ARR was better

[Xaphire]

The only dungeon that was any harder was pharos sirius on launch, owing to people being as bad at the game then as they are now. None of the raids were harder and all the mechanics were significantly *less* complex.

Lol at the hunting log thing. Killing 10 of x in a zone once per class keeping the overworld alive. Okay dude.

[PintyMcEars]

the systems i mentioned WERE and ARE objectively better. shb ruined all of the overworld complexity.

You mean subjectively.

[Jeeqbit]

Jobs had identity

Well they plan to address that so all we can do is wait.

Hunting log and the Hunt kept the overworld alive

Hunts still exist, and still keep the open world alive with S rank spawning and hunt trains. You can spot map parties all around the place usually, too, or people doing beast tribe quests. In EW and ShB people farm for shared FATE ranks or bicolor gemstones or old quests. And gatherers still do stuff.

What really kept the world alive was using FATEs to level instead of other methods. At this point in the game, we have so many zones that they are spread thin, so it's only gonna have a lot of people in if there are events driving everyone there like a new relic step, Yo-kai Watch, or new bicolor gemstone rewards. And SE does do these sort of things sometimes.

The relic was harder, involved the over world and HAD a gil sink, AND dungeons even contained some of the pieces, AND crafters could make money selling the weapon needed

That's going to be fixed in Dawntrail, where we'll have a Field Operation. The field operation area becomes like the open world in that it's the area that becomes busy, with social interaction and lots of players doing FATEs. They are planning to have two ways to do the relics so likely one of them will involve old content like the open world too.

Things weren't handed to you (you had to work a lot harder to clear content and save allowances)

Well some things are handed to you now, but not everything. There are still grinds and high-end content.

The raids were harder and had more complex tank/healer mechanics

They are going back to their ARR/Heavensward content design philosophy of unique role mechanics like a tank or DPS doing something separate to other party members, smaller hitboxes, etc.

I think main way in which it was harder was not having cast bars a lot of the time, lack of telegraph marks, needing to anticipate heavy damage on a tank instead of clear tank buster casts, not being able to go purely off cast bars to recognize mechanics a lot of the time and being more punishing to healers, combined with the job design of lack of OGCDs. Job design was part of it.

I could throw in the different arenas but a lot of them are still circles, squares or rectangles beside the first tier.

In any case, I'm not sure to what extent they'll go back to that design ever, but we know certain things like unique role mechanics and smaller hitboxes are likely to be addressed.

The dungeons were harder (lost city of amdapor anyone?)

This is why the basic auto attacks of enemies should still make the healer need to heal like it did in that dungeon.

levequests had meaning
Grand company was useful
Glamour system was more robust
Elemental attributes on gear

Not really.

[Nebelheim]

There are times when I miss the arr-hw era of ff14 but some of the jank like requiring 20 stacks of different glam prisms and saying it was more robust and some of the other things you mentioned sounds like your over glorifying some of the jankiness as somehow making the overwolrd or game feeling more alive. When it comes to leveling I prefer running dungeons over fates but art the time fates gave more xp. The hunt log for each job was a once and done thing that was forgotten about. Elemental materia was useless and stat allocation was a false sense of job customization that everyone eventually figured out what stat was best for each role/job. I do miss some aspect of that era and miss the time where I had almost a full friendlist of 200 friends where probably less then 10 of them still sign in but some of the jank and systems I don't miss. It was cool seeing multiple groups sitting waiting for the rest of there raid groups at raid entrances but party/duty finder was also a nice addition to the game instead of having to go to various forums to recruit people in your specific server.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

ARR wasn't harder, the game was new and we were all just bad.

If any post can be claimed to be pure rose tinted glasses, it's this one.

And I make that claim because I have video of several of the coil raids of my groups clears, and God I'm terrible.

Also, I was doing speed runs of AK and WP back in the day, I used to pull all the way to each boss room. They weren't really hard if you knew what you were doing.

[Connor]

I liked cross-classing. Yeah, you read right. I miss being able to use Cure, the no-longer-existent Protect, and Stoneskin as a Bard.

Idk about the other stuff. I feel like ARR was simply too early in the ‘post-1.0’ lifespan for long-term issues with the game to be identified. That said, I did like how abilities all felt more fun. I like the silly useless things like Miasma having a debuff more for the thematics (pretty sure it was healing down even though no enemy ever healed lol) than an actual gameplay purpose. Now it feels like everything devs do is attempting to create a perfect numerical balance instead of a fun game

[Kemiko]

The only dungeon that was any harder was pharos sirius on launch, owing to people being as bad at the game then as they are now. None of the raids were harder and all the mechanics were significantly *less* complex.

Lol at the hunting log thing. Killing 10 of x in a zone once per class keeping the overworld alive. Okay dude.

I'll object to "players being bad" as the only reason Pharos was a difficult dungeon on launch. 'cause it was fairly easy - with the RIGHT jobs. And that pretty much sums up the issue with that dungeon. Everything worth stunning in that dungeon was stun immune on launch and forced the party to have a Silence available to actually deal with one of the more punishing mechanics available. Silence was only available for 4 jobs: BRD, MNK, SCH and PLD and we can safely say MNK is not a reliable form of Silence and SCH would be forced to use Selene (which while was generally the better option was also just the worse healing option). The sheer difficulty spike for the dungeon if you don't have a BRD or a PLD is due to either poor job design or poor dungeon design based on the available skillsets of your jobs.

[Kayokane]

the elemental attributes on gear, was an already obsoleted system. Where in Legacy it was actually used, in ARR the amount of points needed for a tangible effect was too high to be useful.

[Galvuu]

The only dungeon that was any harder was pharos sirius on launch, owing to people being as bad at the game then as they are now. None of the raids were harder and all the mechanics were significantly *less* complex.

Lol at the hunting log thing. Killing 10 of x in a zone once per class keeping the overworld alive. Okay dude.

Amdapor Keep. Demon Wall used to actually enrage quite often. Dps check was tight, and some trash pulls were hard too.
(Threads like these make me feel old...)

[Kaurhz]

- Jobs had identity - Sure.

- Jobs had a reason to level multiple (cross class system) - Yes, and it also made things a pain. The role system would suffice if they could introduce interesting enough mechanics. I don't think too many people were like "OMG Let me use this class instead", it was more "Oh, I have to level THAT job"

- Hunting log and the Hunt kept the overworld alive - The Hunt still exists, and I would argue the only reason the Hunting Log kept the open world alive is because it was new. The Shared FATEs fulfill a similar role. You could actually argue Palace of the Dead had some shared responsibility in killing off the overworld, e.g., the number of FATE trains I saw in absolutely every single zone went down significant post-PotD release. Prior to that? It's 3.3, and I could still see FATE trains running on the regular in South Shroud, Costa Del Sol, Coerthas, and Northern Thanalan.

- Things weren't handed to you (you had to work a lot harder to clear content and save allowances) - I disagree, ARR wasn't difficult, it had a lot of terrible systems which just made it inconvenient, e.g., cooldowns not resetting on wipe.

- The raids were harder and had more complex tank/healer mechanics - Sure. Some of them were also badly designed where mechanics would queue based on HP %, e.g., Melusine.

- The dungeons were harder (lost city of amdapor anyone?) - Some dungeons were harder and some were a joke. People literally asked for the current dungeon design, even if they don't necessarily like it now. How often were you going off-course in Haukke Manor for Manor Varnish? I can count the number of times on 1-hand, and that is even when it was the potential for
40K gil for just killing 3-4 extra mobs, which would also yield EXP at the time. - How often did you clear all rooms in Sastasha? How often do you still do it if you get it?

- The relic was harder, involved the over world and HAD a gil sink, AND dungeons even contained some of the pieces, AND crafters could make money selling the weapon needed - This expansion is literally the only instance where it isn't the case. HW still had the crafted items, and was a significant time sink. Eureka had the time and Gil sink, in addition to massive Gil rewards, and the same applies to Shadowbringers. If you wanted good runs of CLL/Dalriada/DRN, then you were still spending a bit of time farming, or a bit of Gil getting all the requisite lost actions and essences.

- levequests had meaning - They still do, whether you decide to use them or not is entirely on you. The amount of people doing Coffee Biscuits was insane. Also is the loss, or restriction on Ishgard Restoration IMO is not worth the sacrifice of making levequests meaningful. Battle leves were useless from my experience.

- Grand company was useful - It had its uses yes. This is a system that they really need to continue.

- Glamour system was more robust - How was it more robust? What are you even talking about here?

- Elemental attributes on gear - The amount of significance and actual meaning behind this was miniscule. Nobody was using a Fire Materia IV - and frankly the only benefit to it was that Mutamix would occasionally give you useless materia

- Tradeable raid glamour meant raids had value in clearing them weekly (the dreadwyrm attire) - Are you referring to Replica Dreadwym Gear? - This was added in 3.x by which time all coils could be done unsync. People are still clearing weekly for loot anyway. Making it tradeable doesn't accomplish anything.