EXP
The amount of exp needed to gain levels is way too high. First off there is really a lack of direction or anything on how your suppose to get exp besides doing guild leves which you are limited to 8 every 2 days or so. Even then if you do 8 guild levels the amount of exp is pretty abysmal once you hit skill level 20+. I got a gladiator to level 28 I occasionally logged in and did a few leves but after getting like 2-5k exp average of 3k when you need so much to get to the next level it just felt very frustrating and made me not want to log on the game much because the progress was way to slow
First off guildleves should give like 10-15% exp you need at your current level upon completion.
Besides grinding mobs over and over for levels there isn't any other ways to get exp. Whats worse is the game gives you no direction on where to go.
The game needs to give you direction on where you might want to go to exp on mobs, in interviews FFXIV like at E3 didn't SE say they wanted to get away from the pull kill mentality of FFXI? The exp grind seems far worse in 14 then it is in 11.
UI and Battle
UI, although it has been improved some it is still fairly unresponsive and commands take a fairly long time to execute. Still feels someone clunky and really designed with a gamepad in mind and not really keyboard and mouse. Simple functionality like being able to drag and drop my action commands on my hotbar, having a separate set of bars for each class so I don't have to redo them every time I want to switch classes. If your going to support switching classes at least give each one its on set of bars.
The pace of battle is very slow. There is a delay from when you hit the button on your hot bar to when it actual occurs in game. I want to see commands go off right when I hit the button not a few seconds later. Auto attack should also be added because spamming my 1 or 2 key a bunch isn't fun and really shouldn't take my resource bar for a basic attack.
Ease of Exploration Features
The game has been out over 6 months and there are no mounts. Having your own chocobos would be nice or at very least being able to rent them to get around faster. FFXIV limits how fast you can get around with anima the currency you need for teleports. This should probably be abolished because if you play a lot no doubt you will run out fast. Stuff like making a party is somewhat cumbersome because they have to be in front of you to invite them and there is no search or seek functions.
Probably take more development on this but flying mounts should be in the game. In the trailers it showed people with their own airship type device. Stuff like flight isn't in the game or close to being in it. Almost every modern MMO flying and exploration on the Z axis.
Lack of quests
I am sure Yoshi P has played a lot of other MMOs and realizes they have a lot of quests while FFXIV has very few and they don't really give you anything. There should be a lot more quests and they should reward you with items you can use maybe a choice of a few items and they should give EXP. I never seen a MMO besides FFXI and FFXIV that do not give exp for finishing quests. It gives players another way to level then grinding mobs all day long.
Lack of Content
FFXIV lacks any type of dungeons, instincts, raids, battle fields, ect. FFXI had this stuff bcnm, assault, dynamis, salvage and abyssea. A good mmo needs content so people can fight bosses kill stuff and gear up their character FFXIV is really lacking in this department.