While I still believe that open world HNMs can stay in XI where they belong, I wouldn't mind something similar to the ZNM series that existed in XI's ToAU expansion. It would be something to get players back into the open world.

For those unfamiliar you would farm up a certain number of Zeni (in XIV's case it could just be tomestones or something) and then buy a pop item from an NPC which you could then use to pop a notorious monster in a specific location. Once you had defeated three certain Tier 1 NMs you would trade the 3 items you got from them for a Tier 2 pop item and so on, all the way up to Tier 5 which was Pandemonium Warden. It did require a certain amount of NM grinding (especially to get T4 or T5 pop items). T1 could generally be soloed by certain jobs, T2 required 2-3 people, T3 a full party, T4 a full alliance and T5 needed entire linkshells (in it's original form anyway).


I just think something like this would make the world feel more alive, with players fighting tough NMs out in the open world for people to see. FATEs don't really achieve this. SE have said they are looking into more open world content but I guess we'll see what they bring.