Additionally, crafted gear for early raiding or latecomer catchup. The prestige in XIV doesn't come from doing something 200 times until you get the respective currencies or get lucky with RNG for a boost in player power, the prestige comes from figuring out the content and doing it first in as minimal gear as they tune for it to be doable in. Or from having a shiny weapon that the hardest prestige content drops, or speedrunning the content and doing the highest DPS to post on a third party logging website. The equivalent to Master Trial weapons over in XIV are very coveted and the draw to doing that content is both the experience of doing the content itself for the sake of it as well as having a shiny weapon to show off.
It's a very different game model that puts the content at the forefront and not the job or equipment. As sort of an exaggerated example, if you don't have an Aegis in XI, there's just going to be some content that you can't expect to do regardless of how good you are at PLD or know the content in question. Because in XI's model, having that Aegis in the first place is considered part of being "good at PLD".
There's benefits to both approaches and it's largely a subjective matter of taste. I will agree that it's cheaper to throw some new stats and math and a singular gimmick on an otherwise mostly reused NM and put it in a box instead of design a wholly new 10-20 minute encounter with a new mechanic happening every 30-60s when you need to design more fights. XIV's model demands bespoke content and encounters while XI can just reuse the Vagary NMs like 5 times with a slightly different twist each time and it's content, especially if you ask people to do it 200 times.
Ehh, in XIV there really isn't a way to gain prestige from raw gameplay imo. Even if you go do all of the ultimates or have all of the trophies or get all of the achievements, a wide swathe of the XIV playerbase just calls you a sweaty try hard no lifer. Another part of it asks if you can do those ultimates as any job or role. Another asks if you're orange/gold parsing them. I'd say the only real way one earns prestige for XIV is by becoming a widely known social persona. Like almost everyone knows who the guide makers are, who the glamor designers are, who the challenge runners are etc. ONLY if their youtube videos or twitch streams get them noticed.
Like there are at least half a dozen notable personalities that are known all over the place for things that have no relation to the gameplay or how good they are at.
TL;DR unlike XI's players, the interests, pursuits, and values of XIV players are so diverse and different from XI's that gameplay and its reward structure matter very little to the majority of folks playing it. And that's by the nature of its majority complaining that giving better players gameplay gated gear that is better than what casuals can acquire would be unfair.
You see them shout about it loudest when raiders get the dyeable version of a really cool armor set.
Their willingness to not upset casuals has actually caused some of their most recent content in the Variant/Criterion dungeons to be unappealing, because they give so few things that people care about that they may as well be fruitless endeavors once you've done them for their story.