changes to the game that would go hard

[BigCheez]

This is exactly what happens now except we have crafted gear on Savage patch as well. Crafted gear exists to serve as a reset. To allow people who only care about progression or are behind for whatever reason to still be able to enjoy the content as it releases.

Nah, it isn't what happens now. What happens now is that an expansion releases, you turn your brain off for 3 hunt trains and buy the uncapped tome gear to do extreme, then you get extreme gear which serves no purpose other than parsing. Then you buy a set of crafted gear to do savage, which rewards you with savage and tome gear which serves no purpose other than parsing. Most people stop here and don't do ultimate on content. They might do it later but we'll have access to higher ilvl gear and you won't need savage gear by then. For the people who do prog ultimate on content, you do actually get some mileage out of your tome/savage gear but the 4 month delay between savage and ultimate completely removes any feeling of progression.

The problem is that there is no progression from content to content. The progression is "buy easily accessible gear for content > do content". Progging ultimate on content is the only exception to this.

I'm fine with crafted gear allowing people to catch up but it shouldn't be mandatory and should not replace your previous BiS. It should be the same ilvl as previous BiS.

You are looking at gearing singularly from the perspective "I get my gear to do the next content with the gear" and not "I get my gear to push myself as high as possible in content that is already out" or "I get my gear to help out my friends who are struggling" or "I get my gear to play other jobs without griefing"

Yes, I'm looking at gearing from the perspective of it being functionally beneficial in-game, rather than tangentially beneficial in the FFLogs metagame. Pushing damage in content by being better at the game is inherently more interesting than pushing damage by getting gear that makes the content easier.

The majority of the playerbase doesn't give a shit about Ultimates, so what are they even doing Savage each week for?

The answer is because fundamentally, gearing up and doing more damage is fun. Being able to do that on more than one class is even more fun. Gearing up multiple jobs should be faster. Idk why this is such a controversial thing.

Because, as garbage as it is, the illusion of progression is the only progression that the game affords them. There's nothing else to do. Reclearing for gear so you can play content without grey parsing is better than clearing once and coming back in 8 months.