Eureka Feedback thread #15216216

[Nalien]

Lets make this brief; FATEs are bad. Really bad. Worst piece of content imaginable, actually.

Solution? Copy XI, grab your torches and pitchforks folks.

Take a look at this;

You may not like it, but this is what peak NM farming performance looks like. The basics;

You kill trash. Trash either spawns a NM, or drops an item you trade to a specific point to spawn a NM. NM drops item that is used to spawn higher tier NM (for example, Jailer of Temperance drops "1st Virtue", which is used with 2 other drops to spawn Jailer of Hope). Progression like this continues until you reach the "final boss" (Jailer of Love here, Pazuzu for Anemos, for example). I believe this would be a far more engaging mode of gameplay than Eurekas current AFK FATE train nonsense.

You'd enter Eureka, go farm items that are required to spawn NMs. Spawn NMs. Kill NMs, get drops from NMs that lead to fighting bigger NMs. Make it function effectively as Levequests/Treasure Maps, so there is effectively a Claim system for NMs (I spawned Pazuzu, it's my Pazuzu for me and my group to fight, not some laggy worldboss where my individual performance in the fight really doesn't matter since I'm just 1 out of about 100 people wailing on it...). Pop items could be obtained from a NPC at the camp, you kill something, it drops an item you trade in for the pop item (this would allow a single item to require drops from multiple enemies/NMs), using the item effectively triggers a Levequest for you and your friends to fight, probably want to make sure you're in the right area first though.

Issues? Well, I guess too many people could want to fight King Arthro, for example, and you'd have lots of groups stacked up fighting their own version? Well, personally I think the whole progression system fixes that. You wouldn't just go to his spawn area, kill crabs, spawn him and fight, you'd likely need to do some of the lower tier NMs for items to spawn him as well. That would split people up across the map. If that's no enough, you can have it so only 1 group (or just a low number) can fight at a time, don't see that as too much of an issue if you scale how long the fights last correctly, and there's always the option to go farm items to spawn Cassie while you wait for Arthro to clear out. Heck you could even straight up copy maps and just have stuff spawn in random locations, although I do like that each NM has its own area currently, and you'd need to not make that 100% random since spawning Snow Queen where Behemoth spawns, for example, would be ridiculous.

And what FFXI tribute post would be complete without mentioning Absolute Virtue (who is oddly missing from the above NM chart but whatever), or his more infamous brother, Pandemonium "People literally passed out fighting me for over 24 hours" Warden. Anemos is probably going to die a slow death as people don't need to do it anymore? Not a problem! Add a drop to Pazuzu, that when combined with similar items from Snowzuzu and Lavazuzu allow you to spawn a super secret mega ultra boss! Suddenly all the NMs in Anemos (and Pagos once Pyros arrives) have a second wind as we work through the NM progression to spawn all the Zuzu's to spawn and fight such a boss. Bonus points if Light farming is added to Anemos (and it damn well better be in Pyros), given we'd have solid reason to go back there.

OK, that's all. Feel free to downvote the mere mention of XI.

[Bright-Flower]

Oh god please no. I have nothing against FF XI but FF XIV is a very different game and FF XI should not bleed any more into FF XIV.

[swiss_Momo]

No.

You people constantly screeching at the devs to copy over XI stuff is probably what got us the cluster*kupo* that is Eureka in the first place.
This is the future you've chosen. You could have prevented this.

[Nalien]

Official Forums never fail to disappoint.

How about one of you actually explain how a tiered force pop system would be a downgrade over the current "Sit AFK and wait for FATEs" system Eureka currently offers? Or does the extent of your reasoning not go past "XI bad!"?

No.

You people constantly screeching at the devs to copy over XI stuff is probably what got us the cluster*kupo* that is Eureka in the first place.
This is the future you've chosen. You could have prevented this.

The funny thing is, the aspect of XI Eureka seemingly copied (HNMs) were perhaps the worst content XI offered and almost certainly not what people who want XI style content have been asking for. In fact to my knowledge XI itself even eventually went back and adjusted most of its old NMs and HNMs so that they weren't world spawns (like we have in Eureka), but instead something your group went and farmed a pop item for, then spawned, then battled. That was a widely celebrated adjustment IIRC, why Yoshida decided to copy Vanilla XI instead of ToAU era XI is beyond me. I've never seen anyone ask for HNM style content, but definitely think Sky/Sea/Limbus/xNM/Besieged/Campaign/etc style content would be perfect for XIV to take over and improve upon. Instead when XIV does copy something from XI, we get a huge downgrade for some reason (look at Grand Companies for example, a pathetic shadow compared to the Nation quests/ranks XI had).

[swiss_Momo]

"The XI nostalgia zone isn't working because it's trying to carry over incompatible mechanics from a different generation of MMOs? I know, let's try slapping even more XI onto it!"
Again, no.

[Nalien]

The XI nostalgia isn't working because they literally copied something XI itself did away with, much to most XI players enjoyment.

Still not seeing an actual deconstruction of why such a system wouldn't work by the way... Again, all you're doing is going "XI bad! Shoo!", it's not a very convincing counterargument...

How about I just put it in XIV terms for you, because XIV actually has exactly what we need already TBH; Levequests. Remove FATEs from Eureka, and replace them with Levequests that are obtained by trading various items (obtained from killing regular enemies and the current NM FATE enemies, FYI this is basically how the Logos system is going to work). Done. You go in with your group. Kill stuff for a drop, get a Levequest, spawn Snow Queen, kill Snow Queen, get a drop that spawns IDK, Ash Dragon. Continue on like that all the way up to Snowzuzu. Much more engaging than sitting on the FATE train doing nothing, no?

There, I explained the system without mentioning XI and throwing this community into a blind rage. Copy the above paragraph and explain the problems with it, or just keep saying XI sucks IDK, I'm not your boss. I do find it hilarious how I could probably have just straight up copied XIs NM spawning system for a suggestion, but never mentioned XI, and there'd probably be none of this issue... Do forgive me for being lazy and simply pointing at a game where such a system worked well and thinking people would look at the suggestion rather than the source... I was joking when I told ya'll to grab your pitchforks, forgot just how much this place loses its mind at the mere mention of XI...

[Bright-Flower]

Tiered NMs I'm against.

Now, it was 'pick up leve quest, go do level quest, get item, fight NM boss' I'm fine with that.

What I don't like is 'spawn NM X and then use that to fight NM Y.'

Really though NMs as they are now aren't my problem with Eureka. My issue with Pagos is the overall map design/enemy placement and having to fill the kettle 31 times. I liked Anemos better where you just needed to get level cap and fight Pazuzu a couple times, the 31 crystals worth of light farming just feels excessive at the end of Pagos.

[Nalien]

Tiered NMs I'm against.

Now, it was 'pick up leve quest, go do level quest, get item, fight NM boss' I'm fine with that.

What I don't like is 'spawn NM X and then use that to fight NM Y.'

Why exactly? If it was like that then you just end up with a situation where people at the level cap are just spamming the same one over and over, resulting in an overcrowding of places like the 'zuzu cave (or whatever the optimal NM would be). Why would anyone ever opt to do Snow Queen over Louhi? The whole point of a tiered system is to keep everything there somewhat relevant and to spread people out. I don't understand the objection to such a system, personally I'd welcome it just because it adds variability and an engaging system to work through (whereas the current FATE train is the exact opposite, I'm not engaged with playing XIV during it, I'm probably playing or watching something completely different to pass the time). I'd rather work my way up doing Snow Queen, then Ash Dragon, then Hakutaku, than just spamming Louhi ad nauseum.

As for the light farming issue, I do somewhat see this as a solution to it as well... Rather than AFKing on the FATE train, you'd farm pop items from trash and presumably get some light out of it. I also imagine a Levequest style system rather than FATEs would increase the frequency of individual players fighting NMs as well, so there'd be more light farming that way, too.

[Bright-Flower]

I don't really have an issue with the current NM system.

In a fresh instance people go for what they want to spawn. Then after that, the timers keep people from just going after the same thing. Just killed Lou? Well you're out of luck you can't just spam him because he has to be prepped and the timer on NM spawns.

Meanwhile in this tiered system, people would just kill what they need to to get the boss they want. They want to kill Lou? They'll just farm what they need to kill the lesser NMs that lead to Lou, it's not going to get them to do snow queen if snow queen doesn't lead to Lou.

I don't feel like tiered NMs really add anything. It would just be another arbitrary step in the process, something people would figure out how to do efficiently and grind away at it just like with the current NM trains.

Also people don't afk in the fate train to graind light. Well not if they want it done in a timely fashion. They form groups to go grind it out on dragons or other high level enemies, and then hit high level NMs as they pop. Having leve quests to fill it instead might be marginally less boring but it would still be 'take this quest, go grind the mob the quest tells you to.' I don't mind that there's a grind but the length of this grind feels like overkill.

There's only two things SE needs to do to 'fix' the next zone compared to Pagos. 1. Have less annoying map design. 2. Have less of a grind between hitting the new elemental level cap and getting the relic. Neither of the issues I actually have with Pagos are solved with tiered NMs. Tiered NMs just feel like extra steps that don't really do anything to actually make the gameplay more interesting. Kind of like the magecite system. Looks cool on paper but what does it add? You fight a new enemy you spin the wheel to the right element then carry on as normal.