https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

I love PSO2 to death but they seriously need to do an overhaul of older content; they keep piling newer systems on without really addressing older content at all. I always said that SEGA loves their duct tape and paperclip fixes, but we are pretty much at a point where the game is a giant writhing mass of sticky plastic and aluminum.

example 1: Pre Kuron Free Fields vs. Kuron and Tokyo
the older free fields seem to have been setup with Advanced Quests in mind; which became even more evident when they updated Super Hard AQs to go into Extra Hard enemy levels. the whole thing seems really awkward; but now AQs have this niche of having double EXP forever, making them better for leveling from 40 to 70.

possible solution? they really should figure out a way to just remove AQs altogether, make the area-stones drop/rewarded from the free fields/hanz; make the area stone tradin items worthwhile

Bonus: rework ARKS Quests to tell a bit of a story like Train Ghidoan Suppression does

ex. 2: Crafting Vs. New-Type Weapons and the Collection File
Crafting was introduced as a way to keep older weapons statistically relevant and useable into the endgame, until Mission Decision came out and gave Red weapons their booster potential; making nearly every other weapon pointless to even craft (exceptions being Zero Range Advance tmgs, elemental crystal tech weapons, maybe some others). Now we got the New-Type weapons that cannot be crafted at all, with the Collection File system to guarantee a useable 13* weapon when you complete a card. they can't let you craft new-types because crafting normalizes the base stats of a weapon, and new-types only reach 135% weapon stats; meaning they would be terrible since even 1* weapons get +150% stats at max grind. they only added new-types to some weapons, and I think it could be somehow related to the fact that old-world and new-types of the same weapon aren't compatible for element grinding for some reason

possible solution? commit to new-type grinding and replace all weapons (and units) with new-types. do the dang work of making old-world and new-types compatible for element grinding already. either remove equipment crafting or make it compatible to new types without making them suffer statistically

Bonus: flat-out replacing all old-world weapons would be ideal, but could be a very messy business. I don't know how weapons with multiple potentials would be handled (Dragon Slayer-NT only has a single potential I hear...) but it should be possible to interpret a weapon's potential level and incorporate that into it's new-type grind level. as for that issue with potentials; just let us spend some photon spheres to change out at any point past +10.

ex. 3: Emergency Quests vs. Emergency Quests
There are too dang many EQs, and making Big Ones by-announcement-only does not help the issue. The problem here stems from the issue in the previous games where people only ran stuff like TTF and White Beast because they were the best groupings of EXP, boss drops, and effort. I get that they want to have special missions to take down a greater foe without that being the only thing people do; but that's also just it, with the EQ system people only wait around for EQs without really doing anything else anyway; so it manages to not solve the problem and fills all the higher-difficulty blocks with people AFKing for EQs.

Possible Solutions: they are really trying to emulate actual MMOs instead of their Diablo roots, so why not just make EQs always up, but you can only run it a set number of times a week; possibly resetting every Wednesday/maintenance to keep everyone on the same page. yeah you will get the people that log in after maint is over, do their allotted Profound Darkness runs, then log off until next maint; but at least we wouldn't be slaves to the EQ schedule anymore! There could also possibly be some other incentives so loners don't get left out in the dust; like allowing you to run these EQs as many times as you want, but you only get EXP and Drops for the first few times, after that you might just only get the clear reward (like, say if PD gave out an extra caligula or two for the mission clear)

Bonus: the ticket system from featured quests could also be useful for this; drop all the junk items and make it only tickets, but add in stuff like Urban Recovery, Chaotic tranquility, Volcanic Guerrillas, and maybe even Cradle of Darkness/Beckoning Darkness. people could join a quest once someone with a ticket hosts it, so it would probably benefit from having a dedicated block for it. on that subject...

ex. 4: The Block System vs. uh.. this is more just a rant about the block system really
The block system is really just a dated relic of a bygone era; it's been really showing it's faults with people AFKing ever since, well; Phantasy Star Universe. the desire for the lobby system is great and all, but I think there is a better way to go about it

possible solution: split missions and lobbies into separate servers. bam. done. lobbies can be on their own servers for people to fight over blocks to afk on, while all active parties on that ship can be queried and joined from any lobby block. this is something

Bonus: people could actually hang out in team rooms now; wow!

Conclusion
There are probably a lot more things I could go on about (like maybe gathering idk); but I feel like these are the most glaring issues facing the game to date. a LOT of it is also probably related to how the game engine has been is still based out of the PSU engine, which I think was also based out of the PSO1 engine. which really stresses that whole Ship of Theseus Paradox; there is probably a lot of problems so deep rooted, that they would need to completely recode the game from scratch just to fix.

and if there is one thing we know about SEGA, its that they hate putting effort into anything anymore.

I know my voice will never reach the developers, I mean i'm posting this on this website and directly into the rants subform; and even if it did I know it wouldn't change a dang thing. I'll keep playing this game probably until the day the servers shut down one way or another, mainly because the combat is just really satisfying. but that won't stop me from dreaming of a better player expierence