Please no more Eureka!

[Reynhart]

A year ago, I suggested something, like what you've stated above and the majority of people on these forums disagreed with me saying, that if a person has only 2-4 hours daily, that's below 'casual and that an MMO is not for that person.

I don't have the same opinion as them, and, maybe some MMO are not for them, but regarding FFXIV, 2-4 hours daily give you more than enough time to burn through every PvE content, even if you're doing Savage.

So you're saying that without the relic, Eureka, with it's multiple zones, new battle systems, varied rewards, would not be able to keep people engaged for longer than a month?

Frankly, I doubt so, and, in fact, I've never stated otherwise...the thing is, without gear, any other content would also die in less than a month, except maybe PvP with its season system.

It's SE's problem when content that took 17-18 months(iirc) to develop

Not, it's not. Yoshi-P is completely free of putting ressources where he wants. Doing Eureka was important for him (He was thinking about it as early as 2.0), so he gave it the ressources. Besides, 18 months of timespan is not 18 months of full time development, and it didn't prevent any patch from being spot on on its schedule. And the participation numbers (However accurate they may be) give him satsifaction. I'm pretty sure in your work too, situations happen where you spend far more time than you should be on something unimportant, just because you want it a specific way. There could be a problem if everything else was heavily butchered as a counterpart, but losing 3 dungeons is really not that big of a deal, since people will simply do their roulette after the first time, and don't really care in what specific dungeon they will end.

Let's dive into supposition, now, shall we. Imagine that in ShadowBringers, they create a whole new content aside the Eureka-type one. This one would be cattered to casual players (according to your definiion). What reward structure do you think this new content should use, that wouldn't make any existing type of rewards irrelevant ?

[Nariel]

Diadem have a pegasus mount as a reward. Still dead.

[Laphael]

According to Reynhart and his signature,Eureka was not designed to be casual content

Yes, it wasn´t planned for everyone, but you could do it causally if you wanted.
Just do it from time to time, some HW relic steps needed weeks of grinding tomes.

So basically Eureka falls into both parts. You can do it casually, ppl just don´t want to, or you can of course put quite some time into it, making it not so casual from a time investment standpoint. But getting more ARR or HW relics was even more time consuming, so no casual content either?

What content do you want as casual content? Make an example.
We already get much casual content every patch:
New dungeon, new casual raid/Primals (8/24 man), new items for canals of uznair, new things to gather or craft, new content for gold saucer, HoH and so on.
We also get hardcore (difficult) content:
New ex primals, new Raids, new ultimate, Baldesion Arsenal for example.

What exactly do you want as "casual" content.

[xbahax92]

Its not Eureka that failed, its the Dev team being uncreative regarding their content releases or lets say at least, very careful?
When Anemos was released, people actually started Fate training. Something that the Dev team didnt even consider, they absolutely didnt want us to do that. But yet, people found out it is the fastest and enduring way to keep this content somewhat engaging. (And we can say NMs are nothing different than S hunts that would pop when triggered)
Pagos added the bunnies later on, a Fate that included treasure hunting and actually gave rare rewards based on rng. ( also not to forget light farming + gold box farming, also if im not mistaken, the challenge log got added which are basically weekly quests)
On pyros we got new skills that would either boost up killing mobs and give some collectathon (logograms).
And at last, hydatos includes a open dungeon you can clear with all those features in one map.
Imo, eureka would of been a success if they implemented all features at the same time and lifted some requirements over time.
Eureka isnt a fail in my opinion. Its just the way we get crumbles every patch. And also to say anemos and pagos are definetly a "beta" to check how players are reacting. We got 4 additional maps to explore next to the stormblood ones, and it did feel like a real adventure seeing people running everywhere. And still is.

[Leanna]

What exactly do you want as "casual" content.

Content that isn't obsolete one month after it is implemented?

Because, once a static is done with progression, you literally play two (2) hours a week just to get the weekly drops. The "hardcore" content only gives two (2) hours per week. And don't say this isn't true because as I raider I know it definitely is.

There is no value on normal mode trials, you clear them once and forget they exist, and the extreme version varies, I cleared the MHW extreme one a few times in two days and forgot it exists because I don't care about the mount. What else? normal extremes? Most people doesn't care about the mounts and once they get their weapon they forget the extreme trials are a thing, which takes 10 kills at worst.

HoH has no purpose outside of leveling once you clear floor 100 five times, in 5.0 HoH will be more active than Eureka ever was at any point.

Canals & Company, either not everyone has enough people to do maps or can't be bothered to gamble, because that's what maps are, gambling at its finest.

XIV has a huge problem and it is that the content isn't designed to keep people engaged for longer than a month (at best), there is literally nothing to do once you have done weekly caps (which takes roughly three hours), there is absolutely nothing, Eureka was supposed to fill that gap but the design is so bad, any F2P MMO can offer better content, making play XIV pointless.

What people should demand from SE is a change in the design of the content, because right now there is no point in play the game once you are done with each patch, can perfectly unsub and resub on patch day (if the patch has enough content) or wait for weekly caps to be lifted, because then you can invest all the time you want.

There is people who wants to play more than two hours a week, but there is literally no content to do, unless you want to deal with heavy gambling or content that any F2P MMO has done better.

[Reynhart]

XIV has a huge problem and it is that the content isn't designed to keep people engaged for longer than a month (at best), there is literally nothing to do once you have done weekly caps (which takes roughly three hours), there is absolutely nothing, Eureka was supposed to fill that gap but the design is so bad, any F2P MMO can offer better content, making play XIV pointless.

I really don't like using this sentence but "this may not be the right MMO for you". This is not meant as an attack though, but simply a loose quote on how Yoshi-P stated that this is how he sees the game. He purposefuly avoid any content that requires you to stay engaged for too long, because he doesn't want people being forced to log in at the risk of falling too far behind.

I personally don't like this view, and would love to have really long term goals, but, whatever population each future content catters to, I'm afraid that's the thing we'll most likely never have, probably because 1) "casuals" covers the biggest part of the playerbsase and 2) "non-casuals" will resub/stay subbed to do casual content but the opposite is not true.

[Bright-Flower]

I don't neccisarily mind more Eureka, but if they do something like this again I hope they tweak things a bit.

For starters, make it more rewarding to stay engaged with the content and discourage the practice of idling until a NM spawns. For starters, make NMs something that happens occasionally rather than the ONLY reliable source of crystals. As crystals are the main resource used in upgrades, having them tied so intrinsically with NMs is a mistake. Allow for chain groups to rake in a steady supply of crystals between NMs.

Second, please stop with the specific NMs being required to be killed at least twice (three times fir Pagos IIRC) to complete a relic. I can kind of understand requiring one gold kill but what is gained by making people get two other than an arbitrary time sink? Or if you're going to stick to this, make NMs more interesting to spawn instead of just 'kill a bunch of these mobs' or 'kill these mobs at night/during X weather event.'

Third, please have more story. The story of Eureka wasn't bad but they really only had one or two actual zones worth of story spread thin across four. Nothing interesting really happens in the first two at all, and things only start kickig into gear at the end of Pyros, and then it all slows down until the end of Hydatos when you finally get inside the building.

[Alleo]

You got that content, its called Eureka, you just don´t like it, thats not SE´s problem!

Thats the problem...if we trust Yoshidas words from Reynharts quote then no Eureka was not casual content, it was always meant to be a niche that only tickles the interest of specific players. Which is exactly what happens.
But if we do see Eureka as casual content (and honestly the size and amount of stuff done for it should hint towards it being meant as casual content, especially since the once casual relic is in it too and one of the ARR story question is solved there too) then its an utter failure in that part because even on the JP side only around 19% of the players reached Pyros level cap. So most of the players never went that far and I kinda doubt that the numbers will rise by a huge amount in the future.

Edit: And lets not forget that these 19% was only reached at the JP side. While the bigger playbase (EU and NA combined) did not even reach that together..

All of these numbers for content that was not only advertised quite some time before it was released, got even delayed further which made us start the relic quest later than normal, had the Krile story line in it and what happened to the one isle that vanished in ARR, had the relic quest line and relic gear in it, a couple of mounts, a big amount of minions, TT cards locked behind its progression, music scrolls, emotes, and other glamour..and yet especially on the NA side not even 10% have reached level cap in Pyros.

[Laphael]

Content that isn't obsolete one month after it is implemented?

Because, once a static is done with progression, you literally play two (2) hours a week just to get the weekly drops. The "hardcore" content only gives two (2) hours per week. And don't say this isn't true because as I raider I know it definitely is.

There is no value on normal mode trials, you clear them once and forget they exist, and the extreme version varies, I cleared the MHW extreme one a few times in two days and forgot it exists because I don't care about the mount. What else? normal extremes? Most people doesn't care about the mounts and once they get their weapon they forget the extreme trials are a thing, which takes 10 kills at worst.

HoH has no purpose outside of leveling once you clear floor 100 five times, in 5.0 HoH will be more active than Eureka ever was at any point.

Canals & Company, either not everyone has enough people to do maps or can't be bothered to gamble, because that's what maps are, gambling at its finest.

XIV has a huge problem and it is that the content isn't designed to keep people engaged for longer than a month (at best), there is literally nothing to do once you have done weekly caps (which takes roughly three hours), there is absolutely nothing, Eureka was supposed to fill that gap but the design is so bad, any F2P MMO can offer better content, making play XIV pointless.

What people should demand from SE is a change in the design of the content, because right now there is no point in play the game once you are done with each patch, can perfectly unsub and resub on patch day (if the patch has enough content) or wait for weekly caps to be lifted, because then you can invest all the time you want.

There is people who wants to play more than two hours a week, but there is literally no content to do, unless you want to deal with heavy gambling or content that any F2P MMO has done better.

So, you aren´t doing anything else than your weekly raid? Maybe you should get another game to play in between, or stop ff14 entirely.

[Laphael]

Thats the problem...if we trust Yoshidas words from Reynharts quote then no Eureka was not casual content, it was always meant to be a niche that only tickles the interest of specific players. Which is exactly what happens.
But if we do see Eureka as casual content (and honestly the size and amount of stuff done for it should hint towards it being meant as casual content, especially since the once casual relic is in it too and one of the ARR story question is solved there too) then its an utter failure in that part because even on the JP side only around 19% of the players reached Pyros level cap. So most of the players never went that far and I kinda doubt that the numbers will rise by a huge amount in the future.

Please read the quote again and explain to me, why niche can´t be casual?
The quote states that the content is not for everyone. Not that it is for hardcore players only!