Quote Originally Posted by Alahra View Post
This at least is kind of an exaggeration. The Anima quest is improved in a number of ways compared to the ARR stages and even directly incorporated some feedback regarding the Atma stage into the early Animated stage. I talked about a number of the improvements that make the quest more player friendly a few posts back.
It's a bit of both. I feel like they trimmed out the parts that were well received by the playerbase (such as the intial relic quest and practically everything attached to that) and tossed it aside in favor of systems that are rather less appealing (2.x content that doesn't encourage open-world liveliness), and while hitting the marks of areas that truly need addressing (like CT). Even if FATEs are good for leveling, it'll end up being dead again after the rush, same with alexander normal, at least if Garuda HM was anything to go by with nexus/zeta grinds.