As for what I would love to see in future installments...
I'm perfectly fine with classic ATB, granted there's more to it. Something that will make battles a lot more deeper and interesting, like junction system for instance. Make me love it's world as much as I love main characters because setting is equally important. Each Final Fantasy tends to have tons of beautiful locations, though the world itself and lore in general are usually shallow, save for Ivalice. WRPG's are pretty good at this, lots of trivia for us to read about it's world, characters and former major events through out the game should hopefully fix this.
Add more monster variety, color swap monsters in earlier games and those with little to no difference in later are silly to say the least, Final Fantasy VIII & IX are I believe only games in the series that don't suffer from this issue. Huge open areas to explore, tons of sidequests, and fun mini games to kill time, in fact Hunts & Triple Triad should be mandatory in all future games. Preferably tons of fan service or allusions if you will. Most importantly though, the way a story is told. Take Final Fantasy IV for instance, those fake deaths really chipped away a potentially great story. For once drop down that generic bullshit "love always prevails", what can I say, WRPG's have spoiled me.
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