To me the ffxiv overworld is obsolete. Not only does it feel ridiculously small thanks to all the teleportation points but its even made completely ignorable thanks to flying.

However, more so than point out what is wrong with it I'd like to point out what would make me like it.

For one the current mobs they may as well delete. To really convey a sense of adventure/danger mobs should be dangerous enough that you wouldn't want to engage with them, but you could beat if it came down to it. This causes you to navigate areas in a more calculated way. To me the best tuned mobs for this aren't Eureka's, it's actually Orthos/DDs. Those mobs are all beatable, but you wouldn't necessarily want to engage them unless you had a reason to.

This alone would automatically make zones a million times more interesting to navigate instead of boring me to sleep.

Then, we would need quests that would give us reasons to travel the land on foot or by mount. It could be transportation delivery quests or retrieval quests that weigh you down as an explanation why you can't fly and make a snooze fest out of everything. an easy currency that you can accrue to purchase cosmetics for these types of quests would be plenty of entertainment.

The game could also stand to gain remote areas that have either small villages/ shrines /locations that are not accessible by teleports or flying, the journey which is also paved with these dangerous mobs and the NPCs in said locations could sell unique wares that are expensive and act as gil sinks.

-Another example that would be interesting is that these shrines or points of interest could contain unique buffs that would not break the game but make the pilgrimage worth it for those seeking adventure. Say one of the shrines upon reaching it and receiving its blessing your gear no longer wears down for 48 hours causing you to need to repair it. I can see this being of use to raiders before savage and they could easily party up to make the journey safer. These would be overworld zones, just off beat paths. Not instanced.

Other examples could be one making all your teleports free for an X amount of time, another increasing movement speed outside instances, negating fall damage in the overworld even during combat or exploration zones like Eureka.

As you can see none of these are game breaking and it adds a sense of life/adventure for those who like to travel and give them perks that are enjoyable, but people wouldn't throw a fit they have to do this content to get it if they don't want to.