What's your first impression of Eureka?

[Miles_Maelstrom]

Just went in today in order to test BLM killspeed and efficiency.

Turns out that the most efficient way to level was to kill Lv 2 mobs as a lv 4 player because they die in less than half the time.
As a side observation: very few people at my level are in there, almost all were 13+.

SE really thought with their rear end when they came up with these idiotic levels in there lol.

I'm fine with the levels but they shouldn't have added all these down sides to grouping with people outside your level. The monster shoulds give static values of xp by their level and regardless of you or your parties level. The only thing that should happen is dividing up the xp among party members. That's it.

I know it would create power leveling situations, but who really cares, this place isn't that great to care about such semantics. Not like your missing out on a riveting and dynamic leveling experience.

[Tyrn]

After hitting lvl20 my experience has been alright, it felt bad the first day when no one had a clue what to do but since then being in xp parties, spawning and killing NMs has been pretty fun.
Some things I'd like to see change are:
Culling priority, the boss and adds should never disappear and after boss/adds your own party members should be prioritized above randoms.
A few more lvl 20 NMs.
A way to join the same instance people on your friends list are in without having to ask them to leave and requeue together.
Being able to convert a lot more crystals at once and also hand in a large amount of boxes at once for a guaranteed rare drop (maybe 50 boxes for a 2star and 500 for a 3 star?).
Being able to synch down to the lowest lvl party member outside of the NM/fates.

There's probably some more stuff I'll think of eventually but for that's it for now.

[Vasala]

The big things that need to change are the penalties people get when grouping. The zone forces you to group up so it makes no sense that you get penalized for doing so. The time between fates would feel a bit better if the experience per mob was not so minuscule when you are in a full group. I would also like to see the fates up more frequently since they make things a bit more interesting. I also really do not like the fact that you can lose experience and potentially levels due to other people chaining mobs onto you especially around the fates.

The other thing that really needs to be worked on is the way level variance in a group effects the other players in the group. Since there is no way to sync within a party it makes grouping with friends very painful when one friend has had more time and is higher level. This also makes people not want to help the lower level players which leads to a very bad experience for anyone who did not get in the first pack to level up.

Basically the zone feels more like work than fun as it is right now since it is the only way to get this expansion's relic weapon.

[Tridus]

It doesn't help that the power curve is virtually a straight vertical line. Levels make far too much difference in power. Combined with the XP penalties, grouping with people who are outside your level range doesn't work well. Either they get nothing at all, or they're doing all the work and you're being carried because the higher level person is basically invincible against mobs that will two shot the lower level person.

So, now that my friends are all wildly different levels (the ones that like it are pushing 7-10 levels above the ones that don't), how does that even work? The mechanics actively discourage grouping with my friends by punishing them or making me a liability. The magicite board doesn't feel like it does anything in comparison to what happens from level disparity.

[Infindox]

I just found a big flaw: most people don't want to do Pazuzu when he pops, unless you got a PF to do so, and then not even that is a sure thing. Had to waste a pop of him because no one wanted to come.

[Vaer]

I just found a big flaw: most people don't want to do Pazuzu when he pops, unless you got a PF to do so, and then not even that is a sure thing. Had to waste a pop of him because no one wanted to come.

I don't blame them tbh. There aren't that many players that are level 19-20. The average player is probably around 10-15. Pazuzu would almost double their level. At that level they would be dead weight and make the NM harder for no reason since they would get one shot if any of the mobs there touched them and it would just end up a clown fiesta, while bringing more bodies increases the chances of people aggroing mobs that they can't even kill.

It will probably get better once the average level increases.

[ReplicaX]

That's what I thought...I saw Bartz' house blasted open (with no iconic music box...)

Well, the majority of the lore in Anemos just isn't there. Like FFIII Eureka, the Dev team stated this is the first of many areas and a optional area. There are there subtle hints across the zone and some text from NPCs, not just a few XI bosses and its gear drops. People need to remember that Hein and Amon in FFIII is where Barrier Shift was first introduced so a tip of the hat to using the appropriate element on mobs/NMs.

Hiromichi Tanaka was the designer of FFIII and producer of FFXI and the reason he was tasked to oversee XI was his experience designing IIIs job system and dungeons. I think you are always going to find some small references to XI, simply because it was SE's first MMO and III will always have a huge impact like it did in XI because of the Job System. Hoping there is more lore and FFIII reference in general when each area is unlocked. Since many are expecting it to be calamity bound.

III references a civilization that could not control the fundamental forces of nature. There was a major earthquake that changed the world. We are there to investigate and likely try to bring balance to the area.

So there is more reference than some think, I am likely missing info as its been years since I played III and we still have more areas down the road. While a lot of Eureka was used in the ARR 24man, there is still a lot of reference to III and there will be more of it in this game anyway.

[Marluxia]

Grinding FATEs is boring. Grinding Hunts is boring. Grinding hunts IN FATEs is "Why am I spending money on this" levels of boring.

The problem would be mitigated if reaching a reasonable level--not even level 20--was even remotely reasonable. Why does level 5 require 10k experience and level 6 require 30k?

Nerf the hell out of it, let it die once everyone gets their relics, and maybe Square Enix can spend 17 months thinking of gameplay other than "Spam your rotation at the monster".

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Grinding FATEs is boring. Grinding Hunts is boring. Grinding hunts IN FATEs is "Why am I spending money on this" levels of boring.

The problem would be mitigated if reaching a reasonable level--not even level 20--was even remotely reasonable. Why does level 5 require 10k experience and level 6 require 30k?

Nerf the hell out of it, let it die once everyone gets their relics, and maybe Square Enix can spend 17 months thinking of gameplay other than "Spam your rotation at the monster".

The experience increases decrease significantly after lvl 6. For instance, 17 to 18 is only 157k.

[Vidu]

I was talking about YoKai Watch, which is the equivalent of Atma farming and since Eureka is tied to Relics (specifically the first few steps), is why I mentioned it. I also find it to be more fair in comparing the first few steps of both Relic and Anima to Eureka's Anemos weapon, rather than the later stages.

Base, Relic, Zenith, Atma
Animated, Awoken, Anima, Hyperconductive.
Base, +1, +2, Anemos.

In the Relic chain, the steps from Base-Zenith are arguably the best, as they required us to do some dungeons, kill some Beastmen, Relic specific Trials and then fight Primals (and Coil, if people hadn't beaten Titan HM yet). From then on, though, the Relic weapon quests turned into the unusual grind. I've already gone over the Atma step and some details on Animus.

For the HW Relics, you could skip the first step of the Anima if you already had a Zeta and getting the Awoken weapon was much faster than the Zodiac(?) step (oh lord, I just remembered the Zodiac step. Doing dungeons over and over again for an RNG drop). The Anima step was... exhausting (and I chose to not do the Anima quest until this particular step was nerfed. Did you know 1 star Specialists were required? and that the crafted items were not sold by GC's?). Hyperconductive I don't remember all that well, but I think it required you to do the Crystal Tower raids once a week... (or spamming dungeons until you have 1800 tomes to buy the material)?

I'll admit that I didnt read to the whole conversation between you and Vstarstruck, but this post kinda inspired me to look back at the relic-grinds I did and compare them to Eureka. Note that I did 3 relics, taking them from Base in ARR to Lux in HW, always more or less at the time they were current (I think, the last one was always done after nerfs, while the first one was always absolutly in time.)

So, lets see what each relic-step wanted you to do!
Please keep in mind that even though things like Poetics and Lights are an aweful grind, not to different from Eurekas Crystals, you always had multiple options to get both.

A Realm Reborn
Base: Find your base-weapon in a specific location, tied to the lore of it. Get a crafted weapon (base mats are from WP) with materia attached to it. Do the Chimera-trial - a trial specific for the relic. Do AK. Do the Hydra - again, specific relic-trial. Challenge Garuda, Ifrit and Titan HM - all actually difficult at the current time. Buy some stuff with poetics. All in all an engaging quests with a decent challenge (at the time) and some nice lore-bits.
Zenit: Buy some items for Poetics (or whatever tomes were used at the time you were doing the quest - when it was first released, you had to use your uncapped ones, if I remember correctly)
Atma: 12 locations. 12 places to grind FATEs. With a Zenit equipped. So no job-change to get exp.
Animus: Buy a book for Poetics, do the tasks in the book. Tasks uncluding: 3 dungeons, 3 FATEs, 3 Leves, 10x10 enemies. Repeat 9 times.
Novus: The whole "Get Alexandrites and Materia and but them into this stone"-thing. The step to pick your weapons substats! Alexandrite are available from special treasure-maps (can be bought for poetics or as daily quest-reward), as low-rate drops from FATEs (when done with a relic equipped), for hunt-seals (added later, I believe?) - Mainly: you were doing your daily "expert"-roulette to get your daily-map
Nexus: The Light-grind - all ARR content gives you light though, so you can pick and choose wether to join quick Garuda-spams or do some dungeons or PvP
Zodiac: 4 quests, each requires you to get random drops from dungeons (damn them! Potentially having to run AV 50+ times...), a crafted item (that wasnt only endgame-crafting but also endgame-gathering and endgame desynth) and item that you bought for 100k gil from a vendor with a "secret" location.
Zeta: Light-grind again - only quicker now and you had to buy the Mahatmas with Poetics (or other stones)

All quests are spiced up with at least a bit of lore and story - both in regards to the weapon and to Gerolt and his relationships with Rowena, Jalzahn and that poor, poor Drake...
Weapons are having a new, unique model (well, at least until it was re-used for the 350-crafted-weapons)...

Heavensward
Animated: Either turn in your Zeta or do the HW-Atma-FATE-grind
Awoken: Nee to do 10 dungeons from ARR and HW.
"New" Anima: Need to get four items. In order to get those you need to get the Unidentified Things, that can be obtained in several ways (Poetics, Treasure Maps, Beasttribe Tokens, Tokens from Gordias NM), aswell as crafted items (those used to be specialist locked, by now you can also get them for GC-seals)
Hyperconductive: Get 5 Aether-Oils. They can be bought for Poetics or you can get one per week from a weekly quest that involves doing all three of the Crystal-Tower-Raids.
Anima (aka "Battlenames"): Its feeding time! You need to get Umbrite (for Poetics) and Crystal Sand (obtained through multiple trade-ins) and feed your weapon. You can choose your own substats here.
Sharpend: Get 50 Singing Clusters - you can buy them for Poetics, do a daily quest to get 1 and a weekly to get 18 - those quests require you to do roulettes.
"Complete": Do three dungeons and some Light-Farm again.
Lux: ARR and HW HM-Primals are in order! Aswell as buying an item with Poetics.

Quests are involving lore in regards to the experiment of creating an artificial soul, aswell as Gerolts and Ardashirs relationship.
All weapons are having new and unique models.

Stormblood
Base: Get your Job-Quest-weapon and 100 Proteran Crystals from killing mobs or NM in Eureka
+1: Get 400 Proteran Crystals from killing mobs or NM in Eureka
+2: Get 800 Proteran Crystals from killing mobs or NM in Eureka
Anemos: I'm not at that step yet, but from what I understand: you need 3 Pazuzu feathers, so a drop from, well, killing that mob in Eureka...

No real quest tied to the relic insight - Gerolts is a vendor now, with a tiny bit of explantion of Rowena sent him there. Maybe theres more to come - I'm not hopeful though, I'll admit that.
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What I'm getting at is: The old relics, while grindy, always gave you options. And you were both able to do them solo or with friends - or alternate. If one was ahead, that wasnt an issue, you could still run roulettes and stuff together. A lot of things, like the light-grind for example could also "just happen" while you played the game. Even if you're looking just at the first few steps, the old relics had a lot more variation to them.
And all of that on top of the other problems Eureka has - like not being able to handle such large crowds, not being solo-friendly, not being able to play with friends on a different level, single fireworks from lootboxes and basically being Diadem 3.0...