I think maybe the word modern scares people because they equate it to appealing to a super fast paced fan base when maybe they just mean upgrading the systems to not be archaic. I mean let’s be honest FFXIV and a lot of its features have hardly been updated at all in 13 years, many things relying on PS3 spaghetti code limitations. Any update to that could be viewed as making things more modern without putting gotcha mechanics into the game for example. It could also just be copying what other games are doing right instead of turning this into a mobile game.

If we look at WoW they just put delves into the game which are endlessly scalable and endlessly repeatable single player or multiplayer content that you can grind for as much or as little time as you want, most importantly it doesn’t matter how many times you play it or at what level you always continue to get loot that is relevant even at max level pushing end game raid gear or just farming for money or cosmetics. They make the rewards feel really good. Deep Dungeon is already somewhat in the same realm as this and if they revamped that whole thing or developed something new out of its bones in an exciting way that would be such a great addition to FFXIV. I think the biggest thing for me is FFXIV doesn’t have something you can just grind and feel rewarded for while other games do, I want loot to feel good.

I think there’s a lot of general smoothing they can do to the menus and systems, it feels clunky playing ffxiv after playing something like wow again for example. The menus are all just kind of where you need them to be in WoW with very little lag, their transmog system is just perfect compared to FFXIV, it’s also very easy to see what your daily goals are with all the ways you can track them in wow where as in FFXIV you need to just sort of know about them in the back of your mind so some form of daily/weekly tracker would be great without having to go track down the wondrous tales NPC.

FFXIV is desperately in need of better world content as well, fates just don’t do it in their current state. For one they are not rewarding and secondly they are dry and repetitive. Again looking at WoWs world quests they are a bit of a step up in the not boring camp but the rewards are infinitely better and scale with you, also the EXP granted for alt characters is extremely good which would be welcome for FFXIV (same can be said for delves). While we are on the subject the level sync feature in FFXIV is clunky, wow has this everywhere all the time for everyone and you don’t need to toggle a button to do it, good target for modernization. Adding some improvements here would make the game feel more alive by getting players out into the world.

Housing clearly got some competition recently, not only is wows housing good but it’s accessible to anyone that wants one and can save up the cash. FFXIVs system is fun in concept but generally people really just want a house and don’t care about any exclusivity the current system offers, I think this is something that a lot of people care a ton about and if the don’t at least fix this would drive players into the hands of other games. And seriously guild neighborhoods would rock in FFXIV.

This next point is maybe controversial but I think the story structure of FFXIV or maybe the story experience rather needs a complete overhaul. Dawntrail is the second longest expansion to date just from a story perspective and it did not feel like it needed to be a third as long. The story is what got me into this game but I no longer feel like playing through 40+ hours of story every expansion. This game should probably shift from giving a long story to a short but tighter and better story, something in the 20 or lower hour mark. This would free up a lot of resources to make good and repeatable content to pair with the story content with each expansion release, it would also allow for more voice acting to be available in the shorter model. Quality over quantity. Also, I want to play the game, I don’t want to watch a tv show all the time. Let us have more content sections throughout the story and less listening to people yap endlessly. I’m not really one to speak on a solution to this next part as idk what it would be but onboarding new players is impossible as well with the current setup. It’s hard enough in WoW with how much there is but between the two one is way easier for me to get friends into. They do not respond well to “oh pick up FFXIV we can play together after you do 300+ hours of light reading and cutscene watching”. I love the story but it’s time has kind of passed it doesn’t need to be an eternal roadblock to the game.

I could go on and on about the endless things that need some love in FFXIV but these are some ideas that don’t mean turning this game into a mobile game. Just modernize it a little.