Where is the "never before seen content"?

[Hestzhyen]

"Shake it up" how? What are you suggesting that is reasonable, knowing the limitations of the game? FFXIV, like a lot of popular MMOs, is a "generalist" MMO - it has content that can appeal to many people. However, it means when you add content that appeases one group, the others think they are being left out. Things like perform appeals to some, but from your own wording, it doesn't appeal to you, so you think it's a wasted addition to the game. Am I correct?

Right now, the game's model is content released in a steady rhythm, yet spaced out enough that you can incur breaks. These breaks can be taken and when you return, you can also easy fall back into being current. The major issue I see people complain on is the amount of dungeons (which I don't, personally, understand) and when something is added they have no interest in, they suddenly mistakenly say "no content."

Also, me pointing out what happened in 1.0 doesn't mean the game's future need suffer. It's mainly to remind people that at one point, XIV was more similar to XI than it is currently and it didn't work out.

However, please keep in mind that the last time SE did want players asked in terms of difficulty and content, we obtained Gordias Savage. Those were dark times, indeed.

In terms of "shaking it up", I'm not thinking of impossible asks like re-inventing combat from the ground up or adding a 1000-man boss fight. Working within the systems have have been established, we could have...

- 8-man dungeons (without the story cutscenes this time), perhaps for various goals like find the most treasure or defeat the most enemies within the time limit. PotD/HoH could have been this too, but the implementation is pretty bare and the lack of direction can cause friction within groups.
- more large-scale content that takes advantage of having a large amount of players... I remember reading about a version of "Hamlet Defense" where combat jobs would fight off hordes of enemies as crafters and gatherers would supply the defenses. That sounds cool and I would be willing to try it from a combat and DoH/DoL role.
- play to the strength of the game. XIV is all about DPS, so introduce some content that is all about how fast you can push through it. Have teams race to the finish and award some prizes. Enforce the trinity, have different modes (AoE runs, single target runs, etc.) for everyone to have a chance to shine. You could even do something crazy like having healer-specific modes that test how efficiently players use their skills to keep an NPC alive.

It would also be great to see them rely less on established mechanics. How many boss fights do we have that involve the boss going invulnerable or leaving for a period of time so we can deal with adds while they charge an attack? I lose interest in a fight as soon as the boss does that any more. Like "oh, this again...". Or all the dungeon bosses who don't care whether you ignore their mechanics or not. It's pretty sad when ARR leveling dungeons have more teeth than some of the level 70 dungeons in SB isn't it?

These wouldn't necessarily be unique to MMOs, but they would be to XIV. And with the constant stream of reskinned dungeons, bosses, and catch-up quests, it would be refreshing if they even tried to branch out a little more. So I'm not asking for a revolution or for SE to take huge risks here. Just to build on what they've already got instead of stagnating like I feel they're currently doing.