FFXIV without HNMs is like christmas without cookies: sure you might get lots of nice stuff, but in the end everything loses it's meaning and the joy of living is gone D:

One thing I'd love is to have more dynamic HNMs. Maybe something like in Skyrim where you actually spot a dragon flying above the landscape and then you'd have to follow it around, maybe gather your LS meanwhile and see where it lands. Or there could be a way to get the dragon to land.

Also many people seem to think that gear must always be either better or worse than every other piece. It tells something about the depth of the battle system and character development if it's somehow very difficult to create gear pieces that aren't directly comparable to each other. For example, in FFXI as PLD there were different sets for magic def, DD, fast cast, enmity, HP, sets for tanking as /WAR, /NIN, /RDM etc. and you couldn't say that a piece in my DD set was somehow better than a piece in HP set. Both had their uses.

Now I don't have any level 50s yet and I don't really know about stuff, but if there's only one viable build for each class/job, I'd say that's a case of boring design. The question that should HNMs drop better gear than instances is just, in my opinion, based on a very narrow perspective of what the battle system could, or should, offer.

So basically what I'm trying to ramble about is more diversity, both in enemies and gear and I really really don't see how adding HNMs could in any way be categorically a bad thing.