Ironically, changing postures and doing animations for ffxiv's one of the simplest/easiest I've seen in any game using 3D programs like Blender. It always baffles me when they decide to hide our characters inside mounts so that they don't have to create a sitting pose on the mount.

Same thing with character poses; there's no real reason why we can't select a default standing pose. As you stated, it takes a few seconds before the character changes to your selected standing pose. These few seconds should be removed so that our selected standing pose is actually the standing pose used when you stop walking/running/sprinting; as well as our default pose in cutscenes!

Furthermore, would it hurt to add new running animations even if they're shared between the races? Forcing a specific style is something I'd expect from korean mmos who still have gender and race locked classes/weapons; not from a mainstream mmo like xiv.