I was looking at a few threads around relating to storyline quests and how people want more of them but not many had suggestions to how to make future ones better so I thought I would throw a few ideas out there and if anyone has any ideas feel free to add them in.

One of the biggest things that needs to be done is use the tech. The bigger cut scenes seen in storyline quests Lord Errant and Futures Perfect should be the norm not the exception. Those scenes are incredible and really add alot to the story but when there are only 1 or 2 of them it really makes the storyline lack luster. In future storyline quests scenes like that need to be alot more common.

In tune with that suggestion the scenes(in general not just the detailed ones) need to be voiced. Having a character voiced adds ALOT of life to the characters and world and can help add attachment. The storyline quests thus far start with a few scenes that are almost entirely voiced and then taper off into pretty much no voice until the last scene in Futures Perfect. That just doesn't make sense however in a way it makes sense because of my next point.

Storyline characters need to be unique characters. Not copy and paste character creation characters. What I mean by that is the characters(for the most part) could be created with the character creator. Doing that makes the characters lose impact as you see a ton of people already running around looking the same. For example Minifilla seems to be a somewhat important character in the Ul'dah quests however she looks like a generic NPC. Think of the lose of impact the COP or Zilart storylines would have had if Prishe or Lion looked like any other NPC. Characters should not be able to look like the characters in the story line. The characters should be more distinct in both looks and what they wear.(after all how are we supposed to care about the story and by default the world if the characters look copy and pasted?)

Back to the voice bit for a second. Get better voice talent. While none of the voices I heard so far in the game were outright bad(more like they were just bland or emotionless) they don't come close to the quality of voice work we have seen in games like FFXII and FFXIII.(and other games like Tales of Vesperia or Disgaea 3) The thing that strikes me as odd is the random foot pads seem to be voiced by Crispen Freeman(very talented voice actor in gaming and anime) and someone of his caliber should be voicing a real character not a generic foot pad or something like that. I bring this up because if in the future SE does add alot of voice work it needs to be good. If it's terrible or lack luster it might as well not be there at all. It needs to be good enough to create attachment to the characters.(in line with that it would be nice for the player character to speak. I know it goes against what SE wants to do but it would add alot to the game. Perhaps have a voice selection in the character creator and during scenes give players the option of several responses and the character will speak those responses so the player still feels it's them in control)

The big thing that all of this does is make you care more about the characters and if you care about the characters you will care about wanting to save the world they live in. As it stands with the current storyline quests you don't really care what happens to any of the characters(as the better ones appear only twice in the whole story line). And as such don't really care about the world. That really needs to change in the future.

All this said I don't expect any of this to need to be thought about or anything until the next real storyline starts(and I mean new one) which would more then likely be when the first expansion comes out(if the game makes it that far). But these things take alot of planning and such and SE needs to start thinking about what they are gonna do in regards to these problems.

If anyone has any feedback or suggestions to add to the mix feel free I would love to see what others are thinking.