I don't get why people have interlinked impactful and hard to get. What is wrong with making impactful and unique gear accessible?

You know what I really hate right now? I hate being able to go through the data-mined equipment lists and putting together a BiS list before playing a single second of a new patch. Day 1 people establish gear purchasing lists that have optimized ordering and you just follow that. You basically sleep walk through what should be a defining aspect of an MMO. That's how boring gear is right now.

Now, imagine that they threw in some materia with unique properties purchasable with locked tomes. Accessible because they just cost tomestones anyone can get. Now, everything changes. BiS lists could change based on how effective the materia are. Purchase ordering might be very different. The point is that people won't know until they actually play the game and thus you're actually excited to get in the game and play around with stuff rather than sit in front of Ariyala or XIVdb. There is more to look forward to as people test and report results rather than just refer back to the stat weight science. It's about the buzz and the interest. It's about getting people thinking about and playing your game.

And in a different vein, like I said in the opening post, I don't think it's bad to leave behind a portion of the players. Whatever happened to the carrot on the stick mentality? People are removing the carrot from the stick and wondering why things have stopped moving. When you pander to the lowest common denominator, your game stagnates.