I think SE is trying to make this game too many things for too many types of players. Let really be honest here...FF is not for everyone. It is about the grind and it is about feeling accomplished. I think when SE tried to take some of WoW's members they dropped the ball. I think they were onto something at the start with the local leves as a way to break up the "grind" but now you have leve parties and there is no real out in the world grind happening. There is now Valkurm Dunes type parties. You know the specific area zones to grind and LEARN your job.
Making this game easier I think is having the wrong effect on many player types. In essence you now have a bunch of 50 lvl noobs running around all dressed up with no where to go. I have stated this before and I will state it again. SE right now the players you are listening to are going to leave you as soon as they have to pay. I mean why pay for a game when you have most of your jobs at 50 with the best gear you can get in the game at this point.
SE my hope is that you will bring back the grind and the zone grind parties. I think people are missing that as much as they are missing the story. I know many MANY LS are missing zone grinds. It might be a thought to get guardian aspect at anytime from a crystal that last for x-amount of hours. This I think would pull people away from leve grinding and D4D at BW for the 1 billionth time and start making players adventure. This way you could give the casual player an option for the limited time and those will much more play time other options to get just as much SP without doing the same leve quest again and again. At this point the lack of story and diversity is killing this game.
P.S. For the love of god please lower the SP there are way to many players with multiply 50 jobs running around without a clue of how to play that job. This I think might piss some off, but for others it will actually make them better players to have the extra time to learn instead of going from 1-50 in 3.5 weeks. This is just silly and should not happen.