What's your first impression of Eureka?

[Vidu]

Stories in FF are great?

I don't know what games you have been playing, but the "brooding male protagonist with awesome hair #999999" isn't that great of a story anymore. I'm actually really disappointed in the fanfiction-level story that they have pushed out with the last handful of games and that includes this one. It's just not resonating with me anymore and I can't be alone in being sick of the same default hero over and over and over again. But it's what they know - and when they try to do anything else it fails miserably because they don't bring in any consultation that could help and they come up with something that is entirely unrealistic.

This is wildly offtopic, but I wanted to respond to it anyways - and maybe with something you call a cheap answer, but please: Still hear me out!

So, to give you the answer right away: Maybe you grew out of the type of story the Final Fantasy games are telling?
Something, that wouldnt be surprising - after all their main target audience is probably people between 15 and 25 or something around that age. I dont know how old you are, obviously, but I could see those stories not being as appealing anymore at a certain age - or after you've seen them so often in different variations.
That doesnt mean that the next story of that type is really bad - even though, granted, I havent played FFXIII and FXV, so I cant speak to the quality of those stories, but I can speak to the quality of FFXIVs story. And personally I have to say that I enjoy it. I specially dont get where your go at all the male characters comes from, because I always felt that we're having a lot of strong female characters - both in prominent on-screen time roles aswell as in important positions all over Eorzea (all three leaders of the ARR-city-states are female, we have several female guild leaders, even in jobs that have a more "male" conotation).
I also always felt that the story wasnt the simple story of a hero (=us) saving the world and putting everything right - if you pay attention to the story, there are a lot of details that can make you wonder "Are we even doing the right thing here?" and more so "Do we even have a choice to handle this differently?"
And I'm not really sure how this is the same story as we had in other FF-games? Even with things like Omega being a bit much on fanservice, the whole world is still very rich on lore - I have a giant book next to my bed on it, that I still havent finished reading because its so heavy that I'm often to tired to hold it for long when trying to read a few pages before going to bed!

Its of course your right to not like the story and voice that opinion - but personally I feel its a bit unfair to call it all "garbage".
I get being tired of this kind of story though if you've played/read/watched a lot of stuff telling, well, this kind of story.
I got tired of crime-related stories for a while after I must have read like 20 or 30 books of that genre in a couple of months. Each new one I picked up wasnt getting me. They seemed uninspired and boring and I always knew what would happen next. That doesnt mean that those books were bad though - I just had enough of that story-type for a while.
I gave it a rest, picked up some fantasy stuff and returned to crime recently and found it really enjoyable again.

Kind like with my previous post about gameplay-innovation: Story-innovation isnt something that can just magically happen. Not even something that has to magically happen. Personally, I'm still enjoying the story - actually, the story is even a big part of why I'm playing this game or FF-games in general. Not so much because I want a spikey-hair-hero, but because... I cant even pin-point it really, its just that stories have always been a strong point of the series for me. I'm actually desperatly looking for more FF-like games to play when I'm fed up with stuff like Eureka (any recommendations, guys?).

You sound a bit like you're just done with the genre. And as I said before: I know, thats a cheap answer and you're obviously also entitled to not liking the story for whatever reason, not saying you're wrong there! Cant argue about taste after all!
But sometimes, when you dont like something that you used to like, it could be time to take a step back and ask "What has changed? Me - or the thing?"

[Souljacker]

both in prominent on-screen time roles aswell as in important positions all over Eorzea (all three leaders of the ARR-city-states are female, we have several female guild leaders, even in jobs that have a more "male" conotation).

I wanted to respond to this specifically because I hear this A LOT, and I feel it's disingenuous at best. Did SE put some female characters in prominent positions? Yes. HOWEVER, and this is huge, there is ALMOST ALWAYS a strongER male character who isn't in that position for whatever reason his backstory holds and SE makes sure we know about it. The Admiral has Mistbeard, The Sultana has Raubauhn, the gladiator lead has whoever that derplander is that's running around doing whatever it is he's doing, the fisher's guild has the absent-minded fisherman who's actually in charge, the pugilist lead has the old maat-esque character, and that's just a start. Maybe you don't see it - and that's ok, because to you there's nothing wrong with this, but to me... There's so few characters that are strong on their own that when I see a character whose story doesn't involve some dude who did whatever he did that ended up with her in that position, I'm genuinely in awe. In fact, the only such story I can recall is the Black Mage quests and even that is because it was from an older character they pulled out of mothballs.

I'm not trying to trash these guys. They are writing what they know. I'm just expressing an opinion here that it's getting tiresome always being the villain, always being second-best to someone else and having the only real character I can look up to being Shantotto. They can do better than this. They can. I KNOW they can.