Please make the placeholder tags do more than just put someone's name in the chat log. This doesn't really do much for us. Please make it so that the game recognizes the placeholder tags and targets accordingly.

This is the behavior in Final Fantasy XI and that is what all of the Final Fantasy XI veterans like myself expect when we type them in this game. Granted, these are two different games, but if you are going to give us placeholder tags like in the other game, they should work the same here.

I suspect it's an issue with the surname. Maybe we should do away with surnames as far as targetting goes. If there are two targets with the same first name, toggle between them, ordered by surname.

For example, you are in a party with John Doe and John Smith. You try to target one of them with "/target John" John Doe would be the one to get targetted. Press the Up Arrow and hit the Enter key to submit "/target John" again and John Smith is targetted.

Or...sorry, this one just came to me. Create a custom targetting category.
Type "/target John" and the targetting category changes from say "All" to "John" and then you can cycle through the PCs named John * that are in the area. Once you change the targetting category, the John category is removed.