Evaluating A Realm Reborn: 2.0 - 2.55 Mega Discussion Thread

Every patch in the 2.0 series has officially launched and we are mere months away from Heavensward. A Realm Reborn has brought us a lot of things, such examples include:

The Binding Coil of Bahamut series
The Crystal Tower raid dungeons
Player vs Player
Treasure Hunts
Beast Tribe Quests
Player Housing
Saga of the Zodiac Weapons
Glamour system
Desynthesis
Hunts
Various primals, dungeons, and trials
Among many other things...

What were your favorite parts of A Realm Reborn? What were your least favorite? Also, what can SE do to improve certain elements of your least favorite parts of 2.0?

Keep in mind, this thread is used to discuss the 2.55 story for those that have already completed it so please keep spoilers out of this thread for the time being.

Favorite: Crystal Tower

Least Liked: Crafting

What I liked about 2.0:

The massive increase in the number of players from 1.0. It certainly helps when there are a lot of people that play the game in terms of wanting to complete various content whether it's through the party or duty finder.

HIldebrand quest series: While I wish the 1.0 quests could've been preserved for A Realm Reborn, the 2.0 quests help reinforce Hildy and Nashu's role as comedic relief while providing an entertaining side story.

Zodiac weapons: Yeah, I'm one of the few crazy people that like having something to continuously work on. Sure there are parts of the quest that I feel weren't thought out very well, but at least the reward ended up being a substantial one.

What I didn't like:

Hunts: I'm sure that there are a lot of people that don't like this system either, and there are a few reasons why. 2.3 and 2.5 saw dramatic spikes in hunt activity while 2.4 cooled down considerably due to the shift from myth/sold tomes to sold/poet. I feel that SE won't be able to find a great middle ground with this system in its current iteration. It also doesn't help that the daily marks include FATEs that can take hours to spawn despite the two increases to the daily rewards.

Eight is enough: While I can understand finding 7 other people to do content is a lot easier than asking 23+ others for help, it feels restricting in places such as pre-DF coil runs where you couldn't go back to help players that haven't beaten prior turns for the week. While 2.45 helped rectify this at the cost of forfeiting loot, it was too little too late. SE has a new loot system ready for Alexander, but we can only speculate whether or not things will improve in that department.

Gear Inconsistency: I'm not referring to the DoW/M gear throughout the 2.0 series, but mainly the DoH/L gear improvements came out in such a scattered manner. For example; DoH had access to i55 rings where DoL rings were gated behind master books and desynthesis, DoH has access to additional Artisan armor without having to rely on 4-star crafters where DoL doesn't even get that luxury, and DoL had access to forager's body before DoH had access to an upgraded body piece.