Eureka... what were you expecting?

[RiyahArp]

Just as top tier as nerfing content into the ground cause of crybabies.

Eureka's difficulty isn't balanced at all, though. It's mostly on players from 1-10. Players 11 and up generally have much less issue, and its easy for max level players. The difficulty also punishes attempts to play the game in other ways; the long TNL makes soloing a chore, and the coordination to grind party makes it unpopular unless you premade. It's not really good difficulty.

[Stormfur]

And there's absolutely no reason (aside from the kindness of your heart) to help players at a lower level than you. You don't get XP and sometimes, neither do they. I felt bad for the level 1s this weekend. I tried helping them but there was little I could do

[MageBlack]

Eureka's difficulty isn't balanced at all, though. It's mostly on players from 1-10. Players 11 and up generally have much less issue, and its easy for max level players. The difficulty also punishes attempts to play the game in other ways; the long TNL makes soloing a chore, and the coordination to grind party makes it unpopular unless you premade. It's not really good difficulty.

Balancing and fixes I'm fine with but dont decrease the TNL, dont increase protean crystal drops, dont increase rare drops, that sort of thing. I see this as a great foundation that they could build off of but they NEED to build on it in a timely manner or I fear participation will drop off. Looking forward to the Isle of Fire and the Isle of Thunder!

[Vstarstruck]

I was expecting new and innovate like they said, even more so when they said it needed to be delayed

With the comments made with leveling your gear being different (something along those lines, something like gear will progress with you) I thought it would be a new way of upgrading gear though battle (something like palace of the dead but done differently) with fully customize sub stats like 2.0 and 3.0 relics, like this:

All I expected was an entirely different way to level up my armor. Perhaps killing monsters of a certain element charged aspects that fueled different stats. Kill fire monsters for ATK and so forth. I'd have different goals as I went but it sounded like we were going to have more power over the customization of what we were wearing.
It was hard to think that they were going to give us anything other than a revolutionary system with how tight lipped and mysterious they were about it. Sure some people got a little overhyped, but that's kind of understandable. What I don't think anyone expected was for them to outright make it so... hostile.
FFXIV has always been forgiving since 2.0 at least. You learn by trial and error, you talk to people. Now? Better have a res with you or hope someone is nice enough to res your white magic user, or 25% down the toilet, possible delevel.

I expected more involvement in the build, not more time investment than ever before.

I feared it would just be diadem 3.0 though since SE shown in the past to have poor wording at times.
What I did not expect:

What I didn't expect:
Nothing to do besides grind and ride the Fate-Train.
FtP-type time-waste mechanics like the pitiful XP from mob kills and the hefty death penalty.
The horrible culling issues.
Mounts and Aetherytes as rewards for levelling.
Not only is it frustrating not being able to attune below level 9 but high level players not needing to pass through areas where the lowbies are levelling might make getting rezzed difficult in the future. I'd have preferred everyone to have mounts and Aetheryte access or no one (the island isn't that big). Note: This wouldn't be an issue if there was any reason to explore.

Since we are basically spamming our rotations without a break while we are in there, I would have hoped (I admit I didn't expect) for some change to our abilities to make it less punishing on the hands.
People who played XI talk about having time to socialise and chat while fighting; I think I would have enjoyed this content more if we had a combat system that allowed that.

I also did not expect level gap to be an issue, both from ffxiv and ffxi and what is in them to prevent that. This place is so pre-alpha even after all those delays i can't wrap my head around this happened. This is a joke right? I want to be put in the real world please.

I'm not asking for that with all content, just this one piece of arbitrary side content. Please, just make one piece of content that caters to people like me. We exist too.

nope, this side content you are trying to defend is simply bad, needs overhauling, it may or may not include nerfing, I do not care but it is very poor in the current state.

[Vidu]

I'm not asking for that with all content, just this one piece of arbitrary side content. Please, just make one piece of content that caters to people like me. We exist too.

The problem here is though: personally, I wouldnt classify Eureka as that. Not with it including the relic-weapon - THE go-to-weapon for most of the people who dont raid (or at least dont raid serious enough to clear the current last tier of the raid-cycle), which is the majority.
The relic was always something more or less everyone was doing, which means that more or less everyone would need to do Eureka. If Eureka would have been more lile PotD in that way (gear/weapon-progress mostly relevant in that content, not related to the rest of the game - maybe with the option to wear it outside of Eureka after completing it), I could have agreed with you. But with how it is right now... the rewards from Eureka are relevant for the rest of the game and that in a way that they could, in theory, be relevant to the majority (given their low ilvl they're not really right now, but that makes matters only worse).

And besides the relic being tied to it, they did a pretty good (or bad?) job to promise all of us that Eureka would be the new Holy Grale - granted, I never actually expected that, but the way they presented Eureka it was supposed to be content enjoyed by the majority of people. Casually friendly in the way that everyone could take part in it (that does NOT mean that it has to be super-duper easy - just that you're able to progress within it without having a static of highly skilled players. That you're able to progress by yourself or with only ond or two friends - and the content is very solo/small group unfriendly).

Eureka, with the ties to the relic and the promises made, is not arbitrary side content. And thats the whole problem. Eureka was supposed to be a corner stone of Stormblood - not some "special intrest"-content like PvP or LoV or even PotD.
I'm pretty sure a lot more people would be fine with this content, if it 1) stayed in its own bubble, without the relic; 2) wouldnt have been delayed again and again; 3) would have been presented as "side content" and not as "the next big thing" with Stormblood.

I'm happy for you that you're enjoying it! I really am! And I dont want to take content away from you that you enjoy - however, I feel that Eureka did that to me, in a sense. It took "away" the relic (as in: it placed it in content that I consider unfinished, with lack of innovation, not being what was promised and solo-unfriendly) and from what I understand it took away development-time from other content (cut back in dungeons being linked to it, for example).

[Shouko]

And there's absolutely no reason (aside from the kindness of your heart) to help players at a lower level than you. You don't get XP and sometimes, neither do they. I felt bad for the level 1s this weekend. I tried helping them but there was little I could do

I had some guy that was like 6 trying to solo, I saw him almost dead, tossed him a regen and waited for him to finish, poor guy tried to invite me, tried to explain it to him but think there was a language barrier, then went back out on my RDM WHM+no tank=aggro city...anyhow again tried to invite me, I just simply turned it down. I felt bad because I would have stayed to help him if I wouldn't have eaten up his xp. There are still people out there kind enough to help even tho they don't need to. If I hit 20, since I don't craft or raid I will probably help a lot, i'll be the unofficial Eureka mentor!

[Teraluna]

Expect? Well blame for thinking it was going to have some level of thought put into it.

What did we get:
Content that you'd expect to be served up in some kind of abysmal ftp offering.
Moronic repetition with whatever the hell odds of opening boxes.

It's like someone asking you to watch paint dry and giving you a new brush after you'd stood there for hours.
Just what the hell SE?
Where did this thinking come from that it would be a good idea to pollute a fine subscription mmo with something that is regularly served up by the likes of Cryptic or some here today, gone tomorrow Studio.

This is the worst content you have delivered bar none. And that includes FFXIV 1.0 which had to be redone.

To see this garbage in this great game breaks my heart, and questions my belief that future content will ever get back the standards seen earlier on in the game.

Eureka - the historical cry of discovery. Only in this game what we discovered was something of zero interest, zero fun, zero innovation and zero thought beforehand.