Man, I HATED the upgrade system from FFVIII with a passion. Every single weapon shop I visited I didn't have the right plans/ingredients for the characters I used. I ended up going through the entire game with my original weapons. I try to explore/find treasure as I go through the game, but if I miss it I don't want to go back anywhere until the end of the game.
Customization in FFX, in comparison, was something interesting. A) Because it wasn't something you needed to do to keep up with damage, just make your weapons more useful. B) I actually had the stuff in my inventory to upgrade my weapons.

Hopefully they can strike a balance between having no weapon shops (one of the coolest parts about finding a new town is running to all the stores first and checking out the new stuff you can buy.), and having no chest rewards (aka FFXII where I just stopped looting chests by the end, finding a shinny new weapon in a chest is what makes going through a dungeon worthwhile!)