What's your first impression of Eureka?

[RiyahArp]

But it's still pretty silly to basically poke your head in, gain two levels and decide it's all crap

No, it's still pretty much crap. Just because people found a way to cheese through the mob difficulty and get decent exp per hour through popping FATES doesn't mean its somehow all right. You have all of five quests which boil down to hunting a spot on the map, you have gameplay which essentially is the same as people spamming cereleum fields to level at HW launch and HW fates for crystals for the relic, just with a lot more arbitrary deaths. Half the people at any one FATE are low leveled enough to get carried. The game's engine and gameplay isn't really designed for this, leading to player an even boss culling, as well as a very tiring experience trying to use your rotation and targeting on nonstop pulls.

The gear being 350...well thank you idiot raiders, it's all your fault for complaining about the diadem weapons; they gimped it to prevent you complaining about the new gear being mandatory BiS if it were any higher.

The only plus is that it does foster some player interaction, and its nice just being in the zone with others from different servers. But ugh, try doing this grinding for a couple of weeks, and see how much fun it is then.

[Contra]

First impression? Gorgeous art assets but garbage gameplay. I'd rather be doing Diadem 1.0 again. I'd rather be in a group with twenty-three first timers going through Rabanastre. I'd rather be farming Atmas.

[Fynlar]

But it's still pretty silly to basically poke your head in, gain two levels and decide it's all crap.

With the content as bare bones as it is, it's not like anyone really has to experience much more than that to be able to make a rational conclusion about said content.

[Kirisu]

I enjoyed it until the NM train became too commonplace, not to mention seemingly refusing to aknowledge the low and mid level NM's that late arrivals and/or others who don't spend their entire goddamn lives in Eureka NEED in order to progress.

[Valdegarde]

...you HAVE to be in the NM train. In order to make a dent in many of those NM's you HAVE to be in a party.

I've given Eureka a bunch of chances now, and this is still my biggest problem with it. Soloing doesn't scale very well at all, and otherwise the only "right" way to play is basically exactly what people have been doing for A and S rank hunts when they came out, which is my least favorite content in the game by quite a large margin.

Even Diadem didn't seem so bad compared to this, it was usually some 20+ people working on chests for their parties instead of almost a hundred or more all clumped together, running from spawn window to spawn window en masse, trampling over other parties' chains to whack-a-mole a FATE in about 60 seconds, repeat.

Doing the previous relic steps, some were more fun than others, but always something I could set my own pace and do by myself if I chose, even if that meant queuing for some things at certain times. The most party intensive step, light farming, was wholly doable just by working on other things instead of grinding it in a party. I got a lot of lights through soloing FATEs, myself, which was supplemented through roulettes and raids, not necessarily grinding it out for days on end.

Eureka currently allows for no such option, unless possibly you're level 20 (is anyone yet?), and that brings up how to get to 20, and back to the S rank server rushing gameplay again.

I'm not going to comment on if the FFXI experience was good or bad, but this definitely was nothing like it even in Valkurm Dunes at launch.

I'm hoping to give Eureka ONE more chance (if I can dare hope) that once it gets old, smaller parties in appropriate level ranges who actually chain things for experience then fight scaled down FATEs will become more common, and/or solo leveling experiences a slight tweak in viability, not something that will match a party going up against a NM or chaining quickly, but not ridiculously inefficient after a certain level. Anything else doesn't sound viable or fun in any way. How long do you think it'll take? 2 weeks? 3?

[Penthea]

No, it's still pretty much crap.

If you played loads of Eureka, know how it works and find it isn't your jam, that's fine.

I'm saying I take issue with those who barely touched it and raged about it on the forums. There are some people who said stuff like "I gave up after two levels". That attitude doesn't give any content a chance.

[Rokke]

But it's still pretty silly to basically poke your head in, gain two levels and decide it's all crap. If I did that with XIV when I started I wouldn't be playing anymore. I found many things about the game downright awkward at first because I wasn't used to it and didn't know so many things...you know...kind of like how many feel about Eureka when they start.

Im at lv 15. Relatively nothing has changed form my first post here- instead of "group up, round up enemies, zerg them down" for 3 hours we're at "group up, find the NM train, round up enemies, zerg them down" for 3 hours. If someone is bored at level 2, they're probably going to be bored at 20 because the most efficient way to play is constant the whole way through.

[Penthea]

If someone is bored at level 2, they're probably going to be bored at 20 because the most efficient way to play is constant the whole way through.

Read my whole post. I said loads of people complained when they had no clue about the most efficient way to play. Some of these people had no clue how fates spawned.

My point is a lot of players complained about content when they didn't even know how it worked. And that was very annoying to see.

[Rokke]

Read my whole post. I said loads of people complained when they had no clue about the most efficient way to play. Some of these people had no clue how fates spawned.

My point is a lot of players complained about content when they didn't even know how it worked. And that was very annoying to see.

Even before we knew how to spawn NMs consistently, the idea of rounding up and aoeing down mobs was the go-to strategy from the start. Heres my first post from release day:

Im so bored. So sosososos ososo os so bored. Even with mobs hitting tanks like trucks its unbelievably boring. Round up mobs, nuke them down. Round up mobs, nuke them down. Round up mobs, nuke them down. Spin the wheel, we're changing zones! Round up mobs, nuke them down. Round up mobs, nuke them down. Round up mobs, nuke them down.

My point is that fundamentally nothing has changed since day 1. If you were bored before, you will likely still be bored now, you will likely still be bored tomorrow.

[Tsunenori]

Read my whole post. I said loads of people complained when they had no clue about the most efficient way to play. Some of these people had no clue how fates spawned.

My point is a lot of players complained about content when they didn't even know how it worked. And that was very annoying to see.

First impressions matter a lot, and first impressions were pretty poor for a lot of players. Let's also not pretend that none of us are paying a business for this experience either, because this certainly isn't charity or a gift we're receiving here. Whether you find it annoying or not those feelings are valid, and that it's been such a divisive issue is a clear indicator that it's not well received.

I understand where you're coming from but I don't think many people are worried about whether or not they're judging unfairly as opposed to whether or not they're having fun, and most people rightfully don't want to slog through something unfun to try to find something fun later on.

Sometimes you find a diamond in the rough, but more often than not things don't get better.