Eureka - from a FFXI point of view

[Darrcyphfeid]

XIV has nothing of this. The party dynamic is incredibly basic and the other players might just as well be your squad. To me it feels they took the most boring aspects of XI and rolles them into XIV...

Absolutely.

The way XIV is designed coupled with the "proper" mob camping style employed in games like XI also presented two problems for me tonight, one which was obvious and another that I didn't quite expect.

The first is that we didn't really have much time to communicate through text and quickly swapped to voice chat. You can't exactly kill monsters while typing at the same time like you can in XI. That's a problem if you're not in there exclusively with friends and yet would like some social interaction to help with the grind.

The second is that my hands actually started to cramp. I've played video games for a really long time and barring using tiny handheld devices like the DSlite for extended periods this hasn't happened to me before. Doing my (DRG) rotation constantly for 30-ish minutes, as it turns out, is rather stressing.

This is different, this is new (to FFXIV), and for that, it's totally worthwhile, in my opinion. And the mere concept of the relic is grinding, if you don't like this grind, you still have other weapon and armor options.

Nah man, this is a different beast all together. I have (just about) all of the Relics, Zodiac and Anima, finished in XIV. I also have Yoichinoyumi in XI, and was well over halfway finished with Kogarasumaru before I quit.

What Eureka does is more banal than any of that. It's not as involved or rhythmic as farming Dynamis, it's not as engaging as farming Salvage, and it's not as varied as what XIV's previous Relics has us doing.