What would you do if you had control over FFXIV?

[Misplaced_Marbles]

-Dark Knight would not place their sword into the ground or hold it over their shoulder. (goodbye shoulder)

...That's the only thing you'd change? Wouldn't you rather they swing their sword like they are strong enough to actually lift it and like they know what they are doing, rather than clumsily and excruciatingly slowly bumbling around like they've never lifted anything heavier than a teacup in their life?

[HeyMcFly]

...That's the only thing you'd change? Wouldn't you rather they swing their sword like they are strong enough to actually lift it and like they know what they are doing, rather than clumsily and excruciatingly slowly bumbling around like they've never lifted anything heavier than a teacup in their life?

I would change some of the movement animations for DRK & WAR by looking at trained swordsmen that know how to use a great sword & large axe in combat- I'd go based off of more realism than anime super hero - To add; it was like 4am & I was only adding ghosts of ideas.

[TheMightyMollusk]

Assuming an ideal situation where budget and time constraints aren't an issue?

Recode the game from the ground up. The devs always talk about how they're hitting software limits and having to carefully work around them. Let's start fresh.

[grinkdaboy]

fire the braindead chimp who designed emerald weapon

[shao32]

If i have the control of the game development then I will:

- talk with my superiors to secure a larger budget, make them understand the amount of content we are developing and the need to keep them rolling without cutting anything, we have a larger player base and it's essential to have a proportional team to handle all the races, jobs and new content around them.

- double and maybe tripled the dev combat team, make teams on each role development to have dedicated ppl on tanks, healers and dps for better development of the even larger amount of jobs to secure a proper gameplay experience on every role and have the proper amount of manpower to develop ajustments to all of them mid expansion if necessary.

- improve proper communication with the job design team and the combat content design team to create content according to jobs capabilitys so no more current Healers and tank situations and proper scaling of game difficulty, no more face rolling content due powercreep.

- hire more modelators to handle properly the amount of races we have, no more developing new races/updating vieras-roghtgars in the "free time" and make plans to make the new races to catch up with head customization in a proper amount of time even if cost the other races a few hairstyles for a few patches so they are on par as soon as possible.

- increase the community devs efforts on communicating with the player base in the forums, specially on job related changes so even if the answer is "we appreciated your feedback we are delivering x, x and x concerns to the dev team, please understand this not guarantee this matters are going to be resolved, we appreciated you patience and wish you a lot of fun in eorzea" every month more or less to boost the morality on the forums.

And that will be all for now, in resume secure a proper gameplay experience in both combat and character customization while I secure a proper amount of content with room to add new stuff without sacrifice what ppl like now, like dungeons.

[Dragonblanco]

Haha, at least getting started on answers. I guess let me be fair and put some of mine.

• Hire more GM and encourage them to be more proactive in the community
  
• Hire more moderators for the forums and have them engaging in chat more often
  
• Expand Hall of Novice to include all key mechanics
  
• Build/upgrade new servers, perhaps expanding on region and helping to specify so players know which is closer to them for a better connection.
  
• Implement the ability to request duels in areas outside of Wolves' Den
  
• Remove kupo nut requirements for mobile application and let it have full use, letting players use Market and their inventory from phone...if they want to pay the extra monthly fee
  
• Integrate functions in chat, such as letting there be clickable links for Discord
  
• Modify New Game+ to include experience and gear. Let the person fully experience the game over without having to make a new character, or at least give the player the option (but gear can't be sold or desynthesized. only purpose of rewards is to continue story in New Game+)
  
• Add more options to "Report Player" than just RMT
  
• Keep existing housing and system for players who choose it but expand the amount of plots. Then add instanced housing that anyone could buy with no competition. The difference would be instanced housing wouldn't have visible neighbors or the scenery you get in normal plots, but you would have land and an actual house to do with as you please.
  
• Make sure all (important/MSQ) cutscenes had voice actors. I'm not sure why they only partially voiced it and left the other half or so with nothing.
  
• Remove mentor status from anyone who isn't actually serving as a mentor. (plenty who got the crown but then never help in mentor chat).
  
• Add world chat
  
• Create some weird and awesome dungeons, raids, and trials. (Like maybe we'd be able to go up against a boss like Ragtime Mouse. One of the mechanics might be where he becomes immune and asks a question. The group has to attack all the wrong adds and leave only the right answer up unharmed. If you fail, you're penalized randomly like maybe his damage will be doubled or you're given status ailments that can't be removed. If you answer correctly, the group gets buffed and he loses immunity).
  

To be honest, I've got a LOT of other ideas. But I'm falling asleep as I'm writing this, so off to bed I go! I hope to see some really awesome answers added by people. (also still waiting to see how many people say anything about bots or RMT. If that truly is on anyone's radar lol)

[Aurida]

1) update glamour to be sensible. If you have a job on which you can wear a piece of equipment, you can use that piece of equipment for glamour on all jobs freely at any time

2) feast reward rework. top 100 rewards from seasons that are more than a year old can be purchased with wolf collars, which themselves can now be purchased for 20000 wolf marks in addition to the amounts for ranked season rankings

3) ability to ban duties from appearing in roulette when solo queuing (excepting mentor roulette)

4) honestly just rework achievements to be less grindy schlock. doing something 10/100/1000/50000 times isn't meaningful or interesting. Promote more stuff like the BLU party achievements or fishing boat stuff that makes you do content in interesting ways or demonstrate proficiency

5) delubrum reginae normal's first boss's first move automatically kills you if you don't have an essence up

6) hunt NPCs in each zone tell you whether the S rank is currently spawnable or not

[Kusanagi7]

Delete pvp
Enforce the TOS
Hire a team to work on the gold saucer n breath back life into chocobo racing

[Alestorm]

Reinstate the current leadership should it have been removed in my hiring and walk the heck away. I know nothing about game development, but might leave a small wish list of things for them to maybe look into; which I would leave at their discretion to consider or not.

[Payadopa]

delete cats

Edgy.

•challenging mid-tier content for 4 ppl
•difficulty sliders that go beyond normal
•at least some threats in the overworld (like Critical Engagements from Bozja)