His Excellency Aethien wrote:
From what I gathered, the original was pretty much a giant pile of sh*t so better in every way isn't all that descriptive.
The original complaints that come to mind was that there wasn't enough to do (like nothing), it was tons of grinding, the market system wasn't enjoyable, and the class system was meh.
So they completely redesigned the game. They ended FFXIV with a giant invasion event, and reshaped the zones and world accordingly for ARR. It's more like a sequel, in that respect.
But now there are quest structures from start to finish, they added a ton of guild leves (their dungeon quest thingy), added FATE events (public events a la GW2/Rift), added a bunch of other PVE content pathways. I haven't actually looked into those too actively, because I don't like going into MMOs knowing everything. I have fun discovering stuff.
Oh, and they changed the class system (dropped one class by fusing it into Gladiator, added the Arcanist class). Classes now specialize into jobs at high levels (Glad -> Paladin, Arcanist -> Summoner or Scholar, etc.) These essentially replace the ability to slot cross-class skills (like giving a Conjurer, the main healer, stronger nukes, too) with dedicated, specialized skills for specific roles. Right now, only Arcanist has two specializations (one is support and damage, like the Arcanist, the other adds healing capabilities to create a second healing job).
It looks like it will be an interesting system. And their crafting stuff looks really interesting.
I know nothing about endgame.