Eureka: successes, problems and possilbe solutons from the PoV of a filthy casual

[Nora_of_Mira]

Eureka and Diadem both are absolute case studies on the necessity for a public test realm where a subset of players can interact with and test content of this scale before it is released. The dev team simply does not have the manpower in their ranks to adequately simulate the true actions that the player population will take.

Im at work so I can't watch the video you linked, but is there any evidence for them not having internal tests and a general "lack of manpower"? Do we compare them to people like Blizzard that have so many huge projects at the same time not even including WoW?

[RiyahArp]

Success no. 1: The danger of exploration

There is no success here. The mobs all have incredibly narrow sight aoe; they have to because SE just slapped five million of them in an area without really balancing density any. You can also outrun them with sprint easily except in the few cases you get hung up on the zone geometry. Players have managed to eliminate even that by the train, since you can just be raised on route easily, and the mobs can't target 50 players at once.

Success no. 2: The enviroment

Why are people liking it? It's just a random jungle, next to a river.

Sucess no. 3: The independent levelling

It's...well, it's pointless. You level up to take on more mobs. It adds nothing to actual relic enhancement, and it's really slow either soloing or chain partying unless you precisely plan your party's level. The bulk of your relic upgrading is from the FATES and their drops; one fate even a low one will give 15-30 times the crystals you get until the highest of levels.

...

I agree mostly with the problems, but the helping part...look, the only way we can help is for the next iteration of Eureka. It's already done content. If you look in zone at players, at least half are 10+, and its been a week. In another week, people will be done. We can give our ideas, but SE simply must change it according to actual player feedback, none of this "we know what the data says" like they've been doing with the latest feast patches. They don't have time to waste any more; we can't go through multiple iterations until they finally give up and implement what they should have.

[Hestzhyen]

Im at work so I can't watch the video you linked, but is there any evidence for them not having internal tests and a general "lack of manpower"? Do we compare them to people like Blizzard that have so many huge projects at the same time not even including WoW?

There are no hard and fast facts about what SE does to test content before releasing it to players. We can assume that they have internal QA to find bugs and test functionality since we get instances that are polished and (usually) free of glaring technical defects. But there is no advertised Player Test Realm, no evidence whatsoever of SE having people test for "fun factor" and how the content feels to play before releasing it. Not all studios do this but considering the mixed reception their new content has been getting SE might want to look into it. Professional game developers creating content in a metaphorical vacuum can become disconnected from the end-user experience- you know your section inside and out and how the content in general supposed to work and be approached, but the actual functionality and how players will experience it can be vastly different from those expectations.

In terms of manpower, I've seen people compare XIV's staff credits to other MMO staff credits. The consensus from that exercise is that SE has about as many people credited for their work that you'd expect from an MMO this size. How efficiently that manpower is used, how efficient the workers themselves are, how much work they are being credited for, and all those other intangible facts are not available for consideration. All we can do is guess for the most part.

[BucklesTrespen]

The majority of players will always take the path of least resistance. SE can say they intended XYZ from Eureka all they want, but if the fastest way to level is mindlessly zerging then this is what people will do.

[MageBlack]

As a filthy casual, no to all the nerfs you are calling for.

Problem 1: the Grind
its not a problem at all once you understand how the content is being played. While the initial premise was "get party, find camp, kill mobs ad nasuem" this is inefficient and I'm not sure if the devs intended it to be this way. What you want to do is look for a low/mid/high level NM train you can join. You will see more of the map, you will get good exp from the NM kills, and you will be safe even if you die because people are good about rezzing others. You may not get mob exp this way but the exp you get fom the NM more than makes up for it. TIP: Turn down your effects before joining a group. Have [self] full [party] limited [others] off. You will have a much better time of it this way.

Problem 2: the Quest
Some kind of indication you are involved in a quest would be nice. I dont really want it to be in the usual spot (the journal) but maybe have a quest in progress marker above Krile's head at the base. I'm actually really glad there are 0 quest markers in this content and even if a "NM hunt board" is added, i want it to be the same as the Krile quest. Oh, and do not reward exp for quests, maybe just increase rare drop percentage or some other one time reward. Really, join an NM train, you will level fast enough.

Problem 3: punished for being low level
a Party sync option would help a little but I found something out that will help me level my lower leveled friends. You dont really lose anything from de-leveling. You keep gained magicite, you keep mount ability, and you keep teleportation. Once I hit 20 and unlock everything I am going to level down to 6 so I can level along side my lower leveled friends. I keep getting crystals and loot so I don't see much downside to doing this. Granted a better system would be nice but this is the same thing that always happens, in a week of a lev cap increase/new dungeon/new instance the ones with more time to play or more dedication have gone through the content at lightening pace while the rest trickle through. I'm pretty casual and I'm already lev 15 and almost have a full set.

Problem 4: Monster density
Again, not a problem. the majority of mobs are agro on sight. just picture a frontal cone AoE in front of every monster, you can literally walk right behind a big bad and they wont bother you. take it slow, be careful, and you should have no problem. I can run clear across the map at level 10 without a single death if I"m careful. deeper in there are mobs that agro from sound (so you need to walk, not run) and sprites that will agro if you cast a spell around them. Also, if you have Hide, you are laughing. I feel everything is spaced just right to account for this, no adjustment needed.

Problem 5: Short relevance of content
I'm sorry but adding in faster levelling like your other solutions are all trying to do will only make this content die faster. aside from un-restricted ability to get relic weapons and gear for all your jobs (no weekly lock out), you get tomes of mendacity, there's mounts to farm, minions, to farm, barding to farm, and quite a few other reasons for continuing to go back in. Also, once they add the next step of relic in, people will still need to do this step first before they can proceed to the next.

Final thoughts:
Does this content need some QoL adjustments, yes. Should that come in the form of a nerf, NO! If anything they need to add more rewards to incentivize players and some party sync option + special reward for doing so that has a chance of dropping some unique item. I think they finally have the beginnings of some fun, long lasting content. As long as it doesnt get nerfed into irrelevancy. It's the relic, it is supposed to be a grind and the system is based loosely around FFXI so I can understand why people with little experience with older MMO's will probably not appreciate it. Personally I'm loving the grind and will be sad when its over. But this is just my thoughts.

[Gimorian401]

I once thought the grind was too much. Now that I know the "trick" that people found for getting the gear in a decent time its not bad, I like it though I admit I have my love for ff11 blinders on so I want this to work.

I do fear that after a month it will die out cause of those that are grinding it hardcore will be gone. I hope the limited resources SE has left for ff14 will figure out a way for people getting to 70 to be able to do the content.

[Recruiter]

The mechanics of Eureka itself are fine. But, my main problem with it is that right now its just glamor content.
We need some depth and some incentives to play Eureka.

I would like to see it changed in a few simple ways.

• Make the relic quest an actual quest.
• A vendor that takes Crystals/Feathers/Whatever and exchanges them for mounts and minions
• Changing existing NMs or adding new ones that function like fate monsters. Only the party that spawned can fight. Spectators can't attack it but it can attack them via aoe or if they pulled aggro with healing.
• Loot. For the love of Halone give us loot! It can be as simple as straight up equipment or in the form of cursed gear material. You get crafting mats and items that removes the curse from the NM. A crafter crafts the equipment and it can be a level 1 glamor, but with the item you exchange for the same looking item but at a higher level.

[Malzian]

Im at work so I can't watch the video you linked, but is there any evidence for them not having internal tests and a general "lack of manpower"? Do we compare them to people like Blizzard that have so many huge projects at the same time not even including WoW?

I never said they didn't do the tests. What I said was they don't have the amount of people to perform the test on the same scale as an instance of Eureka. We know they use their internal dev team to do these tests. We know approximately the size of their dev team and it's not 144 people so they couldn't actually fill a single instance of Eureka.

[YuyuZ]

They should prevent NMs that are too high lvl from giving xp at all. This would split the train into high, medium and low level groups and higher levels can still help the lower levels vs low levels helping high levels only to get killed multiple times forcing too many people to help with raising.

[YuyuZ]

Also having to press my NUM 0 key 627 times to open lootboxes almost isn't worth my time since most of the prizes I get are fireworks. Either lower the drop rate of how many lootboxes we get or allow us to trade a large number of lootboxes for prizes we want.