As far as hard content being in DF, maybe it shouldn't be. This is a weird position for me to take because I feel like people should get a chance to try the content even if they can't beat it (they have random people who are going to wipe them over and over). But since most groups seem to disband after about 2 wipes, in actuality, DF doesn't even work very well to practice hard content. If you can't practice the content through DF and you aren't going to clear it, yeah what's the point?

Maybe it would be helpful to have more gear tiers so players actually need to have beaten other hard content to even get the ilevel necessary to challenge harder content? I don't know if this would make any difference (you already have to beat T5 to do SCoB, T9 to do FCoB, etc.) and SE seems to be going in the other direction (removing the requirement to challenge the first 3 EX primals, beat Coil turns in order, etc.).

I don't even raid current content (I'm on T9 still) but I think there's too much of a discrepancy between doing the easiest content imaginable (for tome gear) and things like EX primals and Coil (for raid gear). Yet the ilevels are the same (secondary stats matter but generally not that much). I've seen many FCoB players suck but maybe we can expect people in dreadwyrm gear to be better than people in full tome gear, on average? I don't know. I think they would at least realize they're not going to steamroll new, hard content and understand some degree of preparation is helpful.

Another problem is that new players are queuing for Garuda EX, not knowing anything about the fight, and beating it within a few tries because echo actually does help there. Then they're doing the exact same thing for Titan EX (queuing blind and hoping echo will carry them through). The increase in difficulty there is enormous. The same thing goes with Coil really. You can 1-shot T4 in most groups now since the whole fight is a dps check and then these new players queue for T5 and get stuck on it for ages. I'm really pretty sure that SE should work on a more incremental increase in difficulty. That would do a lot to help players have accurate expectations when they queue.