Hair texture quality, among other texture qualities.

[Lanceton]

to me, ridding of these 'unnecessary' stuff made the game feels like wow-level graphics, taking the plants you mentioned about for example, they're now just 'cards' stacked together
FF's always about graphic fidelity, and 2.0 got a downgrade on that.
the only graphic 'flaw' I could remember in 1.0 was the 2 tiered texture for distant terrain.. it switched instantly to lower rez texture at like I dunno 1000 yard or so distance
if they made that switch a blend-in transition it'd be flawless

[basketofseals]

to me, ridding of these 'unnecessary' stuff made the game feels like wow-level graphics, taking the plants you mentioned about for example, they're now just 'cards' stacked together
FF's always about graphic fidelity, and 2.0 got a downgrade on that.
the only graphic 'flaw' I could remember in 1.0 was the 2 tiered texture for distant terrain.. it switched instantly to lower rez texture at like I dunno 1000 yard or so distance
if they made that switch a blend-in transition it'd be flawless

It's "unnecessary" because those resources that were spent fine-detailing those plants could have been better spent elsewhere. Most notably it was needed in map details because 1.0 maps were about 12 set pieces per country that were simply copy pasted ad nauseum. Rather than fancy plants, I'd rather see more clothes/armor/hair.