Next Eureka installment - please vastly reduce NM xp.

[Vanitas]

No fun allowed.

[Vhailor]

I don’t think an “intended way of play” should be forced on the playerbase. Because not everyone enjoys chain-killing things, or “leveling slowly”. Even with the FATE train present, there are still small groups of people doing it “the intended way” in every instance I have been in—I’ve seen many shouts advertising “Chain EXP group LFM” and “LFG Chain EXP”. And that’s fine. But let people play the content the way they want to, rather than trying to force one way or the other. FATE train is faster, and people enjoy the fastness, so why take that away from them? I’m sorry, I just don’t understand the reasoning behind it. If they made leveling in Eureka so tedious via all available routes (chain EXP parties and the FATE train), I don’t think I would even bother with it. I don’t have much time to play when I’m in school, and I like to get in and get things done quickly. That’s why the FATE train appeals to me, and chain-parties don’t...aside from the fact that I find the latter boring.

Speed is tricky. It can't simply be provided for people who want it, because psychology naturally pushes people toward the path of least resistance. As an example, suppose there was a third option added wherein people could buy a full weapon / armour set for 2.5m Gil. Would that be reasonable? I'd argue not; I think a lot of people who would otherwise enjoy the monster-chain style or the FATE train would simply buy the stuff, because it's faster and easier.

The FATE train cannot be so much faster than the monster chain option. It lures people who might otherwise enjoy, or even prefer, the monster chain option - simply by virtue of it being so much more efficient. The net result of this is that there are fewer people looking for traditional parties, and it's harder for people to enjoy the traditional parties (and it gives SE a giant get-out-of-jail-free card on their insanely fucktarded decision to not have a Level Sync option ready from the get-go, but I digress).

I think what you're getting at is actually a separate discussion, at least by my way of thinking. There's balance between styles (which is currently heavily skewed toward FATE trains), and then there's overall grind balance. You seem to be having more of an issue with the overall grind balance, which is made less onerous by a pseudo-exploitative method of play that nets rewards far faster than what appears to be the intended play style. What I'd rather see is the FATE train brought back down to earth relative to the monster chaining, and maybe have both of them sped up a little bit, along with some tweaks to eliminate kill-stealing (personally, I think whoever claimed a monster should get the full XP, but that's just me).

[Souljacker]

So... There's a few reasons why the chain XP doesn't work here.

1. No level sync. We can't really form parties out of a pool of 144 players in an instance. In my opinion instancing it across servers was a huge mistake.
2. No way to make parties inside other than shout and maybe look through the whole pt list of adventurers. Cumbersome as all get out.
3. They didn't really think through how to build camps. Monsters are too close, camps are too hard to get to because we don't have stealth medicines\spells. This is half-baked compared to the game it drew inspiration from.
4. This playerbase is already so used to the dungeon crawl that XI-style partying won't make sense to them and they won't do it. Old timers remember having fun at these camps and can likely list every single one of them from memory, but this is a new generation of players.

In the end, I think they need to just embrace the train. They made it a duty, they encouraged the mpk culture, and they punish the player harshly for trying to play 'as intended' so we just don't do it.

This is the sort of thing that wouldn't happen if they opened a test server and actually tested this stuff out with real players instead of in their closed-off development space. We'd have much better content as a result of involving the real playerbase.

[Derio]

If you are going to do that then you need to make the alternate ways of leveling up have increased XP. Chaining needs to grant higher xp or you need to introduce new and better ways to level up in Eureka. Otherwise keep the train going.

[Tridus]

No fun allowed.

Exactly. OP sounds like a complaint that it's not right that people took a dumpster fire and turned it into a marshmellow roast.

IF they do this, they'd be better off saving the development budget and cancelling the rest of Eureka entirely. Sorry, but mindlessly chaining trash mobs for hours for paltry rewards is simply not worth it. This is a game, not a job. It's supposed to be fun.

A better idea is to add daily objectives and such that give people something else to do that's actually worth doing and mixes things up. Add defense style things to give crafters something to do, put nodes out there for gatherers to work. Nerfing the only thing that doesn't suck horribly is the absolute worst way to go about it, and would just be SE being obstinate.

Alternately, triple chain XP and have it also drop anamos crystals and lockboxes so there's a reason to do it aside from needing to put yourself to sleep. And put a damn level sync in, because seriously. NMs are the only thing that let you play with people who aren't your level.

[Vahlnir]

[Miracle_Diva]

I had enough time spent grinding mobs in Lineage to get lvl cap, even more time to get gear, no thanks, I don't want mindlessly kill mobs for even more time, it's boring.

[KisaiTenshi]

The NM train is the only way to make the grind bearable though.

I don't think SE intended it to work this way, and probably wouldn't have had they had made mandatory level-sync, because the train just runs over the low-level NM's, not letting the low level players have a crack at it. Though strangely enough the other unintended consequence was being in a party with a level 20 player while at level 4 and getting 3000 exp from one of the level 15 NM's. I'm pretty sure that was not intended either.

Only two things really need to be fixed here, and it depends on how much you like to solo play. Either
A) Extend the chain time when solo (some monsters take as long as the chain expiry), shorten it when partied.
B) Don't penalize kill-steals. As it's impossible for new players to the area to get any EXP at all if everyone is fighting over the same monsters.

Rather, at least with the kill-steals, it should be weighted as "tagged" (whoever/party made the first hit) gets at least 50% of the exp, and all other assists divide up the remaining 50%. Where as currently it seems like it divides up the experience by how much damage, thus anyone who assists by being able to kill it on shot, neither gets any experience.

[Fynlar]

I don't think SE intended it to work this way

They knew exactly what they were doing when they made trash mobs worth so little and made NMs worth so much.

[Gin_Gray]

I really think that's the best way to keep it working more as intended - chain xp parties - rather than the fate train. Keep the other rewards the same, so folks still do them even when they over level them (it will make sense to go to an nm you see pop and do it) like it was day 1/2.

I feel like this is the best solution as changing tags to party only will cause issues, and already folks with mounts beat out folks without them that need the xp. If they don't give much xp (or any) then only those who want the drops will race to do them.

This from the perspective of someone who's opened over 6k lockboxes, has 4 sets, still has 3k anemos crystals and almost 60 paz feathers.

As a person who started day 1 and has over 80 feathers......eh no? NM's as someone says makes it bearable I've done chain parties all day and controller be dead also the struggle to stay awake was real.