Variation of content?

[Alahra]

And I'd love to see more. I really miss seeing them try different things like they did in 2.0

It's just tricky because just about everything they've tried to do outside of the main formula has met with mixed success or negative results so far. Hunts are and continue to be a mess that they seem to have given up on reigning in. Diadem's been a mess. Lords of Vermillion seemingly took a lot of resources and has been seemingly pretty unpopular. The Gold Saucer was pretty popular for the first month and is now largely empty most of the time. Triple Triad's largely died out in popularity as well. Treasure Maps were new but ultimately have ended up being an incredibly minor part of the game, which have varying levels of player involvement. Though not directly related when it comes to new content, their experimentation with difficulty in HW has been kind of a mess, too, and I suspect the team may be getting reflexively more conservative.

I think we'll still see one new type of content in Heavensward (perhaps in 3.3 or 3.4), but I imagine their main focus now is on getting the ship righted after the problems with 3.0/3.1.

[Miakisu]

It's just tricky because just about everything they've tried to do outside of the main formula has met with mixed success or negative results so far. Hunts are and continue to be a mess that they seem to have given up on reigning in. Diadem's been a mess. Lords of Vermillion seemingly took a lot of resources and has been seemingly pretty unpopular. The Gold Saucer was pretty popular for the first month and is now largely empty most of the time. Triple Triad's largely died out in popularity as well. Treasure Maps were new but ultimately have ended up being an incredibly minor part of the game, which have varying levels of player involvement. Though not directly related when it comes to new content, their experimentation with difficulty in HW has been kind of a mess, too, and I suspect the team may be getting reflexively more conservative.

Right. That's why I specify Battle content. Some people need a carrot for that stick. Seeing them implement minor gear possibilities may not be a bad way to go like Diadem.

[Alahra]

Right. That's why I specify Battle content. Some people need a carrot for that stick. Seeing them implement minor gear possibilities may not be a bad way to go like Diadem.

Right. There's not a lot of room for new battle content to really offer compelling rewards unless something about the structure massively changes (and that's unlikely). I think that's part of what Diadem's trouble was. They wanted it to be compelling for people to run, but not too compelling, and they overshot the mark on the compelling thing at first. Now it's absolutely *not* compelling after the nerfs, and I honestly don't necessarily agree with Yoshi's thought that i205 gear would have still been a compelling carrot.

It'll be interesting to see what they try in the future.

[Kurogaea]

the hunt example

If they did it like everyone assumed they would, like making hunts instanced, making us look for monsters on our own instead of competing with the rest of your server then yeah, it would've went perfectly.

[Derio]

I like the defense and attack idea. We already have that in pvp in a sense. However if you add a caste in. Add enemy NPC's and then add a 24 man alliance. I could see it turning out to be some really cool content.

I still think they are going to come up with random questlines that give rewards for Diadem though. I think they still have big plans for that area.

[Nalien]

I like the defense and attack idea. We already have that in pvp in a sense. However if you add a caste in. Add enemy NPC's and then add a 24 man alliance. I could see it turning out to be some really cool content.

PvE Frontlines (Secure) would work fairly well, though making it instanced robs it of much of its charm. There is no reason something like this couldn't be open world, just tie it in with FATEs.

Lets say you slap several of those capture points from Secure around Coerthas Western Highlands. Have it so they're captured/defended via FATEs. Controlling a lot of them provides some native bonus to everyone in the zone, as well as making the zone a safer place (since it's mostly controlled by Ishgard). You've then got a lot of defend/capture FATEs going on, and you can put in a few other ones (defending supply lines/etc.) to improve the defense (NPCs stationed there) of owned points. If we keep losing the points, eventually the only one we've left with is Falcon's Nest, and we have a huge battle defending it. If we own all the points, we get something similar, but with us attacking the enemy stronghold.

Obviously that doesn't work well for Western Highlands, you'd really need to design the map from the ground up with this in mind, but it's a solid enough concept. The rewards just need to be significant enough that FATEs are actually rewarding for once in their life...

That's pretty much the next step I see from Campaign in XI... Campaign had one outpost per zone, with XIV I see no reason why we couldn't have multiple outposts to fight over per zone. Multiple factions, too. Lets say we start moving into Garlemald in 4.0, we could have Ala Mhigo verses Garlemald verses Beast Tribes. Day one much of the area is controlled by Garlemald. Day two people have burnt through the area, leaving it in control of Ala Mhigo, affording players bonuses. Day three the Beast Tribes take over while we're busy on a new zone. Or, for consistencies sake, we could go with XIs Conquest "tally results every week" system. Either way, it gives us dynamic maps which we can impact. If we ignore a zone, it falls into enemy hands and we no longer get benefits from that zone, so we aim to take it back. FATEs go from crappy EXP/Relic grinds, to dynamic activities people (hopefully) want to do. People want those benefits for controlling regions, if a region is slipping out of our hands, people will want to go help out.

[DPZ2]

Suggestions by the OP are the reason I also play Guild Wars 2 ...

and, no, I don't want FFXIV to be a GW2 clone.

[Lexia]

1) Example: City defense (Besieged from FFXI):
-Defend a city against an invading army. Repel them from reaching their goal and defeat their bosses within an hour to route their attack.

How this could work in the story: Perhaps defend against Imperials skirmishing against Eorzean patrols.

They could perhaps maybe do this with a time travel expansion kind of how they did with FFXI with Wings of the Goddess for the crystal war.

[SendohJin]

What do you think?

the biggest problem is itemization. you can make all those things and none of them will matter if they don't figure out a way to put drops in them that matter.

Treasure Maps is not a bad system but the drops are inconsequential. put pink i210 gear in the top tier map and you will see people doing them a lot more. that would also give them reason to make the maps tougher. the hardest maps right now can be duoed by basically any Tank/DPS + Healer combo. if the drops are good, you can justify having 8 waves of mobs that you need a Full Party to clear before the time limit.

hopefully with the materia change in 3.2 they actually give us more ways to acquire materia that's not just spiritbinding and farming Diadem tokens.

[WellFooled]

I couldn't agree with the OP more. FFXIV has some great variety in non-battle content (Golden Saucer for example), but I would love to see its battle side expand beyond dungeons and trials with with their endlessly circle arenas and linear hallways. The battle content has always been amazingly varied in lore and atmosphere, but not so much varied in gameplay.