Overall Thoughts: The state of the game

[NefarioCall]

To begin, the positive, i do feel this is a great game.
It is worthy of the brand, and worthy of the 87-90+% Gamerankings score.
It is easy enough to argue that it is the best current gen MMO.

Subscription fees aside, taken as an offline game, where the player picks ONE job role and sticks with it while proceeding through the main story from start to finish and trying out the various side dungeons and fights along the way, it is a tremendously awesome experience ... once through. Maybe, like any game you love, you might do things more than once, particularly your favorite fights, because they were really good.

But... this game was built on the armory system. ... and that's where i feel things have continued to go a bit sideways.

What if you want to level up multiple roles?
Embrace the variety of play styles available?

Then you need to grind those jobs up the level curve,
and ultimately the tome curve.

For a game that wanted to be different from FFXI,
i find it somewhat ironic that the design all but requires party play to grind.

Yeah, there's Fates... which generally amount to either not being able to complete them solo because a random group was recently or is in the area upping the difficulty, or you stand around spamming the attack key for 5-10 minutes while watching Netflix till it's done.

There's hunts ... but those are on daily lockout, so after you get your part of one level that day on them, you can't really advance any farther.

Speaking of lockouts. How does one gear up multiple jobs to the level of tackling end game content when the weekly lockout all but prohibits a player from being able to do so with one or maybe two stat types in any reasonable amount of time? Weekly lockouts continue to be one of the dumbest design choices in this armory system based game

Then there's....
The brain dead face roll soul sucking speed run lobby server endless FFXIII-esque duty dungeon parade of hell.
Again... and again ... and again ... and again ... and again ... and again ... forever.

Half the time i don't even know if i could remember what dungeon i was in 10 minutes after i finished it because i was so brain sludged into speedrun corridor culture that i never had a chance to remember to enjoy it. Maybe i did once, the first time ... but it is now the 100th, or the 1,000th time...

Even this could be helped if all the games dungeons were viable ways to level up but they aren't...

What is the devs obsession with pile-driving everyone into only the most recent patch's dungeons to grind on with a daily one off of the roulette when there's literally dozens of great contents going to dust?

Seriously... At this point all the dungeons from the level 15 Sastasha to the newest Level 70 "Extreme" roulette's are pretty much on par for time and difficulty, with only very minor degrees of difference. What's the point of scaling the exp curve so sharply and making even the Heavensward 60 dungeon series all but left for the masochists to try and level up on? Why not just make exp equal to a percentage of the players current level (like with PvP and PotD) and let people play whatever they're feeling in the moment to progress?

And finally,
How about creating some more alternative methods to the grind than the lobby server of the zombie apocalypse?
Would it be so terrible to increase the exp earned from world monsters so that people could do open world mob camping parties if they wanted to? It would take so little actual effort to create and add a whole new dimension. No, not fates. Actual exp grind mob camps.

Or any of any number of other things?

I hope that the 4.1 series proves to be a first step towards a better future, but i remain hesitant to get my hopes up...

Will Eureka finally give this game the true open world endgame zone it has never had?
Something where players can grind tomes/gear in an open world - open ended setting?
Will it become the hub for real variety that finally proves the playerbase is keen on that sort of thing? I had to laugh when Yoshi said, 'Our stats show the players aren't interested in that sort of thing...' FACEPALM. There's no stats for it because the content doesn't exist. If you build it, they will come. I hope they take a chance with Eureka ... even open the door just a little bit, and see players utilise the content when they never did before because it's now there. Before PotD i ran a lot of dungeons. Now i hardly ever do, because there's finally a way around it. Give me more and i'll take it.

Will the NPC AI be halfway decent or will they just stand around and get killed by the most basic of mechanics?

I really... really... hope the devs have put enough effort into this to make it something great. I really do. Of course we won't be using them in new content, but heck, if they can just be competent enough somehow, to be passable at the face roll corridor dungeons up through Heavensward. If so, then suddenly we all have a way to avoid the lobby plague and level up our jobs at least into the low 60's at our own pace, actually being able to take the time to enjoy the environments and genuinely experience the place, and contract the lobby plague only when we're feeling plaguish.

That would be wonderful.