Is the New Design that Skill Doesn't Matter?

[Felis]

But now they have it where we're going through all this trouble to recreate what's supposed to be the weapons the strongest fighters in the world used to save the world but oh some weapons made by some civilization that was recently destroyed by Garleans just magically happens to be stronger than those.

Maybe you should learn something about eorzea history.
The garlean empire is around 55 years old (it was a small republic before the current emperor made it a big empire)
The Allagan civilization existed thousands of years ago.

My biggest issue is that grinding low level fates without measurable progress has no secondary reward (no significant gil or seals or anything else).

With each Atma you get you need to do 1 zone less. isn't it a measurable progress in some way?