Eureka wasn't so bad, but endgame in ffxiv is lacking without eureka

[Vahlnir]

I liked the concept of Eureka, but I hated doing Anemos, it felt like a glorified Fate grind, but as I understand it, it got better in Pyros and Hydratos. So if they learn from that, then great. I like the idea of levequests of some kind in there, well, more you spawn NM's as part of a group that your group has claim of. Make those NM's interesting and I think this would be a good improvement on any Fate grinding. So we might hunt certain mobs as part of groups.

To be fair, the entirety of Eureka was a Fate grind except for BA. That was one of many reasons I didn't like Eureka, but I won't get into the rest here. BA was a decent piece of content from what I've heard but it lacked good accessibility imo. Nothing wrong with it being a challenge. But I feel that BA should have been the "free" reward for toughing out the relic grind from start to finish and should have been made queueable like a dungeon or 24 man raid, with access obviously being locked behind a completed relic and maybe the NM that spawns it. So it would have remained a bit of a time sink but it would have been like "BA's up?! Alright everybody let's go!" instead of "Oh boy, better beat everyone else to the portals so I can get in..." The punishment for failure could have been kept as well, since leveling back up doesn't take all that long. Also, the most ideal way to coordinate one of these runs was through Discord which could take potentially hours to get everyone in the same instance at the same and right time and maybe get everyone that needs to be inside. That itself is bad design imo.

[Saefinn]

Snip.

Ah, I never persisted as far. I had heard multiple times Pyros and Hydratos are where it gets better and that BA is great, but as a friend who did it all to get the Ozma mount said to me "but it's not worth it". I think they found BA to be great, but not so great that it's worth suffering through all the grinding to get there.

I can see what SE were trying to do with Eureka, bring back the old MMO vibe of endgame content, like in FFXI. I was excited originally, but I think the biggest issue was that it was a big FATE train. I don't think it was intended to be, but the game facilitated it and made it the best method of getting stuff. But the content being a glorified FATE train doesn't really capture that feel. Because it feels like ARR levelling, Atma and I think some of the later relics too where there's a big FATE grinding session. So I'm already burned out on doing them.

I think the essence could have been captured if you have groups of people going after forced spawn NM's and that group claiming them. This is where a modification of the leve system would perhaps work better. You could put in fight mechanics and several fights that can be done across the map to spread people out and have the difficulty tailored to a party. If they wanted to go a step further, require the killing of certain mobs to trigger the ability to spawn certain NM's. Or give certain requires that must be achieved by the party. I think this would be a good start. It'd give something to break up fights and feel like you're working towards the fight. I think there needs to be more of a reward from fighting normal mobs too, to give room for solo levelling without it being a huge grind fest.

If they also really wanted, they could also take a leaf out of GW2's book. I think out of the modern MMO's, GW2 handle open world battles best. I don't remember any of the names of things in GW2, but I remember have a tonne of fun taking down a massive dragon whose fight had stages where he was airbourne and people would work together with ranged attacks (I think there might have been turrets? Memory hazy) to take them out of the sky. And ground mechanics, but there were defensive mechanics you had to be careful of on the ground. But it felt like things worked in phases, there was variety in each phase and you felt like you were in a big epic battle as a result. You see a lot of deaths. And I'd say SE has done content I think shows potential for that kind of direction, like Odin and Coeurlregina. But why not go grander for something like Eureka? Where it is meant to be more perilous than normal open world content.

I guess in terms of the FFXIV world, seeing more in the way of EX or Savage style fights in the open world for a Eureka like content for world bosses could be fun. At least instead of stuff you can zerg. Though if I understand correctly that's what BA brought? Something like this would interest me more than Savage.

[Vahlnir]

Ah, I never persisted as far. I had heard multiple times Pyros and Hydratos are where it gets better and that BA is great, but as a friend who did it all to get the Ozma mount said to me "but it's not worth it". I think they found BA to be great, but not so great that it's worth suffering through all the grinding to get there.

I can see what SE were trying to do with Eureka, bring back the old MMO vibe of endgame content, like in FFXI. I was excited originally, but I think the biggest issue was that it was a big FATE train. I don't think it was intended to be, but the game facilitated it and made it the best method of getting stuff. But the content being a glorified FATE train doesn't really capture that feel. Because it feels like ARR levelling, Atma and I think some of the later relics too where there's a big FATE grinding session. So I'm already burned out on doing them.

The Fate train was actually unintended, and the devs wanted people to level the "old school" way. Oddly enough though, as bad as more Fates was, it is what made the grind more tolerable. They tried to remove the train entirely with Pagos but were met with severe backlash (and I'm guessing way less players in Pagos than in Anemos) so they put it back in. Pagos also saw nerfs pretty frequently, though it was still awful regardless. Pyros was probably the best designed area of the whole thing. Leveling wasn't bad, the grind was tolerable and the map wasn't too horrible to navigate. I did NOT like the light grind for random stats, however. Hydatos? I didn't spend much time there beyond finishing my relic, grabbing the glowing Fending set and leaving...never to return. I was so done with Eureka and wanted it all to be over by that point. BA wasn't worth the effort of getting into, though it wasn't as though I didn't want to see it. I really did. But...it wasn't worth the time, really. Not after everything I had to put up with to even gain access to it.