The Venture Coffers they bring back now are just a replacement for the Rare Items. The stuff in the coffers is the same as the stuff you got from the Rare Items returns. The bonus message when you get it on gear just means it will be HQ gear instead of regular gear. The biggest change I've seen is the new tier of rewards they added to the gear. Now your retainers can bring back level 80 gear, whereas the previous highest level gear was the 71-79 levelling gear. I've seen everything up to unaugmented Crystarium gear (i490), which is pretty crazy since that stuff was the highest ilevel stuff just last patch and now quick ventures are bringing it back for free and not that rarely either.

Other than that some of the other new stuff is higher tier housing items and crafting mats and the dungeon gear they added to the old ARR leveling dungeons. What I want to know is what did they remove from quick ventures? The notes said certain items were removed, and it would really suck if super rare things like the onion gear and helms were one of those....