What does Heavensward actually bring to the table as an expansion?

[Kosmos992k]

That's the issue someone in another thread brought up though, the game itself and the way it's built with a weekly lockout encourages rushing because otherwise you'll fall behind.

How exactly does a mechanism explicitly designed to prevent the top tier players from being too far ahead encourage rushing in any way?

[Evtrai]

How exactly does a mechanism explicitly designed to prevent the top tier players from being too far ahead encourage rushing in any way?

Because if someone who doesn't have the time to play, for A or B reason din't play for say 3 weeks, they fell behind the rest of the players on a weekly cap wall trying to catch up, they will be unable to catch up as fast because they are behind a 450 weekly cap, and will probably not be able to get a static or group to progress, anyone who is trying to progress through savage and din't get to clear up one area for a week, they are also falling behind in progress due the weekly cooldown and will not get a gordian page.

Flying
3 new classes
max level increase with everything that comes with that.
red scrips
blue scrips
aetherial nodes
legendary nodes
Seal Rock
new pvp levels, gear, skills.
Master crafting III books
A/S/B ranks with ranks 1, 2 ,3, hunting
Large scale leves
Ishgard and all the new zones
20 new triple-triad cards and another rank i believe (can use 4, 4 star cards)

what else? I'm sure i'm missing some things.

You speak like the bolded things don't sound more like a free patch than an expansion or like some are even relevant or aren't forgotten, some are not even really used like at all like "Large Scale Leve battles", the scripts the currently most hated new thing for crafters since Heavensward, and another reharshed terribly done mechanic that the majority of the population have been complaining in the way it's been executed which is hunts. If the non bolded parts weren't there I would almost trully think this is just patch.

[Fendred]

How exactly does a mechanism explicitly designed to prevent the top tier players from being too far ahead encourage rushing in any way?

Players who don't meet the weekly cap are permanently behind players that do meet the cap in terms of gear progression. It's not really a reason for rushing dungeons more so than a reason for running dungeons too much, which in turn makes people want to rush them to get through the weekly slog faster.

Even if they wait for the next patch that removes the cap, they will end up spending more time running dungeons than those who already have the old set because they would have to pick up the old set from older content, possibly putting them behind on whatever the new weekly currency is.

And that's why we'll probably never get complex dungeons or the like. Everyone wants to do things as fast as possible and will take the shortest route to get there, which is why a lot of people hate the newer dungeons having speed bumps.

I think the player reaction generally shows people like the Heavensward story, but not the underlying dungeons. The Aery, for instance, is designed with the same kind of thinking as Neverreap and Fractal. The one thing the Aery had that the later two do not is that it is a story set piece. When I was tanking, I became pretty annoyed at rerunning the Aery for a vanity set just as much as I was annoyed at running Neverreap and Fractal as a monk.

I can't think of a single memorable experience (in terms of combat) from a single one of FFXIV's dungeons. In contrast, I can still recall running various dungeons in WoW, FFXI (open world), and The Secret World. It's as much a problem of the one-shoe-fits-all combat leading every battle to play the same way as it is the dungeons being one long hallway. Every group of enemies is virtually the same kind of threat we faced in the dungeons that came before. If the experience of running the dungeon isn't worth it, the only things left are the gear drops and tomes.