Firstly, welcome Joel to the forum.
I kind of got the impression from your post that it was more to do with the entertainment/ character factor rather than saying one way or another that a certain group/ era was better technically than another.
My view is that from a purely entertainment point of view it's a near-run thing. I say that in a general sense rather than saying that this era has a better group of greats than the past era, which I don't think it does.
The impact of ODIs and other factors on modern techniques certainly means that run rates have increased, whilst the standard of fielding today, which I find entertaining in itself, is vastly superior. So, to that extent this era is very entertaining.
I saw a lot of cricket in the 70s and 80s, so to a large extent I probably look at it through rose coloured glasses. I certainly believe that there were far more characters around then than now.
Lloyd was a great leader who gelled a culturally diverse side into world beaters, Richards had that swagger even in an era dominated by sheer pace, there was the Andy Roberts glare and Holding's fluidity.
You had the (perceived?) arrogance of Greig, the eccentricity of Knott, the stoicism of Boycott. Then Botham came along.
Imran came along and began to take Pakistan to new levels, as did Javed. Both were characters in their own right. One a pin-up boy, the other irrascible.
Gavaskar and Kapil were both great for India, as was Vishy and Vensakar, although he was pretty young then iirc.
New Zealand saw the emergence of Hadlee who, along with Howarth then Coney and others began to make NZ more consistently competitive as a team, to the point where they seemed to believe they could take on anyone.
For Australia there were the Chappells, Marsh, Lillee, Thommo and, arguably the biggest character of all, Dougie Walters.
So certainly it as an era of great characters, perhaps because, at least until Packer came along, there was still an air of innocence about cricket at that time.
In terms of entertainment, all of the players I've listed above brought certain qualities to the game (Boycott perhaps more for the purist than the wider watching community). Their personalities and auras entertained. Today, I don't think players can do that because of the wider scrutiny placed upon them owing to their professionalism. They perhaps fear saying anything for fear of it being misinterpreted or used by opponents as ammunition against them.
Certainly, as Andrew Symonds found out in England 2005, you can no longer go out on a bender and front up to play, even against Bangladesh. It's a far cry from the early-mid 80s when Wayne Phillips apparently went out to bat in a tour match in Zimbabwe wearing a walkman.
Was the game itself more entertaining then though? That's actually not an easy question to answer. By the mid-80s people were worying about the death of spin bowling, such was the domination of pace. Similarly, slow over rates were perceived as killing the game of cricket, to the point where the 90 over rule had to be introduced. The game today is more diverse than it was, and offers more variety in terms of the influence of spin, which became less and less through the 70s and 80s. Also, 250-260 runs per day was considered exceptional in those days. That in itself does not mean the play was dull, as anyone who loves test cricket would tell you, but it says something about how the game has developed as a spectacle to where it is now, for better or for worse.
Joel, a really good, thought-provoking 1st post imo. After going through everything I've mentioned again, I still can't say which is the more entertaining era, tbh!