The Disappointment of Eureka

[Zohnax]

I’m sure Eureka at first was a good design on paper. However, the implementation leaves a lot to be desired. In comparison to previous relics, I like the idea of having a special zone and battle mechanics over basically just reusing old content. One of the biggest problems with Eureka though is that there is little sense of accomplishment because it feels as if the player is being showered with rewards despite the way the playerbase has been doing the content in the way commonly referred to as the “NM train.” The NM train enables the behavior of basically not participating in content for a fair chunk of players in Eureka while other players do the work in spawning NMs. The fact that players below the recommended required level of the NMs can still gain experience pretty much negates any reasoning to gain experience by defeating monsters in a typical party fashion, despite your hotfix of increasing experience gains from this method. NMs can be easily overwhelmed with sheer numbers and often present little challenge, with the exception of maybe Pazuzu. This is further exacerbated by the oversight of magicite in the magia board not level sync’ing down to an NM’s level.

So now we have content that’s supposed to surpass raiding in every odd patch cycles that does little engage the player, but still yields a high reward which saps the content from feeling rewarding. In other words, this is poor game design, for the way relics are supposed to be, especially for the way MMOs are supposed to keep you playing for longer, not shorter, and for the lack of a sense of accomplishment. There’s a fine balance to be found between making something take too much time in an ever increasing casual MMO playerbase and ensuring something provides a rewarding experience for the players.

On a personal note, playing what I considered more casually, it took about three weeks to get all the relics. This is an achievement I hadn’t been able to do with previous relics due to the amount of time and effort required where I completed one or two. This leaves me with feeling like I got a trophy just for participating in a competition; it’s empty. I’ll play the content simply because of the time invested in this game and stalwart faith in the dev. team, but I can’t say if I’ll keep playing once that faith runs out.

[Dyvid]

Agree here. I went in looking for and XP party only to find that you either solo or leech XP from NM trains. Bad design.

[Avenger]

It isn’t clear yet how Eureka will pan out in future patches. Usually the relic gear isn’t as good as raid gear; otherwise raiders complain presumably because they don’t feel special if raid gear isn’t better than non raid gear.

[Trensharo]

I'm having a lot of issues doing anything in this zone, as a newbie that knows very few people in this game. Most people operate like Bots in this zone and simply ignore you, probably because they see the "new player" Scarlet Letter that Square Enix forces on you.

It's not very soloable, either. Even the level 1 MOBs take forever to kill with the right element selected. Thus far it's been an awful experience, and certainly not something that I will stay subscribed for.

It's unfortunate that I had an allergic reaction to an Antibiotic soon after starting the free login promotion. I could have saved myself some money if I was more fortunate.

I did get 1 invite when, but it was for a group that was way too high level. 20 people huddled together zerging everything that moved. The only thing people said in party chat was "raise."

This feels like a really bad, failed social experiment.

[JockHarley]

I like the fact that with the NM train being such a problem to most, I haven't at all experienced it.
This instance alone, I have seen so much cooperation to get everyone from lvl 1 to 20, not to mention help one another avoid the lvl penalty if you respawn by risking their own toons to raise you.

The island is awesome, the mobs are a reality check for anyone when you first touch base in the place, so I'm very very glad we have this entire experience.

[Rufalus]

There are some good and some bad elements. They have a lot of feedback and data now to help guide them to a hopefully better second part. I liked the danger feeling before everyone was high level and doing the NM train zerg. It's going to be very challenging to find the right balance.

I think it might have been better if they did not use the Fate system, instead using something like treasure maps system where enemies spawn for the party alone (other parties restricted from contributing damage).

If a party is lazy and not farming normal enemies, there will not be a special enemy with rewards spawning for them. Fate at the highest level like Pazuzu is ok though; something that can withstand large amount of strong players for several minutes.

[Blanchimont]

The entire focus on NMs with nothing else is the real problem. It doesn't matter how it is done if there is no variety to it. It will still end up the same. A smaller group will be focusing on NM spawns while everyone else will follow them until it does. Unless they add something besides monsters to kill in Eureka, everything will probably be like this.

[Trensharo]

I'm actually on the fence regarding which is more disappointing...

Eureka, itself, or the actual players in the instance.

[ManuelBravo]

I'm actually on the fence regarding which is more disappointing...

Eureka, itself, or the actual players in the instance.

Eureka it's self is not bad just very repetitive depending on what is your goal.

Example: All anemos weapons yes you can get burned out. Reached level 20 in about 5 day playing a couple of hours a day after it was released. ( It really is not hard ) Did Grind for all weps, around a weapon a day or one full run ( yes when crystals were traded one at a time ). Now with update sooo much easier and I'm even surprised people complain it's still hard. Hence the people are more of a disappointment. Now Just grinding for gear out of boredom until next expansion. Usually 3 session of full Eureka will get you a set and lock boxes for materias.

What makes it really bad is people just standing around and people who lack common sense of how enmity works when they bring adds into fates. I find it hard to believe that people who bring in mobs lack common sense to keep going until mob resets rather than stick it in the middle of the fate and try to cause a wipe. Unless they are trolling all though common sense is somewhat dead. Now I can understand people of lower levels and maxed out for certain over kill...Not sure why people still a void the lower and upper train stay close spam technique -.-...maybe do to laziness and want to others to do the work.

[Trensharo]

The issue with Eureka for me has very little to do with "farming gear," but the fact that the zone seems to have been setup with very little regards for how it will actually feel to someone who resubbed 3-4 weeks after its launched and set foot there as a fresh comer. It's an absolutely awful gameplay experience for the lower levels, and at the higher levels, where you're relegated to zerging NMs.

My comments about the players has more to do with how daft they are. Their complaints are mostly completely valid, so that is not an issue.

Yes, the zone is too hard, especially at the lower levels when you can barely find people in your level range to group up with.

I'm not going to waste dozens of hours PLing lower levels in a time-limited instance just so I can grind XP in this zone.

We pay to play this game to be entertained. This feels like a very bad F2P Korean Grinder. The gear isn't that good, so it's not much of an incentive to play this zone.