Japanese dev posts today (April the 21st)

[Verecund]

I think they should keep anima when other travel means are released, but do something a little different with it.

Maybe they could limit it to teleporting to capital cities and aetherial gates (not aethyrite crystals), making its function similar to what it is now, but placing more emphasis on using anima to ease population overflow from popular behest camps. Or they could place a cooldown on how often you can use anima when porting to certain places.

[Ayerc]

I think they should keep anima when other travel means are released, but do something a little different with it.

Maybe they could limit it to teleporting to capital cities and aetherial gates (not aethyrite crystals), making its function similar to what it is now, but placing more emphasis on using anima to ease population overflow from popular behest camps. Or they could place a cooldown on how often you can use anima when porting to certain places.

This is what I was thinking as well. Some of the runs between Crystal Camp and Gate take time, perfect for a chocobo. Cut the ability to teleport to the Gates, and chocobos can take us from camps.

They could also limit the number of Camps in new areas yet to be released, once we're well into expansions, the areas Anima can access could be significantly limited, compared to what we have now. The lore being that some of those areas are less developed/more wilderness, since they're further away from the developed cities, and the infrastructure isn't there. For areas surrounding Ala Mihgo (also possibly Limsa/Ul'dah/Gridania) maybe the Empire destroyed some of the Camps in their attacks, rendering them useless. It'd be pretty awesome to come across a few damaged camps, with the Crystals broken in pieces on the ground. Airships could be used to take us into these areas, a la Kazham Airship, or perhaps we could make the long trek via Chocobo.

I also think Airships should be used for much more than just transportation between the 3 main cities. Usage for deep expedition (like mentioned above) and air-based combat events (similar to the Ferry in XI) could make their presence in the face of the Anima system both practical and popular.