I liked Eureka

[Hestzhyen]

One of the problems with people who play this game is, everyone wants everything to be easy and accessible, but then they complain that there is no difficulty. When they raise the difficulty, or make things take time to achieve your goal, they cry because it's to hard or takes to long. Eureka is great for people who like to be able to jump in and out of content by themselves but still be able to join a party inside of the content, leave when they want and "choose your own adventure" so to speak. That's why I love it. I work a lot and don't have time to sit in pf waiting for hours to form a learning party that will wipe, rage and have to refill up... that is literally my night. With Eureka I can go in, set a nightly goal, do what I set out to do and log off. I can work on my relic at my own pace, I can farm bunnies for items, or just idle in town and talk to people. It's almost like being in the over world back in the good old days.

Accessibility != braindead dungeons. It's more about respecting the time of people who want to feel like they can progress without devoting their every free hour to the game.

Because let's face it, the only real challenges in Eureka are 1)not falling asleep killing HP sponges with 1 mechanic/following the train and 2)having enough willpower/masochism to grind and grind and grind and pray RNG is kind to you. That's not the kind of challenge a lot of people find to be enjoyable, or else Valkrum Dunes would have been the be-all, end-all of MMORPG leveling systems. Games have evolved since then so it's a bit baffling that XIV decided to go backwards for this content.

I work a lot too, and I don't want to waste the few hours I might get a week gaining a pixel of EXP per hour in pursuit of eventually earning the right to an RNG-laden grind for tokens and maybe some house furnishings or glam between all the sparklers and materia. Long story short if I wanted to play XI it's still there, I can sign right up and see some of the best of what early MMOs had to offer. Word is I can also hop in to WoW and get much the same loot experience at end-game. I don't want to though, so seeing it in XIV - and gating the relic behind it, no less- makes me hope that this is a one-off experiment and next time the dev team doesn't waste so many resources on content that should stay in the games that previously featured it. I wanted something other than 24 man raids, EX trials, and 8 man raids to do but Eureka definitely wasn't it.

[Gralna]

I work a lot too, and I don't want to waste the few hours I might get a week gaining a pixel of EXP per hour in pursuit of eventually earning the right to an RNG-laden grind for tokens and maybe some house furnishings or glam between all the sparklers and materia.

I can understand and respect that some people don't enjoy Eureka, but I find this bit to basically be misinformation. Even in Pagos you can gain a lvl or two in a 1-2 hour session just doing bunny fates, if you're actually killing NMs as they spawn then you're gaining 3-5 lvls in that same time period.

As far as Crystals go, killing NMs and farming light are steady progress towards getting crystals, there is no RNG involved except maybe the amount of light you get, but it's still steady progress.

Only thing I can think of that would cause the kind of results you mentioned is mindlessly sticking to chain parties and refusing to partake in more profitable methods. Which as far as I can see is more a player choice than bad design, since the tools are there to alleviate the main issues that you appear to be having.

[Hestzhyen]

I can understand and respect that some people don't enjoy Eureka, but I find this bit to basically be misinformation. Even in Pagos you can gain a lvl or two in a 1-2 hour session just doing bunny fates, if you're actually killing NMs as they spawn then you're gaining 3-5 lvls in that same time period.

As far as Crystals go, killing NMs and farming light are steady progress towards getting crystals, there is no RNG involved except maybe the amount of light you get, but it's still steady progress.

Only thing I can think of that would cause the kind of results you mentioned is mindlessly sticking to chain parties and refusing to partake in more profitable methods. Which as far as I can see is more a player choice than bad design, since the tools are there to alleviate the main issues that you appear to be having.

I approached Anemos three different ways. Once as a duo with me and a buddy. Once as part of the train. Once as trying to get some similar-level people together in a group to chain and spawn. Out of all of these, the train was the most effective route, at which point I called it quits since getting rewarded for doing nothing is awful design. And the chaining/buddy method proved to me that "U CAN SOLO IT LOLZ"/"You can do it by yourself, on your own time!!1" is a total lie... unless you enjoy doing nothing else until mid-way through 5.x. The punishment for existing in the instance is over the top. If I want a real challenge I can go get my butt kicked in Soul Calibur or get wrecked by Dark Souls bosses. Testing my patience and willingness to put up with crap design isn't worth the time.

In all honesty I might not have minded the instance so much if it skipped the leveling B.S. and just let me (carefully) explore- there are few things I love more in games than gradually revealing maps and discovering amazing scenery. There was zero reason to force us up a hugely player-unfriendly level grind once reaching 70.

[Alucard135]

getting rewarded for doing nothing is awful design.

But why are you doing nothing in the train? You help by killing the mobs that spawn the NM with the train. And if the mobs are a lot higher in level than you, you can just grab a group of 8 and go prep an NM that is around your level or less by killing 30 of the mobs that spawn it (the spawn time is random but very quick in Anemos and Pyros, unlike Pagos). That's how it was designed to spawn NMs (according to the theories lol). So in a way you made your own little train that YOU control its direction and timing. You don't have to be tied to the huge NM train if you're not doing anything in it. And if you still can't kill mobs around your level in a group of 8 and spawn NMs....then I don't know what to say here lol. The difficulty of the mobs and their mechanics there is even less than alphascape normal mode. So that should be considered a content that can be taken by casuals (a group of 8 managed to solo Penny).

On release day, since everyone is around the same level, almost everyone contributes in spawning NMs. Once the level gap grows, that's where you tend to see the AFKers in the train. Now I'm not gonna hate on the train cuz a lot of people AFK in it. It's not my business how they wanna play the content. No matter how interesting and fun a content is, if people find a way to do it without effort, they will do it like that (This is why you'll find mentors in mentor roulette drop out from EX trials as soon as they enter just cuz they don't wanna bother teaching sprouts about the content. They just want a quick way to get the 2000 roulettes).

[XiXiQ]

you can just grab a group of 8

This is the real problem. You can't "just grab a group of 8". I wasted hours upon hours trying to do this before I gave up.

[Reynhart]

This is the real problem. You can't "just grab a group of 8". I wasted hours upon hours trying to do this before I gave up.

That's the sad part. In every instance, you have enough people to make several full parties, but everytime you suggest something like that, people replies that it's better to stay in the train, even when their low level makes them gains almost nothing in it. Sheep mentality at its best.

And the problem is that it's not because of Eureka by itself but only because it's a large scale content. The more people you have, the less implication and coordination you can require from each people separately. At least, Eureka makes it so that others not helping doesn't prevent you from gaining something, as opposed to an AFK player in a raid or trial that will roll over you at the end.

[Arkdra]

That's the sad part. In every instance, you have enough people to make several full parties, but everytime you suggest something like that, people replies that it's better to stay in the train, even when their low level makes them gains almost nothing in it. Sheep mentality at its best.

They don't gain almost nothing from it though. The experience scales with your level and doing a level 50 nm is essentially the same experience as doing a level 36.
Also, that you can't find 7 other people to go hellgrind like it's 1998 again should be pretty telling about how people feel towards that kind of thing!

[LaylaTsarra]

This is the real problem. You can't "just grab a group of 8". I wasted hours upon hours trying to do this before I gave up.

And you need a group of 8 for what? There are plenty of anuby, Dragon and Forge groups in Pagos although they will fill up but they open up often enough and they are for mostly 34/35 level. There are many NM prep groups you can join given so many prefer just to AFK. Were you trying to do logs? If so, logs are best done and more easily done in Anemos. Not sure what type of group you were trying to join.

Edit: If you're talking Anemos I've rarely had problems trying to get a train group.

[Hestzhyen]

Assumptions

I went as WHM, figuring that I could help raise and heal folks since I wouldn't be doing much on a DPS front. Made sure to tag the boss with Aero (when I could see it), and did my best to avoid dying while raising people. That was significantly hindered by the tech limitations of boss and party members popping in and out of visibility (which has since been fixed, too little too late) and idiots dragging random mobs to where I was standing out of the way in the back (which can never be fixed). The sad thing is this chaos of dying to things I couldn't see and trying to raise people I was standing next to but couldn't target was the most efficient way of getting EXP and loot. I got to level 5 in about an hour's time, after which I called it quits. I can see why they wanted to fix the train in Pagos but doubling down on the NO FUN ALLOWED aspects was what finally killed any goodwill I had to the whole concept. SE has no idea what "fun" is for a lot of people if they think Eureka is good content.

[Alucard135]

...

Then you were helping in the train. So you weren't getting rewarded for nothing as you said before. As for people dragging mobs, that's not really a fault of Eureka itself. It's the players' fault. And furthermore, it's the fault of your party members for getting aggro from these random mobs in the first place (I'm assuming you're already in a party, since that's the most efficient way to get gold in NM fates). Since you're a healer, you'll get their aggro if you healed them and most likely get the highest enmity and end up dead. As a DPS myself, I never use AOEs during an NM fight. So I myself never had to deal with people dragging mobs nor did I burden my healers with that when they heal me. But again, that's the issue with the players, not the content (just like early pullers in hunts and the chaos you still see at Odin fate). When it comes to rendering mobs, nothing really can be done about it due to the game engine itself.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Eureka is a perfect content and has to be added to 5.0. It has issues that if fixed would make it even a lot more better. Such as it being an instanced content, no level syncing, no quests in the zone, and Pagos (The logos system was a great addition). But when we talk about RNG and grind being the issue of why Eureka is bad. Then ARR and HW relic should be considered the worst content, since they were riddled with those in their steps. The RNG in Anemos is what you get from lockboxes, the amount of protean crystals you get from Anemos crystals (3-5) and NM spawn rate (which isn't really bad). As for Pyros it's almost the same RNG but with the extra substat one. Which isn't really bad considering you can easily get an OP weapon that can surpass the raid 405 if these substats can carry on in Hydatos with not really much of an effort (Currently my RDM weapon has 575 crit and 65 DH, which I'm leaving at that till Hydatos). As for the grind part, getting through Anemos in 3 days (I'm not a hardcore grinder. People were already reaching level 18 in day one) and through Pyros in 5 days (first day, I was busy doing my weekly alphascape raids) is hardly a grind compared to some steps in previous relic quests (I'm not talking about Pagos. The grind and RNG were horrible).

I can see why they wanted to fix the train in Pagos but doubling down on the NO FUN ALLOWED aspects ...

The dev team did mention that Pagos was already completed before they can even include any feedback from Anemos. So it wasn't made with that intention according to them lol.