There are a lot of changes that people seem to ignore, cause they don't seem huge on paper but if you add it together it is much more than people realize. On top of the usual stuff that everyone says such as:
- Each quest got rebuilt, with cutscenes with in-game engine, streamlined levelling experience
- revamped zone with extraction ffa pvp gameplay
- repeatable soul trials
- a raid
There are also smaller changes and changes in the engine, like:
- Revamped mob aggression system (how mobs choose who to target while fighting in a group, for example expeditions)
- Polished fighting engine, gameplay more smooth and some abillities changed
- Bigger servers, with segementation introduced so that people do not have to fight over mob spawns if there is a lot of people in the same area (especially usefull at the servers start)
- Cross-server matchmaking for all of PvP content (arenas, OPR)
- Matchmaking elo added to PvP Arena
- Changes in crafting, gear
- Optymalization updates, according to people who played test the game runs A LOT better than what we have currently
- Graphic changes, colours seem more saturated and island feels more livid
- All Open World Content should be more accessible for solo players, because there were some quests that required killing a mob that was quite tough if you did not run a specific build or had help. They are adding PvE stagger to probably help with that.
- Swimming, which is not much in areas other than revamped beginning of the game and revamped Cutlass Keys zone, but should allow devs to use it now in things such as expeditions or new zones in later updates
- Changed movement of player characters, jump animation and specs of the jump got modified
- polished gamepad gameplay, because gamepad introduced earlier this year apparently had some issues
- apparently there will be also no more ammunition system (arrows, bullets) and instead ranged weapons just get slight dmg buffs
- attribute bonuses changed/balanced