I have a huge spot in my heart for version 2, but I would disagree with a number of things here:
Enemies are much weaker, so players have to come up with their own ways to inject challenge into the game, such as TAing everything.
Weaker enemies mean that nonrare weapons are a viable option, so many rares are outclassed by nonrares with Hit %.
The way BB/GC are balanced lead to a much greater diversity of play and allow the player much more creativity in trying different strategies. Time attack is certainly not the only way to have fun in this game, and actually being able to use some of the neat abilities Sega gave weapons in a viable way can be lots of fun. This range of weapons also allows many characters to employ strategies that can overcome their weaknesses. My racaseal on BB can solo PW4 fairly cleanly, using the diverse weapon set available. My racaseal on version 2 attempting to solo Soul Blade would be a war crime. Unless you were one of those indviduals with a 180% needle, in which case eww.
I can look back fondly now on limited weapon set available to me in version 2, but the exciting gameplay loop in Version 2 of: Force Buffs team and Debuffs enemies --> Rest of team hits things with Imperial Pick and Red Handgun using N H H combos gets stale.
Also as an aside how screwed were rangers in version 2? They may be godly now, but the only reliably findable weapon in Version 2 for rangers was Red handgun. Legitimate Sranks filled some gaps but were only actually viable with force support.
The difficulty is based on ATA instead of ATP, so Techniques are devalued, as you can do plenty of damage without Shifta and Zalure. In V2, doing 0 damage without support Techniques is a distinct possibility.
Force support range has been massively nerfed. Forces are now required to equip specific weapons and shields in order to get good range, and if you're a Force without an inherent class range boost, your range will always be relatively bad.
I would disagree that techniques were valuable on version 2. Outside of Shifta and Deband, Jellen and Zalure and some rabarta, Forces as the game was played 20 years ago were not using techniques. Forces smacking things with Chameleon Scythe and Huge Plantain fan were the norm.
Forces can actually play using soley techs through the vast majority of the game.
I mean unless we are going to count the fact that S and D had to be refreshed every time a mag triggered, or somebody wanted to show off their S Reds, as rewarding technique usage
Rares drop in quests, so the V2 mindset of playing strictly for fun is dead. You're expected to play an area with a Section ID that can find good items, even if you'd rather be playing a different character.
I would take the most issue with this statement. It was actually tough to find people to play quests on Version 2. If you wanted to play a Quest like EN4 or Soul Blade, you needed a force, if you didn't want it to be an extremely painful slog. Most people didn't want to play quests since as you point out NO RARE ITEMS DROP IN QUESTS. Even back in the stone age of 56k, people wanted to find items in this game. And if you tell me this was not the case, I would point to the endless parade of Crazy Tunes, Twin Blazes, Tripolic Shields, Sealed J Swords, Lavis Blades, etc. that people "found" as evidence that, yes, even in a time where people thought "I am really looking forward to Attack of the Clones!", people wanted cool things in video games.
Forest to Ruins freeplay. All. The. Time. *Shudders* We may have lacked the in depth drop chart knowledge we have now, but anyone who actually played Version 2 would know what Section ID I was referring to if I said "Chainsawd Caves", and creating games in certain Section IDs was definitely something that was done.
The community mindset has been replaced with a competitive one. Picking a bad class will make some people not want to play with you, because they would rather play with somebody who's using a good class and thus contributes more to the team.
What game, that has been played this long, doesn't experience this? I mean, where is the large community of people centered around playing SMB casually? There is a handful of people devoted to the game still, and the entire run of the game can be beaten 3 times in the time it takes me to cook a freezer pizza. I'm not even saying I disagree with you. However that is certainly not the fault of BB. Had Version 2 been the final version of the game, and people played it on Ephinea, as they play BB today, we would be in the same place with a different meta. I am sure as someone who has played that version of the game since the server was taken down, you are employing different strategies, that you have polished over time, and watching an old video of people playing on DC would seem quaint XD.