Goodness, just a small QoL on this ancient forum's interface...

[Raikai]

An active notification feed of replies to anything you post or comment.

Idk how people keep tabs on discussions around here when you have to manually check pages of responses to see if you had any interaction if you happen to not use the Forums for a couple of days.

I know the forums are littered with trolls, but there are still engaging discussions going around, and that would certainly be more enabled if you'd be able to keep better track on stuff. I mean, a notification icon always active on the main window is a standard feature on about any online discussion environment.

[Jeeqbit]

You mean https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/subscription.php

To be honest, it subscribes me to posts I don't even want to be whenever I participate, even though I try to uncheck it, so I just don't use it. But I thought I would point out that it exists if you want to use it.

[Raikai]

I know about it, but I still need to manually check pages of responses to see any replies to what I comment, which is a far cry from a good notification area (usually top right corner of an interface). Also having to open a separate window just to see what subscribed threads are currently active is kind of a hindrance, and I say that comparing to what is standard for such features nowadays.

[Avoidy]

This entire site gives me early 2000's internet forums vibes. It's a little endearing, but yeah, an intuitive notification icon would be tops.
Also making it so the search function actually worked, and clicking someone's name and viewing their profile didn't take several minutes to load. I can't count the number of times I searched for a specific phrase and came up empty, only to manually go through pages and pages of threads just to find the exact thread with the exact phrase and the search simply didn't find it for some reason.

[Raikai]

This entire site gives me early 2000's internet forums vibes. It's a little endearing, but yeah, an intuitive notification icon would be tops.
Also making it so the search function actually worked, and clicking someone's name and viewing their profile didn't take several minutes to load. I can't count the number of times I searched for a specific phrase and came up empty, only to manually go through pages and pages of threads just to find the exact thread with the exact phrase and the search simply didn't find it for some reason.

Although I think a proper dynamic notification feed is the most crucial point, most of the usability tools are due some modernization - the y2k era forum vibes is very accurate lol.

Looking at things like some of the ingame UI (even though It's way improved from how it used to be), or account page are, I feel that the whole topic of 'interfaces with good usability' might not be on the top of their priorities. They probably know they need improvements and they make them, but I don't feel that it's to the extent that is really needed.