How I wish Eureka was

[Sigma-Astra]

People say this, but idk.

I mean, i agree it needed to be designed better, but I played FFXI, and challenging there meant a lot of nights with no progress or going backwards. Savage you just don't progress if you fail a night, but you don't delevel if you do; when you have that, it makes things a lot nastier because now someone just made a lot more work for you to catch up on. In this game you never have to give up on an instance just because you can't even get there, for example.

I've never played FFXI, but my fiance has, however, I have played things like vanilla Ragnarok Online. I have heard horror stories about FFXI such as farming Absolute Virtue, 1% drop rates on items needed for a sequence of quests to even start a NM, their version of Ixion, etc. I don't really consider tedious grinds to be challenging content because anyone with the time and effort can achieve them, if anything, I'd consider grinds to be challenging on one's patience entirely. But, once you hit level 20, it's almost impossible to delevel unless people in your party hate you or you're on your own, and even then if you request a rez more than likely someone will come along and help you out. There's really nothing to do at level 20 besides follow the NM train or just stand around and AFK until wraiths are up. That's not good design. I mean, I have 4 relics now and my SO has all of them, he's not really going for the gear until he sees the next step involved and even if he did? Then what? After you have the mount, Anemos relics, and gear? What then? What's the point of going back to Eureka?

A long grind isn't challenging in skill, but mostly time and patience. I just think that some people are moving away from that era of gaming. I look back on my days of playing Ragnarok Online and wondered how I even found that mess of a grind remotely fun. I must have been insane or bored.

[CorbinDallas]

snip

So? Just because people don't get around to completing it doesn't mean it's enough content for that kind of playerbase. Not only that but there's zero variance for that difficulty of content.

Let's just take a look and see what "casual players" get in those 6 months:

- 3 dungeons, which have become easier and easier with every patch
- 2 trials, which outside of a couple of edge cases (Thordan/Sephirot/Shinryu), I consider casual content
- 24 man raid, which speaks for itself
- Deep dungeon, fits kinda both, but most players never touch the more difficult floors
- 4 normal mode raid fights
- relic/Eureka

Should I go on? God forbid people want something even remotely difficult that doesn't have to have the savage/ultimate tag attached to it.

[Lium]

Relic steps are never about skill, but time.

This right here. I just tried out Eureka for the first time tonight. I have to say, I disliked the experience. A lot. It's clearly designed as a grind and timesink. In fact, you can even tell Krile that. "It's needlessly complicated." So, the devs know what they are doing.

For the amount of time I spent in there, I got 1.5 levels and one crystal. It takes like 50 to upgrade or get new gear, so the thought of going there every night for hours to grind with nothing to show for is making me cringe. Like, here we go with this crap again. It's easier just to do roulettes for tomestones.

Also, I was doing it solo. Which is doable, but it's clearly designed to be done in groups since all the monsters hit like mack trucks.

[Shurrikhan]

OP posts "I'm better than you," the thread, gets the expected levels of disdain.

Have you read that on which you comment? Nothing there points out a quality of player, only improvements possible through optional variance in order to increase the breadth of attraction towards a content area.

It's simple dude, Savage level raiders already have plenty of content tailored to them that no one else can achieve. Relics level the playing field.

Let's say three chefs for an event or franchise have time to design 3 meals by which to meet the wants of their customers, which can be divided into 3 groups, A, B, and C.

What's most efficient, that they
(A) make three meals that are each liked by only one group, A, B, or C;
(B) make a meal liked by all three, a meal liked by two, and a meal liked only by the last;
or (C) make three meals liked by all three groups?

Option (C) may not be possible, but design should always center on doing the most to please the most to the best extent possible, not to attempting to placate community deviated by bickering feedback cycles by giving them each their portion of development time where they could have had far more if not for their tastes being defined only by juxtoposition...

If you want a game that is built entirely around servicing the high end raiders, WOW is about to release a new expansion.

WoW is not a game "built entirely around servicing high end players". Less than a eighth of its population participate in upper end contents (equivalent to the more difficult and upward of our Extreme primals). It merely realized that you can build systems and content types which are lost on essentially no one (so long as they reach level cap), from the boggers of Mythic+ Invitationals, to casuals running for basic weekly rewards. Perhaps you would prefer that what is generally held as the most cost-effective adjustment ever given to an MMO in terms of reiterable content created and community stratums allowed to mix should never have occurred, for fear for casual-hardcore interaction? (Good god, what if they were to interbreed?!)

You're making a game of divisive "equality" when the content involved isn't actually zero-sum. You may as well say that you claim the color blue for your dungeon color palette, so hardcore players can gt*o, while be satisfied with losing red and green to midcore and hardcore, respectively. When development can intercept, being applicable to multiple groups with the same underlying art assets, etc., it should. It saves time, and therefore allows for more content for everyone.

[Colino]

Should I go on? God forbid people want something even remotely difficult that doesn't have to have the savage/ultimate tag attached to it.

"casual players" are the large majority of the playerbase, so of course that's the case.

You're somehow implying that SE should spend the same amount of resources when making content for 90% of the playerbase and 10% of the playerbase.

[Sigma-Astra]

"casual players" are the large majority of the playerbase, so of course that's the case.

You're somehow implying that SE should spend the same amount of resources when making content for 90% of the playerbase and 10% of the playerbase.

Well, people can be a casual player and still raid at the same time. So, I don't think either or is exclusive to each other? SE should cater towards it's entire playerbase, mind you, as alienating any of your customers is a bad business practice as we can all attest to with the All 24-Man Greed and lack of official translations with the Live Letters for anyone not native to Japan.

[CorbinDallas]

You're somehow implying that SE should spend the same amount of resources when making content for 90% of the playerbase and 10% of the playerbase.

Not in the slightest. I'm just saying that four encounters every 6 months isn't "plenty", like the guy I quoted is suggesting.

[Remedi]

every 6 months

7 months actually

[KaldeaSahaline]

Honestly, I didnt like the majority of what you were trying to propose, some things didnt make any sense, and most of it sounds like you were trying to complicate things for the sake of being complicated, like the bleed which adds nothing to the system.

Let me ask this a different way then: What do you think my design intent is? My goal here isn't to "add complexity" for the sake of complexity, so if you truly believe that, it's because you don't understand the vision (which is fair), which means I failed in conveying my thoughts. So I'd like the opportunity to rectify that.

You only gave one example of something you didn't like, which was the Fire weather pattern where the thematic intent is that the heat saps your health away over time. The intent of this weather pattern is ensure healers have it on their mind, as well as offer up the ability to use the magia board to offset this pattern. I.e. (use Fire to reduce the damage and get the "HoT effect" or use Water to shield it). Did you not take into consideration the Magia board or were you strictly envisioning the change in a vacuum (i.e. new weather, with existing magia/monsters)?

Your average player working solo or doing AFK NM's would not be affected significantly.

I also disagree with this need you have to make it more like the savage raid or somehow involve Savage as required for completing Eureka. It should be the other way around (and it is). Its not supposed to be hard, just lengthy. If you want something to challenge you beyond EX/Savage they have already put that in, its called the Ultimate raid.

The issue I have with this statement is that it's one dimensional. Just because the relic has been a mindless long grind previously doesn't mean it can't have other avenues. Ultimate isn't for everyone and isn't the solution to the problem. I don't necessarily need "more challenging" than EX/Savage, what I need is for other content forms to offer a SIMILAR challenge thus increasing the quantity of content for consumption. The framework already exists and supplanting further options into that is the easiest, and most cost effective approach.

Nothing. The problem is the player base is constantly looking for the path of least resistance. Tell me, If you could do something one way with minimal effort or another way thats challenging, why would anyone take the challenging path?

The path of least resistance for YOU might not be the same as me. In fact, It's probably a lot easier for me to focus on the harder higher impact content to get done sooner.

Here's a fictitious scenario: I have 3 hours a week to play and I want to do my relic. You have 15 hours a week to play. As it stands now, you'll finish significantly faster than I would. That's because the content designed is derivative. If there was an alternative method that was harder, but more rewarding I could participate in that (thus enjoying my time more) and still maintain relevancy. You'd be surprised at just how many people would be interested in this. It isn't just me.

It also occurred to me that some of your style of suggestions are already in there. I think its numbers (?) That summons a "Void" that needs to be targeted and destroyed (secondary target to liven up the fights) but no one seems to even bother with it anymore, same with any adds in the vicinity. So how do you expect a raid full of players to actually use any kind of group tactic?

Well ignoring these things on the monsters I designed wouldn't be good. I expect people participating in this content form to be intelligent enough to make good decisions or get on the same page pretty quickly. That's why they're EX/Savage players. If they weren't this method wouldn't be better for them, and they'd shift to the existing methods. Thus working as intended.

Of course. That might have something to do with the fact that it's not ex/savage content.

If you bothered to read the OP, you'd have seen that I mentioned that I believe designing content for specifically one subset of player as inefficient/sub-optimal. You're more than welcome to debate my analysis as to whether that's right/wrong and why, but until then do you have any actual input on the content therein? Anything you liked/dislike and why?

OP posts "I'm better than you," the thread, gets the expected levels of disdain.

It's simple dude, Savage level raiders already have plenty of content tailored to them that no one else can achieve. Relics level the playing field.

If you want a game that is built entirely around servicing the high end raiders, WOW is about to release a new expansion.

Nice man. Really constructive post. Lots of really deep insight and analysis.

Mind sharing where I said or implied "I'm better than you"?

How about taking the time to actually read the OP and cite some specific examples of things you liked/disliked and WHY.

I don't comment on the mechanics because SE in general never really uses player ones to that level.

The hard stuff for people who want it though would just turn eureka into savage and normal happening in the same zone, and kind of removes something players can do together. And you'd run into the issues of finding people who want to do it, if there's the same divide between players who do savage and casual, in a 150 man instance.

I mean, this is more relax and chill out content.

So - you have absolutely no input whatsoever on ANYthing I designed? None?

If that's truly the case (I'm disappointed), then I'll ask why do you think it's bad to have savage and normal in the same zone? You cite the example of "finding people" or skill segregation, but I don't consider those issues. I consider that a good thing. I don't want to play with AFK people or grind nameless mobs. I don't see anything wrong with that.

The OP's hardcore fronting is as off-putting as it gets.

Just out of curiosity how many hours a week would you say that you play this game?

End of discussion guys, we're completely spoiled by getting 4 fights every 6 months. /s

LOL.

Any chance you had any input on the actual content therein? I'd be interested to hear it. Likes/dislikes, etc.

"casual players" are the large majority of the playerbase, so of course that's the case.

You're somehow implying that SE should spend the same amount of resources when making content for 90% of the playerbase and 10% of the playerbase.

How much do you know about SDLC with regards to timing and cost? This will help me frame my response in a way that you'll understand.

[CorbinDallas]

Sorry OP, I was too busy being snarky to give my input earlier.

I do like the idea of weather effects, however certain things such as the persistent damage over time is not what I had in mind. Now that I mention it, I did comment to a friend how disappointed I was when I ran into a tornado and it didn't do anything. Perhaps just keeping it simple such as elemental weaknesses/strengths are modified in certain weather? For example, if it's raining, water element mobs become stronger and slightly more resistant to lightning? Gales giving mobs a haste buff? It's more challenging and makes you pick your battles more wisely, but it's not so difficult it excludes people of a...certain demographic.

The magia board in general could use some work, as right now it's simple stack 5x in one element and switch as needed. Perhaps some dual aspected enemies might spice that up, I don't know.