SE enough of the treadmill, please make the game more interesting!

[Teryaani]

Look at the effort and work that Yoshi P's team did for, say, The Lost City of Amdapor. It was a completely Brand-New Dungeon (with gorgeous Textures (looking like something out of Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind)), with Diabolos as a Boss (classic Final Fantasy), and wonderful Music. Too bad, they WASTED all of that effort, and turned it into a trash mob, easy dungeon, with Irrelevant Rewards.

Bolding it doesn't make it true. At launch, in patch current gear, Diabolos was a pain in the rear to coordinate. Especially in DF. There were plenty of wipes even in premades. Once you outgear a fight you start ignoring mechanics and things become easy, but that doesn't mean it wasn't a challenge at one point. The drops were also relevant at the time. Again, people seem fixated on the gear being good and current for perpetuity. That gear is relevant to help get you to new content and it does that job. Just because your i112 geared character can't use it doesn't mean someone else running it isn't happy to see that drop.

There's no reason the Combat Team couldn't have spent a little more time and made those Dungeons with famous Final Fantasy Bosses (Diabolos, Fenrir, etc.) into "End Game Level" Dungeons.

Because giving some fan service to non-raiders is an awful sin. Got it.

Or at least use them as a STEP in acquiring New Gear (Side Grades / Horizontal Progression, but still it's NEW Gear), with meaningful, interesting Stats.

This is a vertical progression MMO. The current progression strategy is locked in until the end of 2.x. Once 3.0 drops, you may see more set bonus sort of things (I'd like that for sure), but even then it's likely to still be largely vertical gear progression.

Do we REALLY need yet another Trash-Mob Dungeon each Patch filled with worthless gear?

Gear you aren't interested in = Worthless. Got it.

It's very clear it's because of the Vertical Progression Treadmill, and Yoshi P thinking we need to make a dungeon drop i50, i60, i70, i80 gear sets (so boring and useless), when instead,

The Combat Team could've used all that effort & time and spent it on a Separate, 2nd, 3rd, etc. End Game Raid / System that was more engaging to everyone.

Raids that only 10-15% of the players would ever see? No thank you.