One perspective of the game's direction.

First of all, congratulations on the successful release of Final Fantasy XIV, A Realm Reborn. It has so far been a fairly enjoyable few months for me, and I have been looking forward to the release of the new patch. The new patch brings an abundance of new content for all players to enjoy, and is a welcome sight to see. The new patch, however, takes some of the content in a particular direction. I am looking forward to running Crystal Tower with my friends in my free company, and was hoping to have Crystal Tower as content that I could have hours of fun completing with my friends, and as a way to acquire gear for my alternate jobs. The bonus items from Crystal Tower would be a much appreciated stimulus to the rate I could acquire gear for my character.
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As of now, the lot system of Crystal tower is, in my opinion, flawed. I understand that you do not want to hand out gear, and that if you did, it would depreciate the value of obtaining the item, it just wouldn't feel "worked for". The "one item per week" system would only give me possibly two or more hours of play a week. Given that there is a fixed number of tomes that I can spend per week, I was looking at Crystal Tower as a means to "catch up" my alternate jobs to be able to enjoy other content from a different perspective. It would be more efficient to acquire gear on alternate jobs if I leveled an entirely new character, and even then, the achievements are not account shared and Square Enix has loosely stated that there was no need to make additional accounts.
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Another issue from the lot system of Crystal Tower, is that even though everyone wants to assume that people are looking out for the interests of others, there are those that would selfishly leave a duty after obtaining their one item for the week. To me, it feels like you are "tying down" the hardcore players who are capable and willing to spend hours on difficult or time consuming content because of the reward, and focusing too much on casualizing the game, leaving no content for the more experienced and better equipped players. This is just my opinion, and I am sure you know more about what you are doing than I do, just stating my thoughts.

I'm not really pleased with the 1 item per week thing either.

Couldn't agree more...... Don't go backwards with the gear progression...