How would you feel about end-game gear only being useful for 3 months?

[Krin]

The issue with that is gear being devalued. Rather than escalating gear value with each additional content, it should be the goal to add variety. Different optimal gear for different styles of play. New content should not make previous content obsolete - the same goes for its gear.

Good thing nothing suggests that we will face such a scenario in FFXIV. The only scenario we have possibly ahead of us that would devalue gear is difficulty adjustments. If they allow the difficulty of content to decrease naturally simply by means of community pioneers sharing strategies then that is fine. However if they reduce difficulty of previous content upon the advent of newer content, then all the gear obtained thus far will become devalued.

In the end it comes down to what exactly the team is thinking about when they say difficulty adjustments on older content. The magnitude of this adjustment is everything,

This is exactly what I was trying to say, albeit without making as many assumptions and giving some background to support it.