Gear is boring because of splitting a lot of functionality for gear behind content walls. Like being able to dye raid gear is only possible if people do savage, which is by and large a rather unfun set of content to engage in for the majority. Think I originally said that savage was some of the best content they had, but that was before doing it for several tiers and seeing the flaws in it.

Other part is that the statistics in this game are pretty linear and everything favors damage over defense. Once someone has the ability to survive getting hit by a single attack, all that matters is what combination of materia nets the highest output and that is the end of it.