This game's shitty gear treadmill is at complete odds with its accessibility to new players and one of its strongest features, job changing.

In other MMOs it's actually been pretty exciting to see seniors in high level gear. When I dinged 75 RNG back in XI one of my party mates had full relic gear including the rifle and it was totally awesome. I remember thinking some day I'll have that stuff and after enough dynamis I finally did. The level 50 moment in FFXIV was just disappointing. I got out of Aurum Vale, did the Bard artifact quest but was crushed to learn it was literally half as strong as it needed to be in order to be relevant. It's super awkward to ding in this game and have your first meaningful power spike be meaningless.

It sucks even more if you level multiple jobs and you are basically punished with shitty busy work every time the ilevel is raised. The worst part is that the game and community don't actually gain anything from an ilevel increase.