OK, just a comment on the general line of complaints/praise for the old alliance based battle systems like Dynamis, etc. THIS WAS ALWAYS A MATTER OF PLAYER PREFERENCE IN PLAYSTYLE! You never had to do Dynamis or HNMLS or Salvage or whatever, the choice was your based on how you liked to play. That's why there was always so much side-grade gear-to give meaningful rewards in the playstyle that any individual player preferred. If there was any hole it was in viable end-game purchaseable gear from crafters, which robbed people who didn't mind grinding for a ton of gil to purchase gear in order to avoid the hard fights an outlet for their playstyle.

No system is going to please everyone, period. My personal preference was the alliance and larger battles, but I'm completely aware that not everyone shared that preference. Conversely, lots of people like the !! proc systems, I loathe them, again my personal preference. I'm not alone in my preference, and not too many other players are alone in their preferences.

I personally feel that SE needs to develop multiple playsystems catering to the varying playstyles players prefer, but all resulting in comparable quality rewards-if not the same rewards. As an example, why can heavy metal plates only be gotten as drops in VW? Is there some dogmatic law that says your grind in whatever system has to preclude you from rewards from any other system? Especially considering that a trial path may force you from 1 system into another? Look at a full empy path-regular NMs to Voidwalkers to Aby to voidwatch, 4 playstyles that only have killing something as part of your grind as a common element? How does that satisfy player preferences?

SE derives their income from players grinding the time sync, what does it matter how they grind as long as they spend the time and thus the user fees? BTW, making multiple paths would also go a long way to curtailing alot of the griping on here from people who want to bash this or that content, and other players for not wanting to do this or that content. I for one am all for anything that might reintroduce a degree of civility to the game, and to these forums as well.