This game is on a terrible state right now.

[Incinerator2]

I suppose it would add a degree of self-satisfaction to learning it, but when you got to a certain point the end result was guaranteed regardless of how much you necked your stats, which does also remove some of that thrill with doing experts in the first place. I would be curious to see how it would hold in actuality, but I still think it would largely trivialize the recipes. Trained Hand under innovation and ingenuity back when that was a thing was absolutely busted.

Sure, but they could easily just double the quality requirement or some such to make it not trivialized, and further add optimization room by incentivizing low step crafts so that most players won't ever reach a place of perfection. That self-satisfaction is the most important part of gameplay. It's the same satisfaction when people master Dark Souls and defeat endgame bosses with ease, when just a month ago they were struggling with the a regular mob. Obviously everything will be eventually solved, but right now the time to solution is literally negative hours as rotations are figured out before patch is even live.

However, I would say there’s a good number of people in the community that whilst they may want something engaging don’t necessarily want the territory that comes with it[/B]

I unironically think the drama that ensues is good for the game. It's content and it makes the game memorable. And interpersonal conflict is also just part of life. It's not something to shy away from. I like Eureka in part because of the drama. It's also super low-stakes drama, so really it's just like watching reality TV. FF14 now is way too sanitized and dull. I don't mean drama like transphobia or stalking someone though. I just meant the drama of AFK leechers vs. spawners with people quarreling in chat. The game really felt rowdy and alive back then.

I know most players today wouldn't want that though, but I also enjoyed looking at the meltdown that occurs when people wipe again and again to Ozma. It was memorable. And these negative events make actual clears and smooth runs feel even sweeter.

I suppose what I’m trying to convey here is… The question shouldn’t be “Why haven’t we got xyz this expansion” (e.g., Deep Dungeons), because this is precisely why we got Orthos.[/B]

Sure. And now people are asking for exploratory content too. So as a community we need to be clear that we want exploratory content that is better and contains new gameplay, not just a pure copypaste.

IMO, the game's biggest downfall (and SE's, by extension), is that they leave content to die. I think Resistance relics wouldn't be so badly designed had they planned to come back to the content; they don't, so here we (and Eureka relics too) are, never to return. Relics honestly just seemed design to fail, no matter what you do, because essentially the grind is gated behind content you need outside help for (Bozja, SB), the grind is tedious to point of nauseous (ARR, HW) or we're here at EW, where the steps so far is just.. play the game and you get the relic, so the sense of reward isn't really there. I actually think I would like SB/Bozja relics, but if and ONLY if, SE would actually give it the TLC it deserves.

I think they have potential, but I don't think SE can utilize the potential or have the desire to, so here we are. It's really sad because I think SE CAN make a good relic grind, but have just kinda thrown in the towel at this point.. at least IMO.

We didn't even get a proper ending to the Bozjan storyline smh SE

It feels like it all amounts to synthetic difficulty in order to counterbalance the inability to be mechanically creative. Gods, even Eureka orthos everything is literally 1hit KO. Stop this. It's dumb. I'm tired of this inanity. Sometimes simpler is better, SE.

Yeah, I stopped raiding after DSR for this reason. It's especially bad for healers. I remember in UCOB when you can completely screw up a trio but salvage the party by thinking calmly and triaging the party, ensuring the tank survives the tankbuster, making sure DPS are up in time for the mechanic, conserving mana etc. so that you live to see the next trio, even if you don't necessarily clear the enrage. I haven't played healer in a while but this just doesn't seem to be a thing at all in EW now.

[Kaurhz]

Snip

I'm just going to quick reply to these.

It was always negative hours, really. People had fairly optimized macros before the patch was live, ever since we have had macro crafts become so widely adopted, the only outlier to this was the Ala Mhigan gear that people felt so terrified by that they... Utterly cheesed with Maker's Mark anyway (because a lot happens when you give people 67~ steps of spamming 1 button). Largely in part with HW, my recollection was there was a base macro/rotation which you followed that consumed x CP, and the only differential was that every multiple of 18 CP over this minimum was used on a precise touch where possible, or Basic Touches if needed. E.g., there wasn't really a great level of deviation in MaMa in the overall rotation, just the overage CP you had to allow for swapping Hasty Touch with guaranteed Basic/Precise under Steady Hand II. The same reigned true for those that championed Muscle Memory with Rapid Synthesis. The underlying rotation was to still use Rapid Synthesis to be within 1 step of finishing the craft and then working on quality.

Sure, though again, if you take into account technical limitations and creative limitations/blocking, then it is very easy to bump into the situation for copy and pasting. e.g., In the case of Deep Dungeons, there are only so many things you can do with square rooms before you need to transform the content entirely to actually innovate on it About the only thing I could see worthwhile adding/expanding would be to incorporate something such as logos or lost actions (Which granted, I would say is a missed opportunity). But No piece of content is exempt from this e.g., exploratory content - What would be their next stepping stone? Adding gathering directly to the zones? Sightseeing (that nobody does anyway)?

Not that I disagree with you in sentiment, because I don't. I just think with exploratory they're heading pretty close to very largely being copy and paste. My perception behind this is - You've made it fairly clear for the most part that Bozja/Eureka should just be a vehicle for creative large-scale raids and unique job playstyles which with all due respect that they're tied to this piece of content makes it exceedingly difficult for the content to live outside of the expansion it was released in. - To put it bluntly, this content is utterly hard carried by Discord groups at this point to actually function and have some survivability. I'll be blunt once again, it shouldn't need to be a vehicle to this as it should exist natively within the game.

Was BA fun? Sure, did it make going through Eureka nice? Sure, but would it have been better if it wasn't tied to exploratory completion? Absolutely.