- Model the world after XII, which means a bunch of cities that look like real cities as opposed to having only a few NPCs. Many NPCs would have no dialogue at all, as with XII, and cities would be huge. Most of the buildings you would not be able to enter (they're houses, upstanding heroes don't walk into houses and casually loot the place).

-Fantasy setting, as opposed to a modern/cyberpunk setting. This is Final Fantasy. It should be fantasy.

-Somewhat believable ecology. Again along the lines of FFXII, but with stronger monsters further away from cities and towns. Also, have less ferocious animals appear in the wild that don't need to be attacked (but can be if desired). Looting system is much like XII, but fix the steal mechanic so that you can't take pelts off animals before you kill them.

-Airship obtainable early, and with the same basic mechanics as Flammie from Secret of Mana or the airship from FFVI. You can fly over the world and actually see it from above. Landing would be in designated areas, and there would be no walking on the overworld map, as with FFXII.

-Politically-driven storyline with believable villains and an ambiguous evil factor. I've little interest in the cliche "heroes go forth! Save the world!" plotline that many Final Fantasies (and other JRPGs) love to cater to. It's fun the first few times, but it's starting to get old.

-Huge world to explore with a lot of options not in the least bit pertaining to the main plot.

-Uematsu retired from doing FF music, let the man rest. See if Yasunori Mitsuda will do the music, if not, there are many talented composers, both Japanese and otherwise, that might be hired for the score. Music will be classical-themed and will be used to help set the mood and emotion of the scene, as is its best function. Effort will be made to make the score memorable, so it doesn't fade too much into the background.

-Characters will come with a predisposed statline and will enter the party as a noviate-level class. From there, they can advance to other classes as desired, but are locked into their advancement when they do. Both class and character will affect how baseline stats work, so turning a high physical low magic character into a mage class will end up with a mage who can still deal good damage with physical attacks.

-On the subject of characters, include a wealth of playable characters to choose from.

-Skills are learned through leveling up in a class, following skill-point trees depending on what one wants from their class. This also gives flexibility, giving a mage class a Magic Sword progression, for example, in order to give the option of a balanced warrior caster. Skill reassignment is available, so that players don't have to worry about screwing up their party.

That's the basics, anyway.