To me, the loot system is fine in the terms of party makeup. The only thing I would change is for higher level gear to switch to a token system a la WoW (where armor comes from tokens that work for different armor types and have weapons and accessories be the only thing that drops directly) and for primal weapons to have the same system, or at least increase the number of simultanious drops. That run for my ifrit lance on my dragoon was painful.