I'm pretty sure I've read some article that stated they will be bringing back a world map and it will be bigger than any FF world map before it. And that makes me very happy, because I love having a world map that I can roam about on. It makes the game so, so much better. I hated FFX's system on that part.

I think random battles are a good thing, especially if they're going to use a world map. If the battles weren't random on a world map, it would be... kinda weird. I guess.

EDIT: Although, that being said, I would like for them to have that ability they put into FFVIII that you got from Diablos, the one that makes you avoid random encounters by either 50 or 100%. I think it would be cool to have some kind of item/ability like that that slowly increased from 0 to 100% that you could turn on and off. That would be very nifty. It was one of the small but brilliant ideas put into FFVIII.