Variance in player skill is hurting FFXIV's itemization design.

[Granyala]

The story is killed in Normal mode, there is no sense of build up or progression.
(This is why multiple difficulties of the same raid suck, never was a fan myself)

Normal mode killed the appeal of aesthetics since the N and S versions of the gear look exactly the same with some of the best colors being default colors.
(This is indeed a gross design fail, Savage should have exclusive looks)

Gear is trivialized in this game, you don't need to raid to be in in raid equivalent gear.
(Good, but they should tweak it so raiders get their gear faster. The choice should be determination/loyalty vs skill. RNG loot works against that and frustrates raiders)

The only thing is the challenge and we all saw how well SCoB savage went when challenge WAS the reward.
(Intentional. Bleeding edge content only appeals to a TINY fraction of gamers. There is nothing wrong with that unless participation doesn't warrant dev efforts)

Stuff in bold = my answers to your statements.

You can be full 240 without clearing a8s, you just need a few weeks of a7s loot.

So why exactly are you blabbering on about: "Waah waah upgraded lore gear invalidates raid rewards!!11"?

Also: please read the edited information. I already gave you the proof you wanted in regards to WoWs item level distribution.

That is a nice fact you like to ignore. While a mythic tier is current in wow, there is no way for players to get mythic ilvl gear without doing mythic raiding. How you can cite wow/mythic without addressing the rewards wow offers their raiders? That seems to be giant gaping hole in your fact sheet my friend.

Well I'm biased in that regard, I openly admit it.
I think, being able to get to a similar power level of a raider is one of the charms FF has to offer, compared to WoW where your character remains useless trash unless you raid at least heroic.

Now, is it to soon to add 240 upgrades to the eso gear after 3 months or should they be gained at a slower pace than 1 item per week?
I think we could debate that one.
Maybe they should wait till the deployment of the next Tier so raiders get to keep their minor (and imho totally justified) advantage.

As long as SE looks to favor raiding over everything else without other content on the wings, non raiding content can suffer because of it.

Actually, the only problem was that they DIDN'T want to keep the item level gap.

If you keep a 10 item level gap betwenn Savage raiders and everyone else, most of these "special snowflake" / "not rewarding enough" comments would go away.
10 ilvl is noticeable, yes, but not crippling (yet, wait a few expansions >.<).

If you honestly must know why i care so much, its due to the fact that I raid lead. I have to deal with these motivations and when it comes time to replace someone (due to one reason or another), it saddens me that the raid talent pool keeps shrinking.

I can feel your pain.
As a retired officer I know all about motivational problems and the difficulty of "keeping things going".

But bribing people into the raids is not the answer. You only get people that aren't suited to diehard/bleeding edge challenge and merely want "them purplz".

Though I do think compromises should be possible. Grant savage raiders UNIQUE looking gear and a 10 item level power advantage.
Get rid of the RNG loot and make it a fair distribution.
Give raiders titles and mounts (I think they already do that, yes?)

BTW: I do think this will be the last post I can write for today, so I will edit in any remaining answers. Congrats to the idiot that came up with limited post counts per day on a discussion board lol.