Unofficial Census 2016 for FFXIV

[Neophyte]

You missed the point entirely. It's not about pretty mounts and/or vanity items. It's about rewarding a person's time investment so that they're more inclined to invest more of their time and continue playing.

When you work your butt off for something only to have it become near meaninglessweeks later, you're not going to be very enthusiastic about going through that again. When you have less and less reason to invest your time, you have less and less of a reason to stay subbed.

There is a fine balance in a progression centric MMO between earned exclusivity and general accessibility. This game has a heavy skew towards accessibility and that design decision reverberates through the entirety of its content.

Which part of gear is replaced after "a few weeks"? It's more like "3-6 months", depending on gear.

Also people should stop treating this game (or any game) like a retirement arrangement plan where you have to think about "where do I get the best return for my Investment". Just play the stupid game or don't, that's not a tax declaration.

I know a lot of people who are not subbed all the time (like 1 month stop every 2-3 months) and I know a lot of people currently playing Overwatch, No Man's Sky, etc. and only returning for raids&stuff 3 times a week.
I for myself just started healing after 100+d playtime and even que for Mhach or other stuff where I already got my weekly lockout, like A5S/A6S kills, Niddhog, etc.. or I help the boyfriend of an FC member who just started the game. Also I'm usually not doing any farms, just kill groups for ex primals, because they're more fun to play compared with standardized burn&farm groups.
No one of them would play this game more often, if there were longer lasting rewards.. why should they? Because they want to "work their ass off and be rewarded for that."? Well, they already do that... at work.

Like I'd say to the 2-month-sub/1-month-unsub - guy: "Hey, don't unsub now, you won't get the ultra long term reward then!" and he'd say "Oh yea, I totally stay subbed now and play, although I wanted to start some of my not yet touched steam games instead and take a break."..

Totally.. NOT. In my opinion you're totally overestimating gear/rewards in terms of motivation to play a game.

You may think "I only log on, if it's beneficial regarding reward". I just think "I log on, if I want to heal/tank/dps a FF14 fight."