What's your first impression of Eureka?

[Xtrasweettea]

My first impressions of Eureka.

TL;DR: I will be doing this again, I had fun.

I could feel the waves of addiction crashing over my brain as I enter Eureka. The starting town gives me a sense of nostalgia of Selbina in FFXI. Stepping out of the town after the quests, seeing people struggle to solo mobs, people agroing mobs and dyeing, people MPKing other people, and PC corpses littering the beach from enemies agroing due to poor camping decision gave me the warm fuzzies of games long past. The chat was filled with job and Elevel shouts, looking for party. It was Valkrum Dunes all over again.

Solo: Knowing that this place has mobs similar to FFXI (high HP, hit relatively hard compared to mobs on the outside, now have this elemental addition) I know that not all jobs can solo. So, out of my jobs that I know can probably solo efficiently, I chose RDM. I solo’d a lot in FFXI on RDM, I am sure I can do the same on FFXIV. I was able to solo with ease and I was able to keep a chain. A lot of old mechanics came back to me. It was like riding a bike you haven’t rode in years: rusty, dusty, and still feels right

Partying: I was invited to a group when I hit eLevel2. We fought enemies Level 3 and with a few level 4s pretty quickly. Once we had two ELevel3s, we started going after mostly level 4 enemies and dropped the level 3s. We were able to keep the chain. Luckily, we had a healer to help keep everyone up. People communicating that “they had X time left”, “should we move”, etc. was refreshing to see in this game. Usually when I group in dungeons it is usually just “hi” and “pull big/small”.

Crystal Drops: I got 10 Proto Crystals within the two hours I was able to play. This felt normal to me if we were using FFXI drop rates to turn-in ratios for Relic Weapons in FFXI. I did not do any NMs.

Would I do it again: yes, definitely. This might be my main “to-do” in the game. I started loathing the Dungeons in this game… it would take great effort for me to even queue for a roulette. The tomestone grind is boring. I have no interested in Extremes or Raids. This, at the moment, makes me want to log in and play.

[Vocal_Night]

I had a pleasant time in my 2 hours doing it.
Yes it can get boring.
Yes, if you go in only to do the relic, the RNG + grind for the crystals will bore you.

Forget about the relic grind and just go in there as a side activity, explore, join a party, kill some mobs, try your luck with the lockboxes, and get out.

I'm also waiting for people to reach level 20 and give their thoughts about it.
If the team take this as a base and expand on it with daily quests + crafting stuff/other types of content, i can see Eureka becoming something very good.

[KyokuhoKensaki]

Or on the otherside it suffers Diadem's fate and never gets touched again.

[Caitlyn]

Visited Eureka yesterday. Got 2 crystals after mashing 30 mobs. Exit Eureka after 30 mins, because its not fun.

So... just leave a quote here: "Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is? Insanity is doing the exact... same thing... over and over again expecting... things to change... That. Is. Crazy"

[Velhart]

I just wish there was a little variety or set small goals in there. I am fine with Eureka conceptually but it needs more work. I would of liked it more if there were daily quests you could do in there. Do about an hour's worth then leave. Don't feel that tedious grinding. It is just all grinding and little else.

Simply not interesting content and the reward as it is currently does not entice me to go in there. Even casual players can get better gear than it from other content.

Maybe we will get something like Diadem again where they take it back for a few months and release it again.

[Mahrze]

So... just leave a quote here: "Did I ever tell you what the definition of insanity is? Insanity is doing the exact... same thing... over and over again expecting... things to change... That. Is. Crazy"

I want to kill puppies and kitties every time someone uses is this overcliche'd and realistically wrong.

[Nariel]

I want to kill puppies and kitties every time someone uses is this overcliche'd and realistically wrong.

Well, to be fair, griding over and over again expecting things will be different at lv 20 is kinda insane.

[Avatre]

Well, to be fair, griding over and over again expecting things will be different at lv 20 is kinda insane.

So...how was getting from 1-70 on an alt class(or character) really any different? You were grinding to get there, whether it be grinding dungeons, FATEs, Leviquests, main story, or side quests, it's still grinding over and over again. And a lot of the time, you're grinding the highest possible dungeon for your current level.

[Connor]

Am I the only who feels like they had much bigger plans for Eureka but for whatever reason didn’t go through with them? Idk it just feels like something important is missing.

I’ve only tried it for a short period twice now so I can’t fully comment on how it is, but my initial impressions were that it was very boring.

The content could have used daily quests/objectives based on killing certain mobs, finding certain items, etc. They could have added gathering points you can use as a DoW/DoM for items specific to these quests. Enemies could be positioned with less frequency but be much more dangerous, further incentivising good party play instead of spamming the same AoE skills. There could have been a claim system where parties can’t attack each other’s mobs, making the area much less of a zergfest.

The grind itself doesn’t bother me, I’m happy with idea of long term goals (even if the reward doesn’t match the effort). But the content itself isn’t interesting enough to make m want to grind this much, and the battle system is far too uninspired to fit this style of content

Maybe it’s changed now that a few days have passed but aimlessly jumping into a party and zerging mobs that pose absolutely no danger to you or the party because the sheer amount of players attacking them at once is not my idea of fun. I haven’t been in any parties that bothered to do FATEs but I’m assuming it’s the same deal; they get zerged so fast that there aren’t any mechanics or interesting aspects to them.

[Squintina]

As much as I hated it the first day...and believe me I HATED it.

I have found that it's actually quite fun with friends..

Now I know what people are gonna say "well of course, anything is fun with friends". Yes, that is true. However, this is the way I see it:

I could do my roulettes with friends in VC, but I don't.
I could do POTD with friends in VC, but I don't.
I have however gotten to a point where I can't imagine playing Eureka any other way.

It's not just that it's more fun with voice chat, but it's also more efficient. It kind of reminds me of savage, where it IS playable without VC, but it's easier if you have it because you can coordinate.

In the case of Eureka, if you're not one of the new AFKers, if you're actually part of a group trying to actively kill things, sometimes it can get unruly.

Like yesterday we were trying to spawn the bear fate so our tank grabbed 5 bears....and a 6th one spawned on top of us. ALL THOSE BEAR SWIPE CLEAVES. Us healers were coordinating with our mana batteries (you know, BLM and stuff), which we would honestly not have the time to do if we had to type in party chat.

Or when a NM spawned and a ton of people kept bringing more mobs in that we eventually aggroed, begging our tank to take them off of us immediately before we died.

Or when we were farming for a different spawn and some rando walked by and brought us another monster of a different element.

Having the ability to keep our hands for playing while being able to talk allowed us to try to grab more and more mobs and strategize and deal with unexpected setbacks.

And there's not a whole lot of content, apart from Savage, where I felt that can matter so much.

Plus, as a healer, it's nice to see content where I truly feel like a healer in this game. Because we were taking on challenging mobs in big pulls, I actually got to a point (several times) where I felt I had to stop DPS-ing because all that healing and rezzing was killing my MP and DPS-ing was out of the question.