FFXIV: The Fear and the Reality
No one is wearing gear this good yet, much less doing anything this epic.
I purchased FFXIV knowing I was going in to a game with a host of issues. The problem is with a game this big and you really can't half-ass it. I'd hate to be Blizzard trying to make a World of Warcraft 2. Sony Online Entertainment crashed and burned trying to follow up Everquest with a solid offering. It's a really hard thing to do. That said, Square Enix has not only had plenty of time but an abundance of feedback. They also pulled a huge budget for the title.
Part of me thinks all the money and energy went in to making the most visually impressive game possible. There's no MMO that can compete visually with FFXIV and few gaming titles can period. Sadly, I don't subscribe for pretty pictures so lets get to the problems:
The user interface, you should be able to queue multiple battle comands (and see the resulting string visually and be able to manipulate the actions in line). Also, you should be allowed to sort and manage multiple inventory items at the same time. Finally, the UI lag needs to be cut dramatically. This one is silly because, the UI lag wasn't this bad in FFXI (where it still sucked). This is the biggest problem with FFXIV right now: user interface lag. It's at the point where it's bearable enough to play and complain about it constantly and ruining the overall game experience.
I'm convinced that if the UI was worked out the market wards wouldn't be so much of a hassle. If we could quickly go through retainers and apply filters item lists, life would be far easier and browsing multiple retainers wouldn't be so much of a hassle. On the topic of the market wards, sorting the market wards won't drastically help the current situation. It'll still take a really long time to go from retainer to retainer and in the end, each character will need multiple retainers in order to sell all of their wares (costing $1/per extra retainer no less).
IMO, I think some sort of market ward notice board or advertising system would make things easier. That way, players can advertise a single item -- or maybe 2-3 and you know who you're looking for. Even better would be a fee paid for sellers to appear on a directory of stores -- then you can pick the retainer/store name from a list and be warped right to that player's bazaar. With the current loading system, it takes forever for shops to load and if there are too many people they don't always show up.
In addition, we need a way mail system for sending items and gil. It can be a regularly scheduled delivery system that we have to pay fees for (based on rank and/or % of gil -- possibly over a certain threshold). The fact is, we need something. It's too much trouble to run from city to city just because a LS mate needs fish glue.
A Linkshell/Company retainer would also be nice with limited access of course. However, that's not a critical fix right now.
As it stands, crafting is fine -- don't touch it as a whole. There are bugs (I'm not a main crafter so I wouldn't know) supposedly so fixing those are of course important.
A minor annoyance: monster density is a little low -- but that's only because of the mass of players in the starting areas. I can tell that once the levels spread out a bit, it'll be fine.
I also wish there was a death penalty. I know I'm nitpicking this point though.
Battle regimens are cool, but as everyone knows -- they are ridiculously inefficient given the current implementation. Setting up and executing a battle regimen is currently rarely worth the 2-3 attack rounds you're going to lose in the process.
Of course, we need at least regional party invites. People complain about the current party seeking mechanic but I haven't noticed an issue with it outside of people simply not using it.
So in TL;DR fashion:
Fix the user interface lag.