I feel like this is beating a dead horse at this point, but SE has tried to put more incentive into buying Tome Weapons with the release of the Exquisite Weapons and it's just another thing to spend tomes on.
FFXIV is a game that tries to play the idea of not needing alternate characters, the idea that you can build every character onto one job. However, the restrictions of the tome system as they are currently implemented make it extremely difficult to play more than one role, to the point that it's frustrating trying to play anything else.
I play just about everything in the game, so as an experiment I made it my goal to get everything into BiS this tier.
Anabaseios dropped 5 months ago.
Because of the tome system, I still have roughly 3 and a half months left of tome capping to get every role into something that resembles BiS, notwithstanding the variances for things like healers and Blackmage. If I added those it would be another 4 months.
Granted, I missed a week or two due to things like traveling to Las Vegas Fanfest, but this is absolutely ridiculous.
SE Please, for the love of God, quit putting things behind tomes or at least change the tome system.
I would be all for a 450 tome restriction for first 4 weeks, then a 900 tome restriction up to 8 weeks, and after week 8 just unrestrict it, personally.