The Current Status of FFXIV Patch 3.1 and How to Address it Moving Forward

[Mindy_Macready]

Another problem with 2.x EX primals is that they never gave relevant rewards. Think Bismark EX with the weapons, except that was a reoccuring trend until shiva (the last EX primal no less) with her bracelets (and diamond dust upgrade, which was introduced later). Ramuh, Levi and Mog drops were all i100 , there was no sense of progression from the gear perspective.

When they added accessories to the EX primals, those were ilvl 90 back in myth days, and more than a few were BiS. I farmed for those Titan EX earrings for my SMN for a long time, and I enjoyed that (some may disagree on the enjoyment of farming Titan EX, of course).

Leviathan EX weapons were actually great for those who hadn't cleared T5 and wanted alt weapons for Second Coil (or, if you were ridiculously lucky with mirrors, get something better than a T5 weapon).

[UBERHAXED]

When they added accessories to the EX primals, those were ilvl 90 back in myth days, and more than a few were BiS. I farmed for those Titan EX earrings for my SMN for a long time, and I enjoyed that (some may disagree on the enjoyment of farming Titan EX, of course).
Leviathan EX weapons were actually great for those who hadn't cleared T5 and wanted alt weapons for Second Coil (or, if you were ridiculously lucky with mirrors, get something better than a T5 weapon).

Levi Ex was the "entry level" fight to prepare you for second coil. Either you didn't have a 95 weapon and you needed one for SCoB or you did and you needed a 100 weapon (because we didn't have charity weapons like tome weapons back then, you needed the unidentified allagan tomeston (a raid drop) to get a 100 or 110 weapon). Similarly Ravana was the entry level fight for Alex savage since a lvl 190 weapon was the new "prereq" weapon. Where they messed up was releasing a charity weapon (eso weapon) so people don't bother with the intended progression anymore. We even had another progression weapon fight (Thordan) to fix that, but then they oddly messed up again by making the anima weapon 210. The progression was there. The difficulty increased smoothly from Bismark to Ravana to A1S to A2S to Thordan to A3S to A4S. Of course Thordan was released after A3S and A4S (obviously) but that was because if they release it at the same time, then people would just so Thordan before they entered A1S and that would mess up the intended progression.

You also didn't need 205 weapons for any of the raid tier, so it wasn't a necessity. It also wouldn't make sense to make Thordan of higher difficulty of the highest raid because only those who cleared the raid could attempt him. I'm talking solely from the weapon perspective though, they can give out as much charity gear of anything else.