What's your first impression of Eureka?

[Fyce]

PoTD leveling has always been a weird point for me. People say it's the most efficient but I cannot for the life of me bring myself to PoTD for that long , over and over. I'd rather daily roulette and beastman quest. Varied experiences with changing mechanics and pauses in between. For someone like me, Eureka is that PoTD grind but it's the ONLY way to get those levels. That's why I have a problem with it.

This paragraph wasn't for you then. It was to point a finger towards people who throw themselves into that sort of grind all the time, but come on the forums saying Eureka is bad. "I'll happily turn my brain off to do hundreds of A1S, but I'd rather cancel my sub than doing Eureka". That makes no sense. FFXIV is filled with what people consider "bad grinds". Yet, people do them all the time.

I mean, they hurt worse than overworld mobs, but anything but NM's aren't going to one shot you. And once you find your flavour of the .. next 20 minutes it's not going to change and you can autopilot the everliving hell out of it. Trash mobs ARE trash mobs, but dungeons mix it up from pack to pack. Eureka is just a long drink of lukewarm water.

They pretty much all have a mechanic of their own. This is better than 90% of the rest of the game when it comes to "trash mobs". And yes, people get one-shotted a lot. It just takes one idiot to pull a cleaving water snake into the group and you now have to raise 10 people.
Besides, do you think your argument is still valid if you are just 4-8 people trying to get a high level Fate to spawn? I know for a fact that when we go in there with 4 people and try to diverge from the Fate train if we deem it not worth (ie "let's go to the other side of the map to spawn the lord!" - "B...But guys, it's windy and we are next to the typhoon sprites... Oh well"), you can be sure that we aren't playing the way we usually do when we do a random expert roulette.

You know what would be a good penalty for dying? Getting warped back to the starting point and having no aetherytes except the main one. MAYBE make it so if your party is still alive they can res you but once everyone is out of battle , pewf, homepoint. You miss out on some XP, you gotta walk back, you maybe miss out on the rest of the NM because you can't get back fast enough. Cost, danger and no 2 hour setback. People rez-ing others simply because they hope to god someone else will do the same for them since the death penalty sucks so very badly is not a positive for the game, it does give me hope for the playerbase though.

You don't want to lose EXP for dying, but you are okay with being denied EXP from a Fate? That's pretty much the same thing. And your "MAYBE [...]" completly makes your suggestion worthless, as it's almost exactly like what we have now. People will raise you anyway, and you won't lose anything. And I bet you that a lot more people would find it way more infuriating to be warped back to camp every time they get killed by whatever. Even if I'm a tank and that I'm not dying that much, I cannot imagine how I'd feel if that happened.

If the formula never changes there will be the people farming at 20, and then a scattering of people trying to level solo to 15 or so when they'll be viable for the 20 people to pick up. Ideally the lowbies will group up , but since disparity in level is so harshly punished this seems unlikely. True its not a bad way to gear up an alt job quick, but it's not like you're going back to old content to do it. You'll be farming the 20+ NMs.

You can't farm the "20+ NMs". There's only one which is Lv.20. And once you get it down, you either try going in another instance, or join the Fate train to get some crystals.

100% garbage? Of course not. A lot of things I personally don't like and wish I didn't have to deal with for the rewards they've locked behind it? Most definitely.

If you don't like it, then you shouldn't like a lot of the examples of "bad grinds" I gave either. "Good grinds" are an exception. Especially in FFXIV.

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Except you're not done because death can make you lose a level. You even mention it later in your post, but I'll address it now.

I mentionned it not any later than the very paragraph you quoted... Whatever.

Losing exp and deleveling is an awful system. There is a reason MMO's moved away from that punishing mechanic a decade ago. Hell, even FFXI has eased up on that significantly over the years and was never as harsh as this. The slow leveling isn't even the core issue, the issues is the levels themselves are an arbitrary grind. Strip it away and nothing of value is lost. It's literally max level players being forced to re-level so they can fight stronger mobs. It could have been more interesting like say tying the elemental system to it by getting elemental abilities that you can only use in Eureka and are your core gameplay. But there's nothing substantial to leveling but to pad out the grind.

It seems like you think that you'll die and lose EXP all the time. That's absolutly not true. Especially at Lv.20 where 80-90% of the enemies aren't threatening anymore. People try to turn it into a big deal, but when you actually go in Eureka, it's obviously not as big of an issue as people claim. I'm level 13. I've not lot EXP once. And again, the more Lv.20 there will be, the more people will be able to come to you and give you a raise.

Whatever the case, you also seem to think that using another grind method than giving a new leveling phase to people would've been better. Well, that's not true and you know it. People would've complained no matter what type of grind. Besides, not everyone hates leveling.

On the bolded part I can agree. Though 2 main points. 1) Those grinds were better designed, if not by much. A lot of the time FATE's let you go on any job so you could at least level an alt while you do it. The light steps gave you more variety in activities despite repeating old content. 2) The major point I wish to make here is a lot of people griping on Eureka are also griping on

So, you agree with the main point that FFXIV is filled with bad grind. Let's keep that in mind for now.
Though I disagree that the old grinds were better. No, PotD isn't better. No, farming A1S wasn't better. No, farming chocobo races hundreds of time isn't a better grind either.
A lot of these grinds have absolutly zero "variety" like you claim. "You can level alt jobs while Atma farming!" Well, you can gear alt jobs while Eureka farming. I wouldn't call that "variety" though.

Even WoW innovated their game every expansion. And innovating, at least their own game, is something MMO's need to do to survive. They aren't single player games to be done and forgotten, they are active games that are supposed to evolve over the years. XI was only as successful as it was because they kept adding new kinds of content over the years and pushed what was possible with their engine.

FFXIV is itself the very example of a counterpoint to your argument. You claim that innovation is vital for MMO(RPGs). You imply that FFXIV isn't innovating. So... FFXIV should be dead by your own logic.
Either FFXIV do innovate, or innovation isn't actually vital. Pick one.

It's up to players, it's always up to the players. Diadem died because all it was was a shallow carrot on a stick system. The carrot wasn't worth it so people quit fast. They gave a slightly better carrot this time (relic), but it ultimately won't be enough to keep players. Ultimately if people aren't having fun with the system then whatever reward you put in won't matter.

Just two paragraphs above, you agreed with me on the fact that FFXIV is filled with "bad grinds". Yet, people are doing these grinds. People did grind A1S. They did grind Atmas. They did their animus books. There are still people farming PotD for hours as their main source of class EXP. And people did farm Fates in N.Thanalan. They did all that. And for what? Because it was fun? No. Absolutly not. It was simply for the reward.
Again, the history of FFXIV itself proves you wrong.

There has been no hype. People have literally stated they just want it to not be Diadem, and yet it's what it is. If anything what I've seen from people is essentially "I had no expectations for this, and yet it still somehow disappointed me".

That's completly not true. There was definitly hype everywhere. People were impatient to get Eureka for the day it was announced. "We waited all this time for this?!" is extremely common. I don't know who you missed these opinions.

You're right, the map is nice. So, about 99% garbage then.

I'm not even surprised anymore.

Whatever. People say they hate bad grinding, but they are playing FFXIV. That simple fact is so absurd that I don't know why I'm even trying to argue.
When this forum wants to hate something, there's no inbetween. No compromise. Absolutly everything sucks, no matter what. And people who actually enjoy it or simply think that some parts are ok are wrong and none of their points will make any difference.

I guess I'll simply play the game and enjoy it like thousands other players and not bother giving feedback then.