What do you miss from ARR?

[Anienai]

Unchained, Butcher's Block, Inner Beast, Mercy Stroke, Fracture, Brutal Swing, the old Overpower, and a bunch more.

[MrPresident]

Figuring it out as we went along.

No one knew what the hell they were doing and it was great. Fine tuning our skills, optimising our gear, finding little rewards like minions from fates and dungeons, It was all done on the fly. There may have been a small group at the very top of the game who understood what they were doing from the get go. But most of us were just bumbling through and I liked that.

Now the game is so big and established every major fight is cleared and has an established strategy about a day after release. The dungeons all follow the same formula and rarely deviate while there is also less adaptability and variation in play styles now than ever.

I still enjoy the game and probably will for the remainder of its life span. But it’s hard to replicate that feeling of when it was fresh and original.

[Johaandr]

Everything was fair

[Shurrikhan]

Everything was fair

...Was it, though?

/memories of GL originally not affecting a handful of skills, our strongest skills being cross-class GCDs to spam at high TP cost, and our maximal dps still being less than most DPS's even after having fully ramped up and being played optimally.

[Kohdo]

Mana Shift.

[Luna-M]

Protect and Stoneskin!

[Enkidoh]

Protect and Stoneskin!

^This. This oh so very much.

And expanded on that, the old cross-class system. Yes it got a bit creaky but I still miss being able to cross-class Cure and Raise on my PLD.

[Hazama999]

Figuring it out as we went along.

No one knew what the hell they were doing and it was great. Fine tuning our skills, optimising our gear, finding little rewards like minions from fates and dungeons, It was all done on the fly. There may have been a small group at the very top of the game who understood what they were doing from the get go. But most of us were just bumbling through and I liked that.

Now the game is so big and established every major fight is cleared and has an established strategy about a day after release. The dungeons all follow the same formula and rarely deviate while there is also less adaptability and variation in play styles now than ever.

I still enjoy the game and probably will for the remainder of its life span. But it’s hard to replicate that feeling of when it was fresh and original.

This. Absolutely this.
I still remember partying up with a group back in ARR beta. We were so excited about getting our chocobos. Everything was new, fresh, and mysterious. We didn't know what the future of the game was going to be like.

Looking back, I think ARR was the highest I was ever excited to play the game... I remember being really hyped for patch 2.1. The sheer amount of content it'd bring! Extremes, the first 24-man raid (this is what I was looking forward to the most), PVP, housing (this one hurt lol), and of course, story.

[Mhaeric]

This. Absolutely this.
I still remember partying up with a group back in ARR beta. We were so excited about getting our chocobos. Everything was new, fresh, and mysterious. We didn't know what the future of the game was going to be like.

I remember all the dragoons in alpha lol. So many blue spiked armors running around Central Shroud. Even back then in Alpha it was pretty clear that they had done something right when comparing it to 1.0. We weren't sure exactly how it would all end up, but the game felt infinitely better already.

[Soraki-Muppe]

That the game didn't just hand you a bunch of treat as tank, you had to work for it.
That we got 3 dungeon each patch.
The raid felt like a raid instead of 4 trials you had to do in the correct order.
The relic weapon was actually useful.
Getting more trials.
Hildebrand being amazing.
Getting more beast tribe.

I guess the short version would be to say: I miss getting more content each patch, and I miss that tanks were fun and interesting to play.