This is probably my last post on this forum as my sub is finally coming to an end soon. I bought a 6 months subscription in advance at launch, but haven't really touched the game much in the past 2 months.

It's not your friend's fault, or any player's fault if they find themselves feeling this way. It's the symptom of a vertical progression format, there is virtually no reason to visit any of the lower tier activities that yield equipment inferior to what you have. I know people hate it when someone brings up FFXI, but that game did do some stuff right, and their gear system was much more horizontal than this game (pre-abyssea anyways, I stopped playing just as they started those expansion). Take paladin gear in XI for example, you had a set that boosted defense and vitality, another that boosted acc and attack power, and another set that increased speed and reduced casting time. Players would take part in the various type of activities to collect all those pieces because they yielded different benefit, even though they were all considered endgame gear; and they would swap gear set to match what they needed for that particular battle, this applied to basically every job in XI. In XIV's vertical progression format, you get a BiS gear that makes it pointless to bother collecting anything else beyond that point, and just have to wait for the new BiS piece in a future update, leaving you bored with nothing to do in between.