FFXIV Bitter Sweet

[Soukyuu]

Wanna know whats funny? This is how FFXIV 1.0 was.. Exactly what you want...

How so? Each class had it's set of "optimal" gear everyone wore. Leves were just as repeatable. Granted, GC quests were a lot more involving, but that was because of the Umbral era storyline - they were essentially the continuation of the main story - something that is filled by hard primals & coil this time. Class quests were just "done once and forgotten", the only difference was that they started later in the game, lv30 afair. Chocobo caravan escorts were just as much of a grindfest (for seals) as CM/Prae/AK are now - and people wanted only a specific setup for them, else it wasn't efficient. Back then it was "AoE only" now it's "full DL/relic please".

Are you sure you're not falling victim to the rose-tinted glasses? 1.0 did some things better, like the 1.23 battle system, elemental wheel and monster AI, but it certainly wasn't better in anything else. Powerlevelling to 50 by abusing the party claim system. Now FATE spamming. Grinding same dungeons over and over again for a low drop rate item. Now speedruns for tomes. Open world was just as dead as it is now - additionally being plain copy pasted environment.

I agreed with your initial post, but I don't think 1.0 should be the first example on how to do it right. They had to make 2.0 for a reason.