How new spontaneous-style content could be added to the game, by looking to the past.

[Zofian]

First, what I feel the game has a lack of:
-Unexpected enemies/challenges/anything random to deal with.
-A situation where we can round up some people and go do a special thing- especially during quiet hours.
-Cutscenes where our character actually does something apart from draw a weapon or take a menacing step forward to an enemy.
-8 person Praetorium is gone, and it was special, cause it was a little bit of an outfit show sometimes amongst the 8 players- But something better can be done in it's place.

There's a way to tackle all of these with one new piece of content really, but by looking to the past to do it. I'll just say that I really like the 1.0 trailer where the catgirl/hyur/elezen are checking out those leve plates and all that. A new series of leves could be added. Make it so you purchase a box of broken/discarded/cursed leve plates or something, and there's a 2d graphic that comes up on the screen looking down at a box and all the broken ones get swiped out of the way and a random intact leve plate is uncovered. They could add like 14 of them, some rarer than others etc. Make it so '1 box' of broken/discarded' leves costs 1500 poetics, or you can also get 1, 2 or maybe 3 boxes in exchange for a Khloe Bronze Certificate, giving those extra use.

The leves themselves are basically a special duty (half the length of a regular dungeon) for 4, 6 or 8 players (depending on leve), where the enemies are random and unpredictable (but somewhat in tune with the area- you won't know what will appear next or how strong an enemy is until you attack it- even when using the same special new leve plate you've used before. The leve plate seen in the 1.0 trailer looks like the area around the Euphrosene alliance raid- it'd be cool if such a leve took place behind the starting area currently seen in the alliance raid itself. These leves would also have some co-op puzzles and such (like in that Qitana Ravel solo duty), maybe activating switches or assisting NPCs aswell. If everyone get's KO'd the duty ends and that's that, no restarts (but raise works as normal etc).

Part 2 in next post due to char limit

[Zofian]

As far as the randomness of enemies goes, almost nothing could be off the table, including seeing enemies divide into 2, or doing attacks that they traditionally don't use. A Morbol suddenly activating Dragon's Voice (ice circle attack from Cutter's Cry's Chimera), A large Funguar/Stool using Eye of the Beholder (Coincounter's outer AoE from Aurum). A random swarm of enemies that do what those squid guys do in Sastasha-Hard, where they grab you and lock you from moving but you can still attack them. Blue Mages would be allowed to partake in the duty, but everyone must be a blue mage? But then also perhaps having blue mages in your party could then trigger blue mage enemies to also appear and use assorted sets/random skills against YOU.

Now, the other important thing is that these leves would all come with structured unskippable cutscenes like Praetorium, and your character slot (and class) will determine what you're seen doing- basically to emulate what you see in that same 1.0 trailer really. Everyone does a bit of a greet/psych up or whatever at the start, then after some random unpredictable battles and travel there's another action-based unskippable, which is then interrupted by a random boss, then when you get it down to 0%, one last cutscene where each of your characters does some action moves/skills to finish the boss off in a dramatic way etc, it would just be nice.

What should the reward be from doing these? I have no idea. Something unique that's also tradeable maybe, for once (remember when MMOs allowed proper trading?). Whatever the reward, I just think the game needs some gameplay spontaneity given how routine the rest of the game is, and why not try to recapture the vibe of that 1.0 trailer? It may or may not be possible to make it so that you can only 'unbox' the leve plate in any of the inn areas, and make it so that they must be activated there and all players get warped in with the duty/pop from there or something, but it might be a bit corny to force doing them this way. In any case it may work to model them after treasure maps/portals system.

[BRVV]

First: why is this in guildheist?

Second: i don't think the devs will spend time to implement interesting new ways of combat or party comp. Sadly. We do get new spontaneous style content with Island Sanctuary. Maybe 7.x will have a dating sim, 8.x could have a swimming minigame or smth. Low-effort mildly interesting content is the thing now