What's your first impression of Eureka?

[Darrcyphfeid]

I've got about 8,000 hours logged into FFXI (actual playtime, not idle time) across two characters. I did a bit over an hour of Eureka tonight with some friends, many of whom also played XI for a good stretch of time.

I loathe it. I can, and did, run around and uncover the map after we finished - got one-shot a couple times which was amusing the first time but then the novelty of it wore off and the reality of that set in - but that's about the only fun or amusement I had. There are tons of flaws present, not the least of which being that the game just wasn't designed with this level of sustained combat in mind, but generally it actually doesn't really remind me of XI very much (despite countless efforts on Square's part) and it doesn't mesh well at all with what XIV is. There are a number of things present in Eureka, and by extension XI, that I've always felt should have been present in XIV's overworld - more aggro types, day and night cycles for monsters, overworld objectives that make the world feel alive (running around Eureka seeing people fighting all over the place was nice) - and if this "experiment" leads to those things being implemented, then that's great.

But Eureka itself isn't good. I think a lot of it can be attributed to needing to do the "Eureka" content (read: level up. A lot.) first before you can probably realistically make a good dent in your first Relic, but that both assumes that people will want to do multiple Relics (almost none will) and doesn't do the Relic itself any favors effectively having a grind locked behind another unnecessary grind. And we're assuming that when they expand Eureka they'll also be increasing the level cap, right? So it may not even be a one-time thing.

If Eureka was what ARR itself was at launch, with everything being slowed down a ton and there being all manner of support systems in place (like XI itself had), I'd be okay with it. But I can't really justify, nor do I feel any compulsion to, effectively play a shallow XI-inspired minigame within the content cycle that XIV has. The fact that the gear is so far behind the curve from Day 1 just makes it worse.

[Jrystal]

How the cycle of unpopular game features goes: Has a terrible new idea, releases terrible new thing, forces players to use terrible new feature, defends terrible new feature based entirely on its newness and finally blame players for not adjusting to terrible new thing. Nintendo has this down to an art. So far we're on step three and soon we'll see if Yoshi has a fragile ego or not.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

If it's some consolation, the JP playerbase seems equally upset. Someone offered quotes from third party forums.

"Looks like I can just press my mouse a few times for this."

"Might as well stop my sub and go back to playing Rust."

"14's battles are really boring without mechanics, this isn't even fun even partied up."

"Maybe they should have let us use Ungarmax for this..."

That last one... is Savage level burn.

[Jxnibbles]

I spent a few more hours grinding and I am really happy I got the Dino mount. As for the relic grind eh don't know, I think I will pass at least that way I can spend my time enjoying other games.

Eureka has nothing else I care for.

[dalta]

this feels like all the mistakes that the dev's have made over the years all rolled into one big MEA of a patch

[Kaonis]

"Maybe they should have let us use Ungarmax for this..."

They really should. Having did a little grinding today to reaffirm that yup, I hate mindless grinding, I died a little inside when we got LB and it barely dented the mob we were fighting after how long it takes to build.

[Alestorm]

I and a friend tried it out. EXP gain is painfully bad in a group and everything is slow to die, yet hits like a truck. We looked at the rewards and decided beyond the Materia slots and making the sets (finally) be dyable.... not really worth it. Like they never adjusted the item levels to account for the delays; either bash my face into the wall and grind out 350, or clear Sigma weekly for the same item level gear. (which I nearly have a completed set on WHM)

Please fix this place, it has potential and making it a horrid grind like this makes me want to give up already. I don't want to; but it's being considered.

[Galaktica]

I've been trying to think about how to put it into words. Like...I don't get it. I mean, i understand what we're supposed to be doing, but I don't understand why it had to be the way it is and how someone signed off on this. And I sure as hell don't get how it has been so vehemently defended.

All you do is sit there...and kill stuff, praying for a NM or that someone spawns a FATE. Okay...so what? The gameplay loop is Musou-level barebones except Musou games have at least in some iterations mastered the art of making you feel like a 1-person wrecking crew. And the reward structure seems astronomically absurd if you don't care about mounts and minions. And yet, you're penalized heavily for failure at later levels? But this is supposed to be casual content? Am I missing something? And I get that rewards increase the higher your level, but getting to a high level seems like a giant. monotonous pain in the ass to begin with.

The grind in and of itself doesn't bother me. I did like 7 anima before any nerfs. Don't come at me with that "you just want instant gratification reeeee" and/or "you didn't expect a grind?!?!?!111?!?!1111" shit. It's just...like...they couldn't even think of a clever way to disguise the grind? For something that's been talked about and presumably worked on for over a year, it just feels so uninspired. I don't care that SE can change it and add to it later. As it is right now, it's a barebones version of what could be a great idea.

Also, quick aside, after almost an entire f***ing year, this is how we finally get to dye our job sets? Really? Well f*** me I guess. I had a bunch of AF3 job sets I wanted to dye, but that dream is dead. I couldn't care less about the whole ilvl debate tbh. WHo on the design team has a raging boner for making us jump through hoops for what amounts to a basic feature in almost any other noteworthy MMO.

[Bellsong]

I hope they delete this and give us the old relic system back lol, I've never been so immediately let down by a piece of content SE has put out. The diadem was better than this. Heck they could have copied and pasted everything about the diadem but changed the rewards to protein crystals and it would be infinitely better than what we got.

[PotatoTree]

It made me so sleepy that I was blanking in and out of consciousness.