What do you miss from ARR?

[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.

[Adeacia]

Not a thing. The game has only improved by leaving that behind.

[Wilford111]

It's funny, a lot of these were actually addressed in Eureka - like having a world that felt alive and vibrant, enemies that actually felt intimidating and powerful, FATE trains... even protect and stoneskin are in Eureka if you have the logograms for them. I'm not really defending Eureka because I don't find it fun but I think the whole point of Eureka was to try and recapture that feeling of ARR. Let's hope Bozjan Southern Front is better at it as well as being actually fun.

[Brightamethyst]

I miss knowing less about the game. The pure sense of adventure that comes from being a starstruck newbie with no idea what's around that corner or at the end of that dungeon. Seven years later I've done everything and know everything, and while that's fun in its own way, it's very, VERY different from the new player experience. You can't explore something a second time. You can only revisit it.

I guess I miss the semi-realistic armor. A lot of the AAR gear had a sensible design while most of the expansion stuff have gone off the deep end.

Also this. Foestriker, Warwolf, etc look like practical armor a lancer might actually wear in combat. Slipstream does not.

[Ursa_Vonfiebryd]

The chills I got from the Edda easter eggs and storyline. Also her ghost sightings. They should bring that back for Halloween.

[Mhaeric]

I had a love/hate relationship with that. On the one hand it forced people to get good or be left out of content. On the other hand it got REALLY aggravating when all I wanted was a Titan EX clear and the ever present latency issues ensured people were being knocked off left and right, even if they reacted to dodge the landslides. I felt Levi EX was pretty fair by comparison however, since you had generally enough time to react without lag killing you.

I took a break starting sometime in patch 2.2 for this exact reason and didn't come back until after Heavensward started during 3.35. Missed all of 2.3-3.2 simply because my 180-210ms ping at the time meant that even a full patch after Titan EX dropped I still couldn't progress past it to even unlock Ifrit and felt the game wasn't worth investing my time in until I could get a better connection. I had already reached level 50 with every job/class so there wasn't much left to do for me other than end-game trials and Titan EX was effectively impossible for me without a carry. Once I got back with better internet (90ms which the subsequent server move a year later improved even more to 40ms yay!) I was completely fine doing Titan EX without getting one-shot during plume stacks or getting knocked off. I think there was even some adjustment SE had put in during that time to help account for higher pings... my memory is fuzzy on what that was though.

[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.

[MomomiMomi]

When crafting was good, items were worth something, and there was stuff to spend gil on.

In a couple of months it will be 6 years since I stopped bothering to try to make gil. I fear the economy will never recover.

[VictorTheed]

I miss the amount of content we'd get from each patch in arr, hw was pretty good on this to, but sb and shb felt like we got a lot less content each patch.