Never Make Your Players Have to "Find the Fun"

[Lexia]

This is a false dichotomy. You're presenting it as if there are only 2 systems - lockouts or ridiculous grinds. I'm sure there is a middle ground, the body piece you mention costing 1600 tomes instead of 10k.

My argument is that the game should not be based around the players that can and will grind 20 hours per day. Sure, there will be those players and they will "get ahead" of other players in a way they can't now, with lockouts, but they will be a minority of players. I think those who want to preserve the lockout system mostly want to preserve the small gap that exists between players' ilevel (they can be just a few ilevel different from someone who is actually clearing the raids). But what they don't realize is that gameplay will improve in almost every way with lockouts removed. For example, there will be more people doing more content which equals faster group matching and formation.

What are you talking about? Only minority of players would grind everything out? The people that wouldn't grind everything out would be the minority not the other way around. I don't know about your server but least on Balmung there be ton of people that would just grind all day long.