I think overall, I would like to see a little less melodrama and lot more emphasis on tactical strategy in the gameplay.

I'm sick of character fawning over how tragic their lives are the stories themselves trying to wring every drop of emotion out of a scene until it feels like soap opera or a spoof of what real drama is. I need more subtlety and more things left unsaid rather than deep analysis or constant romantic kisses as the world explodes behind them. Its getting ridiculous. I would also like for them to stop with the AC Wire-Fu before it somehow becomes a godforsaken staple in the series. If I want cheesy Wire-Fu I play Devil May Cry, they do it better cause you have control over it and they don't take themselves as seriously.

The best drama I see in film or books, or even games, are quiet and there is very little talking. SE has been doing a great job incorporating body language into the games and I would love to see them press on to the point where we could cut down on the pointless dialogue sequences that only continue to destroy immersion. I also don't feel that drama has to have a resolution, so stop with the last minute epiphanies.

For gameplay, I would love to see a battle system where strategy is the utmost importance and no longer a faint illusion. I want the game to be challenging but use of good tactics save the day and cuts battles down to a few seconds. I don't want random encounters to return but and I feel FFXIII looks to have struck a nice balance so all of you fans bitching about the lack of a proper Fanfare theme in XII can get your cake and I can eat it too since I don't have to deal with random encounters anymore. Mostly, I want to see a system where exploiting elements is more important and you own party has their own weaknesses. I would love to see a FF that actually nerfs physical abilities. The Palings from XII were a godsend in making what seemed like routine battles into something a bit more exciting now that you can't use your Blade of Total Badass Epicness to slay the beast in one blow. I would love to see more enemies that are immune to physical or even have the ability to counter or reflect Physical a la SMT. Mostly I'm annoyed how much FF tends to favor physical melee characters. Mages are useful in the beginning but once you get that one set of armor/weapons/or abilities your warriors can solo the game. We need to nerf melee characters something awful and we need to rid RPGs of "Main Character" syndrome where the main guy is absolutely perfect in everything. No more statistical Cloud's, Ramza's, Terra's, or Squall's the main shouldn't be above average in everything.

Of anything, I just want a game where I can see the game over screen and its not because the enemies have such jacked up stats that you need to have even more jacked up stats to win. I want you to get into a battle, and you and the opponent have an equal chance of annihilating the other and it all depends on using strategy to take control of the situation in your favor as opposed to unleashing your "Ultimate attack of Epic Doomness" to one shot your way through the fight, but also on the flip side, I want the strategy part of the game to be flexible enough so you have multiple ways to win and don't have to figure out the "one token strategy" to win. No Zelda syndrome please.

For world design, I wish the series would use the worlds more. I feel XII was going in the right direction but it needs to hearken back to a few older games and push some of its good points even further. I want it big, I want to explore, and I want to trip over optional content. This is not to say everything has to be open ended but don't write a story that calls for one or the other. I want my linear dungeons but I also want my large open dungeons. Hell, make the dungeons linear but since we're ignoring the world map, the parts that count as an overworld map in the game should be open-ended. No more FFX roads.

I want the world to be fleshed out and I want it to also possess its own story seperate from the struggles of your own party and the main plot. Everything should have a place and every place should have a story and not one that needs to somehow be relevant to the main plot I mean come on, its a smurfing planet not everything has to be tied to the Ancients and their magical McGuffin that correlates to the Great War that correlates to the plans of the evil corporate empire from the future. You can't tell me that interesting crap doesn't happen in only one place and a 1000 years ago. Let's be realistic here. Regions and cities should be diverse and possess their own history and customs and I feel this has been waning a bit in the series.

I wouldn't mind seeing a world map again, not because I truly miss them but rather after playing older FF titles, I feel that we killed the idea before we fully explored how we can use them to create more immersive worlds. I' love to get on a world map that actually has trains, airships, and ships moving along seperate from the ones my party is using and maybe even coming across people also on the world map. I also don't want these lements to disappear as soon as I get better access to explore the world.