ARR was better

[cutestfox]

Considering DRGs aren't completely barred from endgame content anymore due to their ridiculous inherent weaknesses (like low Magic Defense) and have actual party utility now, yeah, it's changed.

Any DRG who says they want to go back to the ARR days is a dirty liar or certifiably insane.

They were never barred from endgame content and were always desired.
Dragoon always had party utility, are you forgetting the whole group meta around the piercing debuff?
Low magic defense was countered during the early weeks of each tier by throwing up a vit accessory if you really needed to, and you *always* had enough dps to clear. You could also respec your stat points to vit temporarily too if you wanted to skip the accessory.

Nonsense points

[Rekh]

OP's correct. To this day it's still my favorite "expansion." It felt and performed like a balanced open world and instanced world. They tried to at least utilize the open world for hunts, relics, levequests, etc.

Those things still exist but back then it took more time, which by extension kept the open world alive longer. Right now relic quests don't even exist; you just do rouletes for weekly tomes and you get a relic for free.

The jobs were better designed as well mechanically and even aesthetically in some parts.
Also, I have to go back to the open world, it was dense and had more design significance to it.

Open world since heavensward has been a regression for the sake of flying.

Eureka really showed us what they could do if they didn't have to worry about flying mounts.

[NorthernLadMSP]

Heavensward was peak. Fight me.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Heavensward was peak. Fight me.

The peaks was in stormblood.

[Kaurhz]

Heavensward was peak. Fight me.

I too enjoy an expansion that was bad design until 3.3

[Battler-Ushiromiya]

I don’t understand why you included this unless you weren’t actually playing during ARR and just found a page somewhere that had a list of expired ARR content.

That's exactly what he did lol

[TaleraRistain]

Like Jeeq said, overworld was populated because we were out there doing FATEs. This is because we had a hard stop at (I believe, it's been a bit) level 47 where we ran out of MSQ experience and had to go do FATE farms to get the next quest.

Having to level two classes was also pretty annoying, because they often were two different styles of play. So you're jiving with this class that you love but then you get stuck not able to progress to the Job step because you have to stop at 30 and go level this other class to 15 before you can keep jiving with the class you were enjoying.

[4clubbedace]

okay, to prefix. the CONCEPTS were better the QOL was horrid but most of those bad QOL have been addressed

• 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
• levequests had meaning
• Glamour system was more robust
• Elemental attributes on gear

youre out of your dammn mind with these alone

[Casti_EL]

I briefly played in 2.0, started probably a month before HW came out (and left a few months before SB release only to return in ShB) and for me I'd say I certainly enjoyed the class system more back then - lot more identity to the jobs, familiar spells (Stoneskin, I was a bit bitter when SE took that away from us), and to be fair, I did like the inter-class requirements for some of the advanced jobs - just made sense lore-wise that to be a Paladin a Gladiator would need to learn White Magic but I can understand how some found it frustrating (for me it was a bit reminisce of FFXI sub-job system so I didn't mind it at all, plus I do like trying out all classes in a game).

[Sigiria]

just made sense lore-wise that to be a Paladin a Gladiator would need to learn White Magic

I mean, it might have made sense if paladin had any healing spell at the time, or any spell at all...