I can agree with both Andy and Mog.

I don't believe crafted gear should ever be better than raid gear.

In WoW's structure, the best gear ultimately is in hard mode raids, where the ilvl is slightly higher than normal version. Now you can pick up patterns in those raids to make gear that is on par with normal mode.

How FFXIV should be setup is that you can make gear that can be good enough to get you into major content, but really shouldn't go beyond that. Rare/ex. gear should ultimately be better. Materia system is good, but it shouldn't be able to go beyond rare/ex.

I know FFXIV's main aspects are making crafting as important as battle classes, but if you don't make a proper balance, people will not care about going out and getting a rare/ex. piece when they can just sit in town and craft a better piece.

As for a request for harder, more engaging content, I can't really judge what they have in store till I see more content. Primals don't really give me a good idea on this. Overall however, if I see the best piece of gear on someone in this game, I want to know it was hard as hell to get and not just anyone can get it.