Yoshi-P on Character Growth

[YakushiHinata]

I can understand that at start of ARR they wanted to play it safe, and it was a great game, easy to get into. Heavenswards rolls out and the hype is big, everyone levels up, figuring out lv 60 rotation and gets to endgame, aaaaand its the same formula as 2.X.
Fine, I can even accept that going safe for the first expansion is a good idea, why fix what aint broken right? New players have it easy to get into expansion, even more now with the QoL patches through 3.X series, Novice Hall, etc.

But one our wishes that I know have been asked for since 2.2 days, is still not being considered. I am talking about gearsets bonuses on equipement, Raid / Tomestone / Crafted / Dungeon equipments. Yoshida did say in a recent interview that the system for that type of thing is already in the game, pointed at the GC gearsets with the Sanction buff.

But he is afraid it will block people from entering content since players will go, "You don't have X item? Sorry but we cant take you with us", which is understandable but its already happening with itemlevel / have you cleared this content? (First time bonus).

I feel going safe most of the time is a good thing for new players, but when do we start focus on the longterm players? You have players that sub for a new patch, does the new content and is happy, maybe gives Savage a try, some even go so far to say its too hard, please nerf it since my casual playstyle cant beat it or dedicate time for it but then stops playing and waits for new patch.

Its the players that keeps their sub active that is asking for more growth content or something to work towards, like the relic weapons, maybe give us relic armor sets with its own unique gearset bonus.
Its the players that dedicate time for this game everyday, that maybe is part of a FC that chew through the major patch content in a week time, they are the main group of people that are the big income in a subscription game, we love this game and wants the best for it, we want challenging content but feel our voice is never heard because the casual voice group overdeafen us with, "please nerf x content, its too hard, i cant play enough or dedicate enough time to learn mechanics, I dont want to learn my class / rotation or read tooltips on skills, hand me items for free please" everytime they try to add more content that is more focused on harder, grindy, challenging content when we are finally heard.

Little extreme but you get the point, even in the interview Yoshida says it himself, over half of the player base have yet to clear Binding Coil of Bahamut with Echo buff which makes me sad since the difficulty on Coil was somewhat perfect and had fun mechanics, I wish everyone could have a equal fun learning time to work on their own class and draw out its full potential and work with a group to clear it.