Eureka - from a FFXI point of view

[Staple]

I think when people say they want content XI style they mean structured stuff not an exp party.

For example Sky, Sea and Dynamis Were all massive grindfests but the key point is they had structure. Something that\\'s missing from all of XIVs endgame. XIV is pretty much enter an instance arena kill a boss and done or go back and enter again if you didn\\'t get a drop... no structure to any of it as it\\'s all pretty much just single
...

That just goes against the ethos of FFXIV though. The purpose of the game is to be semi casual with the acknowledgement that most people are adults with responsibilities and don\\'t have the time to grind and farm endlessly to unlock x, y and z.

If that was released, there would be endless uproar of how the content wasn\\'t accessible and was too grindy. It\\'s a delicate balance that no company will meet. As they say, you can\\'t please everybody all the time.

[Dzian]

That just goes against the ethos of FFXIV though. The purpose of the game is to be semi casual with the acknowledgement that most people are adults with responsibilities and don\\'t have the time to grind and farm endlessly to unlock x, y and z.

If that was released, there would be endless uproar of how the content wasn\\'t accessible and was too grindy. It\\'s a delicate balance that no company will meet. As they say, you can\\'t please everybody all the time.

Thing is a lot of the grinds didn't take that much time.
Einherjar for example was a strict 30 minute limit once maybe twice a week depending on your is.
Most sections of limbus could be done in maybe 45 mins if you went after everything in the zone. So again was 45 mins once or twice a week.
Contrary to popular belief They didn't need 6 or 8 hours of your day every day to do.

Even sky. You could go up for an hour grind away get a key and be done for the day. Come back tomorrow or even next week to get the second key for the boss. And pop the boss on the wekend if you wanted..

It's kinda like potd 101-200. Loads people complained that it was too innaccesible and impossible when the reality was you could easily do it.
even if you spent 40 minutes one day a week clearing 10 floors a time..

You can't really get more casual than that

[Ryaz]

The problem with it feeling like FFXI is that it has all the grind of FFXI, but none of the part interactivity. There are no skillchains followed by a well placed magic burst to keep things fun. It's just spamming a few buttons over over until mobs are dead (no communication required!) and risking carpal tunnel from it.

[Niqote]

and risking carpal tunnel from it.

I changed my controller from hold to trigger simply so i didn't have to keep holding L2 for an hour straight.
I'm a bit slower, but my hands are glad for it.

[Keramory]

I’m an ffxi fanboy till death. If they legit remade ffxi vanilla in upgraded graphics I’d give this game the finger and go there in a heartbeat. I joined Ffxiv 1.0 in the hopes it would be. When I joined the island, I saw people jokingly shout “lfg” parties and got my hopes up... just to have it come crashing down in the first hour.

This hot garbage of an update is NOT ffxi, and it’s a bit insulting if the development team thought this would appeal to us. The grinding is slightly similar but you couldn’t be this mindless and effortlessly spam murder so many mobs at a time, continuously, without end in ffxi.

Ffxi players enjoyed the game for its combat system, vast world, and the party system. This set up slightly, very slightly mimics ffxi camping, but that’s where the similarity ends completely.

[Rhymenoserous]

Here's a crazy idea, lets stop listening people that want to turn back the clock on MMO design. XIV and XI are drastically different games, one of them is a themepark and one of them is an early style MMO. They don't mesh. Trying to make them mesh is just going to frustrate the hell out of the people who play this because of the themepark. If some game dev ran up to me and said "HEY I HAVE A WILD IDEA, LETS TURN WOW INTO EVERQUEST" I'd treat them like they had just run up to me and attempted to communicate in a series of hoots clicks and whistles.

[Fynlar]

Interesting because other FFXI player seem to hate it as much as every other XIV player. Soooo.

I'm a old school FFXI player, and I'm fine with it. I actually like the open world combat mechanic.

But the progress is way too slow in here to be justifiable in a game like this where everything becomes outdated so quickly, and it's going to discourage people fast.

The ironic thing is that nowadays, FFXI is nothing like this. The leveling there is now *ridiculously* faster from what most people who haven't played it in years might remember. Also, the exp loss on death in FFXI was never anything as severe as it gets here in Eureka, even back when the game was at its most unforgiving, so even that aspect is mismatched.

[Gun-Cat]

This is nothing like XI. Well in a sense it is like low level Dunes XI experience where most classes were about the same. The thing is that, since XI was a lot slower than XIV, classes were able to play a lot closer together and the party dynamic was actually interesting. Each class had their own little role. Be it THF doing aggro management, BRD being on support/pull/sleep duty, DNC setting up TP based healing, healer in general having to manage mana closely while healing and buffing/debuffing, RNG being on pull duty or every DPS and tank setting up Weapon Skill chains that the magic users could burt off. It was interesting. Even the travel to the camps, or finding the camps to grind was interesting.

XIV has nothing of this. The party dynamic is incredibly basic and the other players might just as well be your squad. To me it feels they took the most boring aspects of XI and rolles them into XIV...

[Darrcyphfeid]

XIV has nothing of this. The party dynamic is incredibly basic and the other players might just as well be your squad. To me it feels they took the most boring aspects of XI and rolles them into XIV...

Absolutely.

The way XIV is designed coupled with the "proper" mob camping style employed in games like XI also presented two problems for me tonight, one which was obvious and another that I didn't quite expect.

The first is that we didn't really have much time to communicate through text and quickly swapped to voice chat. You can't exactly kill monsters while typing at the same time like you can in XI. That's a problem if you're not in there exclusively with friends and yet would like some social interaction to help with the grind.

The second is that my hands actually started to cramp. I've played video games for a really long time and barring using tiny handheld devices like the DSlite for extended periods this hasn't happened to me before. Doing my (DRG) rotation constantly for 30-ish minutes, as it turns out, is rather stressing.

This is different, this is new (to FFXIV), and for that, it's totally worthwhile, in my opinion. And the mere concept of the relic is grinding, if you don't like this grind, you still have other weapon and armor options.

Nah man, this is a different beast all together. I have (just about) all of the Relics, Zodiac and Anima, finished in XIV. I also have Yoichinoyumi in XI, and was well over halfway finished with Kogarasumaru before I quit.

What Eureka does is more banal than any of that. It's not as involved or rhythmic as farming Dynamis, it's not as engaging as farming Salvage, and it's not as varied as what XIV's previous Relics has us doing.

[Reynhart]

What Eureka does is more banal than any of that. It's not as involved or rhythmic as farming Dynamis, it's not as engaging as farming Salvage, and it's not as varied as what XIV's previous Relics has us doing.

Frankly, it's not that different from the early magian trials in XI. As for Dynamis, considering any mobs could drop ancient currencies, the first stage of the relic wasn't that involving, since you didn't have to "win" the Dynamis. And it's far too early to judge how it will expand in subsequent .5 patches

Sorry but "tomestones, tomestones, tomestones, lights, tomestones, tomestones, lights" is hardly varied at all, when you think about it. That's why my favorite stage of Anima was when you had to gather all the mysterious items and the specialist crafter items...that all of people found horribly grindy.