Quote Originally Posted by Fyce View Post
tl;dr: tuning raid content around player's skill instead of player's equipment is what fits better to FFXIV.
Adequate gear checks are necessary because player skill doesn't consist only of handling fight mechanics, you also have to handle class mechanics, your rotation. Extremely low gear tuning essentially gets rid of half the meta-game and makes gear progression obsolete for anyone who is able to clear a fight straight off.

I could even argue that the real difficulty in FFXIV comes from class mechanics, not fight design. Fight mechanics typically happen 5-20 sec apart from each other, sometimes in small clusters, when in comparison class mechanics happen 1-3 times in 2.5sec (GCD) for as long as the encounter lasts. When the game difficulty is so heavily tilted towards class mechanics, getting rid of gear checks is very stupid, because they're a way of challenging a large part of necessary player skill.