get an SSD drive where FFXIV is installed in that drive. Any mechanical drive will load much slower.

Edit: People/NPC loading is due to the limitation of the game not popping more than 40?-ish characters on screen at any given time. So sometimes for other people to load, you'd have to run away and come back. Same thing with the wards. It takes me at least 10s for the retainers that aren't "starred" to pop.