To be fair FFXIV does have problems in terms of not taking risks. I don't think they need to reinvent the wheel but they need to look at the connective tissue between all of the systems and game modes introduced since ARR.

Nearly everything is self contained or instanced which makes the game feel smaller. For example I think it would be cool if we had more difficult world bosses (FATES) that dropped fun cosmetics and Triple Triad cards. It would be cool if there were treasure chests in the world, and jumping puzzles (GW style but less intricate since jumping in that game is way more precise) and I would love it if I could see gathering nodes in the world as a combat class and automatically swap to a gatherer when approaching them. Seeing a notice that I would need to be x gatherer type at y level would make me want to gather more.

Basically, let the open world be a connective tissue instead of something that you just run through to get to the next cutscene. I think this would make the game feel more alive without actually having a negative impact on endgame flow. If they want to shake it up further from there they can but right now I'd consider the open world FFXIV's least used feature. Looking literally any other MMORPG would give them ideas.

Open world stuff is also great for story foreshadowing. Seeing Fandaniel's spires at the end of Shadowbringers was exciting to me. They rose against the skybox and I just stared at them wondering what horrors they'd bring (the answer, of course, was not many but that's a separate rant).