I look through the forums and everyday we got players here with some interesting and cool ideas (and not so great ideas) that could help break this game out of its rut.
However
I'm not sure if Naoki Yoshida understands what he is doing to his own MMORPG:
1. The Jobs feeling meaningless, more like copy and paste that reach the same conclusion which some forum goers have stated many times over. I think FFXI was the complete opposite of this if I'm not mistaken?
2. Lack of Custom Building for your jobs, I think the Job Diversity would help if there were passive abilities built into these jobs and other particular substats like elemental alignments (meaning a new materia system that have elemental sockets, so one could make a Fire Warrior or Ice Dark Knight). These are just a few ideas, I'm sure you guys got better ideas than I do (also I'm aware that elemental materia was a thing back then, but I think it can still work in a different way). Also have monsters be weak against certain classes like Avians weak against MCH/BRD.
3. Most of the normal monsters feel really meaningless, and their mechanics don't matter much. Maybe given its a relic from a time when MMOs were in a very different gameplay environment, but at this point most players have evolved, and so should the monsters in every corner of this game. Speeding up the mechanics would fix this problem pretty quick and might actually make dungeon monsters feel a lot more fun rather than something to be dreaded. I know Yoshi thinks these dungeons are fun, but in reality most people find it a chore because none of the monsters pose any real threat in most 4-man and alliance raids. I was so happy that one day when Thunder God Cid proved to be a real challenge and then he got nerfed (I just don't understand why that needed to happen).
4. There was some personal debate between me and a dear old friend who loved crafting if Crafting actually devolved after Stormblood (he left FFXIV when Crafting got very nerfed), I want your all opinions on this as I was not around during his ARR-HW era.
5. The Blue Gear every time its introduced also feels meaningless and its a waste of developer time to design all these clothes and gear only for it to be inferior to the Green Crafted Gear. It should be the other way around since Blue Gear seems like it was suppose to be a bit more special considering all the effort the Devs go into designing these things. Green Gear should be the first step, and then the Blue Gear being the 2nd step, and then finally Purple Gear.
6. Lack of Side Quest Diversity, now don't get me wrong the stories contained are interesting at times, but the gameplay involved in these is incredibly minimal and not very engaging and this seems like its been this way since ARR. I'm kind of surprised it kept continuing like this for so long. There were a few moments though that broke the trend, but then it goes back to what it always did.
7. FATEs, I don't think I need to say much how some people feel about FATEs for years on these forums. I think Bozja FATEs and Duels was incredibly a good step in the right direction and I wished Endwalker had followed through on this, but instead it was more of a copy and paste situation again. This ties in with number 3 above, I feel if the monsters were re-worked then FATEs could be a bit more fun to do and also FATEs need more diversity in terms of gameplay rather than always being the same situation, and these different situations are very few in each expansion.
8) The Remaining Grand Company Ranks that we will never get, I don't know where they're taking this, but it feels like a dead project that maybe someone on their development team gave up on. I think next time if someone gets a chance to ask Yoshi a question about this please do.
9) Empty Zones from a lore perspective, a lot of the landscape feels like it could tell a story, but in the end its just names slapped here and there all over a zone. The Lochs from Stormblood come to mind as it seems like half its zone areas on the map never ended up being used for anything. There is definitely a lack of local lore that maybe players could read or find out about, but instead its just a lot of empty void. Was Yoshi trying to make us come to our conclusions for some of these things?
10) PVP gradually losing its maps, Dead PVP Modes, and lack of PVP variety:
PVP should be one of those things that should be a good filler between major expansions, but all there is left is Frontlines and Crystal Conflict (before that being the Feast). The problem is Rival Wings which in my opinion offered more diverse gameplay, but instead players like myself is getting pigeon holed to play Frontlines for eternity and honestly don't find this fun at all after a certain point because that is all players want to do, I feel the Developers unintentionally dumbed down PVP because of how simple Frontlines is (and thus people want a quicker reward and also because of the achievements, mounts, and gear being more regulated to FL and while RW only has two mounts and a few achievements).
Now long time ago there were other Front Line Maps with different objectives, but these got removed for various reasons. To me this seem like a bad move when players could use more variety, and not having it taken away later. Same case for that one Rival Wings map that has been locked for years all because there was a balancing issue they never fixed for so long. Also removing the Feast Maps doesn't make much sense, why delete variety?
Finally PVP should not be boiling down to CC, FL, and RW. They had years to expand on this, and there is a lot of fun PVP modes they had not tried yet that other MMORPGs do. Better yet make something that is very original that no other MMORPG has yet to try (to our knowledge).
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There is so many things Yoshi's team has excelled at with this MMORPG, but there is just as many glaring weak spots that either he is intentionally ignoring and is aware of or he is not aware of how some players actually feel about this game, the curation of questions seems to be a bit of a major problem from what I understand.