@Hanz:
toei doesn't want to risk it, the usual formula works very well for the majority. and there's nothing wrong with it either, luffy beating super powered villains with his rubber powers is fucking cool. but out of curiosity… when you say "different", what exactly would you want it to be? do you want a different story structure? more emphasis on characters or drama?
something that expands the world of onepiece in places that oda doesn't want or doesn't care to explore…i don't know,make a special where you cover a group of shichibukai during the timeskip (i don't know,boa,doflamingo and bagy,just to put 3 characters that would clash all the time by being completely different,one has to go to protect amazon lily,one is bored or has some interest in the whole story,like retrieving something,and the last one has to prove it's worth as a shichibukai to the wg) unwillingly sent on a mission by the WG (it's not like they have them ONLY for yonkou attacks on marineford) to deal with a great new world pirate (i don't know,someone capable enough to try and take the spot left by whitebeard with some grand plan,shiki style,so "yonkou" level with a big crew,enough to justify 3 shichibukai) that it's trying to acquire something important..you can justify the fact that they are sending the shichibukai using the post-war recostruction of the marines and the fight for power between akainu and aokiji in punk hazard that took them out of the picture for a while. basically do something new a fresh with a world so big and full of unique characters but even if you want to stay in the present story (more or less) and stay with the mugiwara,at least ditch the little child (toei seems to have a fascination with those),ditch the monodimensional bad guy that doesn't believe in "friends" and the mcguffin out of nowhere.... basically as you said,different story structure,more integration with the canon onepiece world,and just not being against the usual greedy evil villain and his goons that are there just to give a 2 minute fight to zoro and sanji they kinda tried to do something with the last special before this..the one with the strategist and foxy,but they botched it because the story was still bad and most of the new things they put in had no explanation whatsoever and didn't made any sense in the onepiece world..like the anti devil fruit user plant,or some of the new technologies shown