Trials of the Magians and casual players.

[Zagen]

The biggest reason I would say for needing the expansion of TotM weapons is gear diversity. Some of the effects of TotM weapons are rather nice, and don't show up very often on gear. Like occasionally attacks twice for example.

You're missing a few key things here:
1) A casual who isn't focusing on current endgame which is roughly the same as level 110~120 content doesn't need weapons on par with delve weapons (designed to be at the strength of 110~120 while still reading "Lv.99").
2) If you are focusing on current end game then the weapons designed to be at the strength of 99 are more than enough until getting the newer weapons.
3) Effects that don't show up on gear often keep most of those weapons relevant even when compared to the newer weapons, as to OaT/DA see #2.

You still haven't answered the question of why someone who doesn't participate in content designed to be level 110~120 difficulty needs a weapon to be designed or rather updated to be in the 105~110 range.

I don't have a problem with TotM being upgraded though I believe if they're going to keep up with the newer weapons they should require doing newer content to advance because if you aren't doing newer content what's the point of having an upgraded weapon.

I'd likely fall within the same grouping as your friend, but before I go and level a job I don't enjoy I am going to exhaust other routes I do first, then try ones I find tolerable. Like for me, before I would level and gear BLM to do anything beyond subjob use, I would likely have every other job geared and leveled first, which thanks to liking SCH, and at least finding RDM, SMN, and GEO tolerable, that is very unlikely to happen if I needed a magic nuking job.

Just on a standard DD job, if the expected average output for an event was 1.7mil and I was averaging 500k, I would not really want to be doing said event with people I did not already know unless there is are no other options available.

My friend hates mage/support jobs that's why he geared his MNK. As to my 1.7mil keep in mind the more MNKs we have the lower my damage goes when we've gone as a LS with 1-2 more MNKs my damage drops into the 700k-1mil ranges, higher than the others but by a much smaller margin.

Let's replace him with you in my farming group using the jobs you like:
SCH or RDM could easily tank the NM while doing magical damage each cycle allowing the DD to come in and go crazy.
Like I said in the paragraph below what you quoted it's all about getting creative with strategies to fit your preference in jobs.

If SE wants this game to continue to flourish they have to compete w/ other MMOs who are basically thriving right now(going against F2P MMOs puts a huge hurt to P2P MMOs. That's the truth). It makes u wonder why they are making changes to this game to be like other MMOs if u haven't noticed. If u didn't see the signs of the progression of this game then I don't know what to tell u. They need that subscriber count to stay up if they want this game to last longer. If u haven't realized by now they are losing ppl to the point they had to cut servers by half, make some older content non-lvl restricted, make dynamis easier to play, u know signs that this game is hurting despite them saying that it's the most profitable game they ever made in 10+ years.

Using Free to Play MMOs as an example is terrible for a few reasons:
- Different type of player base
- Completely different design of game progression

Free to Play MMOs are much worse than FFXI when you consider how much more grinding is in place to make buying boosts appealing.

Would you be playing if the upcoming Double EXP/Plans weekend worked like this:

Double EXP Bonus 15 day duration: $7.50
Double Salvage Plan drops 15 day duration: $15

Yeah I'm totally interested in stupid shit like that... That's not even accounting for the fact to be on par the exp rates would be worse than they were during the 75 days pre 50-75 adjustment. Oh and you know how currently we're guaranteed 5+ plans in Salvage 2.0 when trying to farm them that would be 1-2 if we're lucky without buying the boost option.

I sure as hell wouldn't be playing if that's how it worked, then again that explains why I'm here paying my $27.90 every month and not playing a Free to Play MMO.