I felt the same disappointment when I got my AF gear. As I leveled up I did each dungeon 2-3 times to get better gear than what I could get from single player quest rewards.
Then I did an easy single player quest and replaced most of my dungeon gear. Instead of feeling like a reward, I felt like the game was broken and FFXIV hadn't finished making the class quests.

I think it would have been ok if earning AF was spread out, and I replaced one piece at a time. (Maybe there could be 1 quest per level starting at level 45 to outfit the player with AF? Or a quest chain that gives another piece of AF for each dungeon run starting at level 45?)