Everyone can agree that we need more challenging content I'm pretty confident no one wants it any easier right now. Everyone also seems to agree that crafting for the best gear is not a good idea and comparing it to "I died 100 times on the most epic raid ever to get my sword of champions" vs "I got lucky and tripple melded str gloves cool story".

As previously stated some simple solutions: Allow U/U gear to be melded, improve U/U gear stats, introduce new materia or top tier materia to drop from instanced content or to be created from U/U gear.

My extra idea: add in achievements for specific kill conditions, the 5chest speed run in DH was a great example. Short order for moogle is another. Now just improve the drops or add more unique drops to those special conditions to give the most dedicated players something to do. ex. Short order moogle > only way to get the sword. something like this would go a long way toward keeping content worthwhile.