ARR was better

[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.