What they need to do is drop two things. First is the inability to swap armor while engaged in battle. Second is add more god damn stats to the game.

People hate to hear it but this game needs to be more like XI. When new content came out for XI the devs weren't scrambling to release gear that surpassed previous releases because they were able to release gear of equivalent strength based on unique combinations of the games far more numerous stats that suited different play styles or situations.

When a new patch comes out I shouldn't be thinking "Well I haven't finished this content yet... but screw it because that gear is iXX and this new stuff is iXX+10 so what's the point?" I should be thinking is "Well I haven't finished this content yet... but even though the new gear is great for doing this stuff the old gear is still great for doing that stuff so I guess I'll go after both now!"