FFA or Free For All PVP Zone where it's just for fun. Like even if you wanted to face your friend in some roleplay. There could be two sections, single combat and multi-combat. Meaning in single you won't have to worry about other people interrupting and killing your fun or on the other hand your enemy or you getting help from others.
I was REALLY hoping you would incorperate gambling into the Gold Saucer but it honestly feels like you played it safe and idk maybe to thwart gil sellers cus it could be another way of trading gil, which is bumming cus it sucks how much gil sellers effect our game sometimes when you think like that.
I don't even think you need to go as far as closing one server to open world PVP. You could have two versions and isolate these battlegrounds somewhere on the server. Like one could be safe FFA where you don't lose anything except maybe PVP rank and the other dangerous zone where you'd lose tradable items like potions and whatnot and maybe gear but the problem there is spiritbonding so probably not.
And make em big, don't confide us in small spaces cus Black Mages will wreck us if we're too close in multi-combat and oh god i don't wanna get hit by 10k+ crits and whatnot.
I don't know SE. I really just wish we had more content that could keep us playing. The Gold Saucer is great and I don't deny TT is pretty good and LoV is a step in the right direction as far as this topic goes but other than that all thats there is.achievements, glamour, minions and mounts.
I recall one of the interviews Yoshi-P was in and he said depending on the popularity of frontlines, they would then consider the idea of a PVP server. And that sounds great and all and I'm sure SE would love to see the Cash flow from every other dedicated PVP player switching servers but honestly a closed FFA PVP minigame on every server seems a lot easier imo.
But I can't expect something like this to come anytime soon or fast, just like we can't hope to get more jobs faster than we already are. MMO's take time, and it sucks.