My Long Overdue Eureka Topic

[Aster_E]

Hello dearies, and hello everyone else; Aster E here, only a smidge late on writing about a topic I’ve been meaning to discuss my opinions about. Yes, it’s high time I finally wrote down and shared my thoughts on the Forbidden Land of Eureka, in FFXIV. The short of it is that I don’t like this content, and that I see so much potential, perhaps more than I will be writing here, compared to what we actually got.

Pre-Beginning Impressions
The longer version of it starts back in the spring of 2017. Yoshi P was announcing Eureka with sparse details as a selling point for what we could expect. What we were told, as a community, was that it would be a fun diversion from the game as a whole, such as going to a theme park. At least, when I heard this, I thought it was odd since Final Fantasy XIV was already meant to be a theme park for the whole series up to this point. I was still intrigued, not counting the fact that the relic line would be superimposed in this form of content, and only this content; to say nothing of hints that we’ll see relic armor as well.

This was followed eventually by details that Eureka would be drawing heavily from Diadem. This was already concerning, and I know that some of us expressed as much, though it was drowned out by the hype for everything else in this expansion.

Next came details regarding how experience worked in Eureka. We were told that it was essentially going to have some similarities to FFXI, mainly losing exp. if we die after the first few levels, and how we can even de-level after a certain point. I have to tell you, this announcement alone brought back some PTSD from when I played XI for about seven months and loathed more than I loved about that game. It didn’t help in the slightest that I played XI during the lowest point in my life, but I digress.

Some memories are better are off forgotten, but never will be.

On a more interesting note, we were introduced to the idea of the Magia Board, and how we would only start out weak before gaining special items to make ourselves stronger against same level monsters. Wary as I already was of Square Enix talking about newly implemented systems, I was willing to give this a chance. Likewise, I was willing to give Eureka a chance once it would finally come.

Patch 4.15 came. We got nothing yet, aside from news of a delay. Previously, we had relics fairly quick in “A Realm Reborn,” and the Anima line of relic weapons picked up in 3.15. This wasn’t boding well, but we waited, and we waited.

And then Patch 4.25 came out in March 12, 2018.


(Post 1 of 5)

[Aster_E]

Aesthetic and Layout

I will need to break this write-up down into whole, semi-organized segments, and so I’ve decided to begin with what I like most . . . sort of. This is an interesting parallel with Final Fantasy XI, as the three things I liked most about that game were the zone designs (mostly), the music (Zilart maybe withstanding), and the lore. In Eureka, the one music theme for the whole area is kind of OK when you only hear that rendition of the main world’s FATE theme so often in one zone during the night or the day, unfortunately it’s heard night and day, in both Anemos and Pagos.

It was almost like the developers knew we would turn off the game music to listen to, or watch, other things anyways, so why bother?

More will be said later regarding the story, so that brings me to the layout of Anemos and Pagos. Anemos is a largely beautiful landscape in which we can roam freely, with the exception of a couple caves of certain death for the untrained, even at the highest possible level for the place. It felt like a place that you could explore on a whim. The area was open, full of various routes for traversal, and you could avoid groups of monsters that otherwise added a sense of danger – all things I was trained to deal with by FFXI some thirteen years ago. There were neat looking whirlwinds, too, that were only there for appearance’s sake, which I thought to actually be a bit disappointing. In the orchard area, you could spot little butterflies hovering around certain spots. Even the least appealing spots of Anemos were fine.

It was like a walk in the park, and I wanted to go fishing by that southeast waterfall

You could look out to sea if you wanted to. The space wasn’t so enclosed, nor barren. Indeed, it seemed as though the developers put time and effort into making this place. Kudos to all involved for that much. However, then we got to Pagos in Patch 4.36.

One geyser to the north, that I’ll bring up again later, one frozen tower of a mountain (instead of a castle) in the northern horizon looming over us, one tiny hot spring that promises to give you a case of the crabs, and one open spot in the southeast that just leads to another wall.

Let me make something clear here. It is entirely possible to make snowy regions interesting with some effort. When it came to Pagos, however, the vast majority of effort seemed to go towards hindering players and railroading us, apparently in retaliation for the unintended fun we had in Anemos. There is a canyon toward the middle of the northern half of the map where we are faced with not one, not two, but three choke points with sleeping dragons five levels above the region’s cap, and then three other sleeping dragons lying around (more on this later). This, as is, was deemed anti-fun; not just “not fun” but against the very idea of having fun at all. The other monsters, particularly in that canyon, peppered the area and made lower level players experience the Hell of Ice, basically.

As if traversing the canyon once or twice was not enough for the whole experience whilst leveling up, Notorious Monsters had a habit of popping back where players came from once they got to an opposing side of the canyon. Return has its cooldown, on one hand, and then there is the Geothermal aetheryte to the northwest.



It takes level 30, minimum, to attune to that crystal. Groups trying, for whatever insane reason, to grind the monsters directly, are likely to be in the Geothermal area of Pagos at around level 27, give or take a level. The Forge for Frosted Protean Crystals becomes necessary after level 25, and is by there. The decision to have this aetheryte a minimum level of 30 is less than intuitive, to say the least. A fair number of us have been saying this since Pagos came out, and no change has come in the few months since, despite a promise at one point for more changes to be made weekly.

Oh, and the zone exit that I linked earlier? That was originally tucked in the corner about ten yalms away. The problem, in my opinion, wasn’t that people could not find the exit, but rather they could not see how we managed to enter Pagos from Anemos, or from anywhere else on the island. As shown on the aforementioned screenshot, leaving the zone was as easy as opening the duty window and selecting to leave. But, at least the huge priority of moving the exit was met, while more necessary changes remained on the backburner, if anywhere at all.

Before Pagos came out, I was speculating if we would see an aqueduct running through the area, if we’d see a frozen pond or two with fish underneath (akin to the butterflies in Anemos), or if we’d get something neat like ice sculptures strewn across Pagos that depicted Sharlayans of some renown. We got none of the sort. Like with Anemos, unfortunately, the buildings are a couple of stone huts that we cannot enter, or see much happen in the ways of science or magical studies, let alone cataloging creatures and their habitats. I essentially see all of Pagos as boring, boxing us in with so much snow and rock, and lazy, aside from the efforts to actively impede us players from enjoying ourselves.

I know that Square Enix likes to sweep things under the rug and pretend they didn’t happen (a la., Verminion, Diadem version 2, etc.,) or refuse to make changes (eg., lack of flight in ARR zones, the current condition of Aurum Vale, et al.,), but Pagos is in dire need of help. We were promised quality side content with Eureka, and Pagos might be the defining area where Stormblood as an expansion fails horribly. Sprucing up the design, and giving the background music a new theme, could go a long way, if only the developers could or would go back to older things that need updates. It doesn’t stop here, though.

(2 of 5)

[Aster_E]

Combat, Development, and Story

Just so everyone reading this knows, I had to take some ibuprofen for my head so I can even begin to type this without feeling like my cranium’s going to explode. Square’s writing when it comes to story has always ranged from all sorts of bad to ridiculously good. The story to Eureka teeters between mediocre and pointless.

I’ll let you guess which of these I find to be garbage, and which I find to be on the better side of the spectrum.

For those of you who skip the story, or those of you who didn’t but also didn’t quite catch what happened, here’s the gist of it. We’re flagged down and asked to help investigate a mysterious island. Krile and another Lala, a right asshole of one, suspect it to be the place where they went to school together, but they went and called the island something else instead – Eureka. Gerolt is told to tag along because the story writing team, and by extension Rowena the queen of greedy, slave-driving bitches, decided he hasn’t paid his damn bar tab. We get there, it’s Sharlayan confirmed, and we’re told to go look in general locations (without markers) for the source of aetheric disturbances.

The areas of Anemos and Pagos are allegedly ruled by demons, who in no way impact the story other than to show up when we beat up night time mobs, wait for the right time or weather, and sacrifice enough Lalas Allagan fish genetically infused with popoto batter. If I may deviate from this a moment, I like how the Pazuzu in FFXIV resembles the one from Mystic Quest far more than the generic ogre-like demon that was XI’s Pazuzu. Louhi is even more detached from Pagos, as he apparently shows up from another dimension and decides to test his blades on you since you’re basically the first living being he sees.

Then again, Pagos’ story is where the story goes from barely setting you on the path to “Uhh… wha?” You’re sent out to more disturbances, but the magicite are complete and utter duds. Then you’re told to find the next thing with which to transfer to the next Eureka, and you find a geyser stream of endless aether shooting into the sky.

Meanwhile, you periodically meet a robed figure who goes around mumbling a bunch of words, just words! He’s doing something with the island that is unclear. Then he meets the asshole Lala, offers him(?) power, and then exclaims that HE IS EUREKA! (To be continued, if you haven’t facedesked your brain into oblivion at this point)

Now then, in Anemos, we level from one to twenty. The established game feature of riding on our mounts is taken away, for reasons, until we complete the quest at level seventeen, and, even then, it is the slow mount speed so many of us are used to before flight became a thing in Heavensward, as opposed to the boosted speeds we were introduced to in Stormblood (allegedly as a result of PS3 support ending so no more limitations?). We find, pick up, and put to use five magecite to power our conveniently gifted Magia Boards.

First we have to level, however. Here is the first major hurdle that Anemos faced on Day One. The accessibility to this effect is kind of crap. You need to find the first protean crystal while combatting monsters your level or higher. The monsters are hard to solo when you are not ready for them, which may or may not involve utilizing a job that not everyone has leveled; and the other jobs are basically screwed out of the solo experience for the vast majority of players. Note that I said the vast majority, you know, the casual and common populace of the game’s player base, not the super elite for whom this content wasn’t exactly advertised.

It was rough on Day One when there were so many people trying out the area and raging over the required play style. You see, the speed of FFXIV’s combat, though not the fastest, doesn’t work well with damage spongey monsters that you have to kill quickly for chains. A ton of people were ready to swear Eureka off entirely, or perhaps some already did. Within the day something the devs did not foresee or intend happened. I will bring this up again soon.

Now then, Notorious Monsters can be spawned by beating up so many monsters, or beating up monsters, and oh yeah! There’s the one that requires beating up a ton of monsters. FFXI did Notoroious monsters better by having more variety as to how to spawn or trigger those fights in the world. Already, if you have read all that I said up to this point, you might suspect a pattern where the lion’s share of elements from FFXI present in Eureka are either downplayed if it’s good, or turned up to, well, XI when it’s not so good of a design choice. Meanwhile, so much Diadem is also present. Beat up Notorious Monsters, open the lockboxes they drop, shut your brain off as you try to progress. Unlike Diadem, however, the Notorious Monsters of Eureka do not count towards FATEs in achievements, nor do they event count towards the NM slayer achievements. You just get Lockboxes, Anemos Crystals, and, in the case of Pazuzu, special feathers to finish off the last step of the Anemos phase of the not-yet relic weapons.

Oh, whoops, after all that time, the weapons still are not relics. For that matter, the weapons we finished with were i355, and the armor 350, when we could already get higher than that from tomestones or raids. You see, back in “A Realm Reborn,” the relics were not only on time with new content but were also relevant in item level. In “Heavensward,” the relic patches were halfway between content patches, but usually managed to remain relevant to the content as we ran it anew. At least the Anemos weapons and gear had five open meld slots and could be earned so quickly that it barely mattered at this point.

It gets “better.” An instance holds up to 144 people in it. Anyone who has done the 24-man raids with their settings turned up, or done the Hunts on populated servers, can tell you how well the game handles the load. Anyone who farms Suzaku Extreme can also tell you about the server latency. Additionally, anyone capable of measuring the game servers’ ping can tell you that, here in the US, more than half of it comes from the data centers’ Service Provider. So what do you get when you combine these things into a single brawl of a hundred or more poor souls against a Notorious monster whose mechanics can be summed up to “dodge this aoe telegraph?” You get player character corpses that slide and jump all over the place. You get people taking damage from stuff they’re not even touching by a ridiculous distance away. You get people turning down in-and-out-of-party effects, and still somehow getting screwed over by the game’s spaghetti code or server ticks. At least we don’t have to sneak past anything sound-based that will eat our faces in a fraction of a second if we fail. Oh, right (more later).

The lockboxes, when they came out in Diadem, and all the way up to a month or so into Anemos being live, took so long to open, and there were so, so many of them that we got. Glamour could not, at the time, be sold on the market board, and that was updated in time for the market to immediately crash since everyone had the Anemos gear who wanted it. The same could be said of the demand for minions plummeting fast while the supply only went higher and higher. Anemos crystals can be traded in for Protean Crystals after the first quest is completed that leads you to Gerolt, hard at work at hardly denting his debt to Rowena; however, we had to trade them in one at a time instead of the improved numbers we got weeks later. Truly, it could be argued that Anemos lacked play testing.

Attention, Square Enix. Hi, I know you hate play testing, but I know you also hate having to go back and fix stuff. Ask yourself something, though. Would it cost you more time and money to have someone actually test your content for feasibility, in regards to time and energy spent by your average player to do one simple action, or would it cost you more to do as you’re doing now with having to fix stuff so often? You promised so much new content this expansion, but you have spent so much time fixing or updating things like Shiro housing + housing ward increases, Glam dressers, and Fashion Report requirements, that it shines a light on the lack of play testing as an issue. Thank you for reading this side tangent.

Before I step into the Pagos side of this experience, it’s high time that I address the elephant in the room.

Not exactly what I meant, but it’s actually fairly close.

Yoshi P’s team did not intend for the train to happen. We were even punished for it in Pagos, instead of the hard questions being asked that honestly should have been explored. Here in the English speaking countries, people gathered at the spawning points Notorious Monsters. In Japan, people waited in the main hub for the NM to spawn. Chain parties dwindled to basically nil. People leveled with the NMs and gained so many crystals that our weapon and gear for one job, maybe more, was covered by the time we got to receive rewards from Pazuzu. To put it bluntly, no one wanted to play the game as it was designed.

That is not the fault of we the players. It should never have been taken out on we the players. Our fault was realizing we could run together around the zone in any order of spawning points, socialize with one another, go ballistic with our puns, work on our resurrection achievements, cheer one another on, and bear witness to additional monsters coming along and wrecking people who are either just standing at the waiting spot, or people fighting a NM (eg., the water snakes by the dinosaur NM). The whole situation did need an address and to be handled in a proper way. Sadly . . .

(3 of 5)

[Aster_E]

Combat, Development, and Story, part II

As I mentioned before, there were chokepoints created around the north-central canyon of death. There were also a few caves with the same dragon right outside.

Its favorite meals include fairies, egis, and the faces of anyone experiencing lag between server ticks.

Let’s take a step back, however. As I mentioned earlier, the story has us scouring the frozen landscape for magicite that are completely drained and cannot be used. In terms of character development, this essentially stagnates growth outside of leveling up and hoping it’s enough. People who want to solo are unable to put additional points into attack or defense. People farming Mutations are unable to compensate for the elemental change without wasting charges on the Magia Board. Above all, it’s a disappointment that makes us ask, “Wait, why are we even risking our butts for so-called disturbances that are just rocks at this point?”

For the first few weeks, the train was effectively dead, derailed in the snow like the end of that one movie I’d rather not spoil more than I already have. The move basically killed Eureka for a lot of people, many of whom still haven’t returned to it. So many folks were forced to beat up even meatier monsters than before, for so little gains, with just as many button presses per minute. It was carpal tunnel syndrome (https://orthoinfo.aaos.org/en/diseas...nnel-syndrome/) waiting to happen, much like many of us complained regarding the lockboxes in Anemos.

Some monsters have a chance to mutate, and become other monsters with different elemental alignments. They’re worth more light than the plain monsters that didn’t mutate. Oh right, there’s a light grind now, starting at level 25, and it’s totally rng-based in terms of how often you get a tick. Mutations, in addition, have a chance to drop loot, and that loot has a ridiculously high chance at dropping material, as opposed to the drops that might actually interest people (ie., mats for eye clusters to get a Gold rating in one NM encounter, an emote, a minion, etc.).

To level up in Pagos, people discovered that the best method became going back to Anemos and running those Notorious Monsters while filling out the weekly Challenge Log and continuing to socialize in text chat. I often told people to only go to 25if they were to do that, because the light grind starts there, and less time spent on the light grind should be a welcome thing.

Back in Pagos, people were dying to random crap and not getting their raises, even if there was a party a stone’s throw away, because parties that bothered with the chains were too focused on building their chains to 30 in hopes of better exp and light. The social aspect of Eureka ran cold there, because the average player didn’t have the time to say anything without hurting their party’s kill chain combo. Honestly, for this sort of content, monsters needed less health, the chain timer needed not dwindle so quickly at higher numbers, and second parties cutting in to face the same mobs needed to not demolish the same monster’s worth in exp or light. No, really, if one or two come in to fight the same monster then the rewards take a massive dump. Do you remember what I said about the landscape screaming anti-fun? It applied here as well, since it stripped the content of social aspects. Some people did the no-life thing and reached max level this way, and earned a ton of light somehow. “Some people” are in no way the same as the main of your playerbase. Some people also claimed to enjoy Pagos, whereas so many of us did not.

I sure didn’t. Pagos was triggering bad memories I had of the lowest point in my life, due to how closely tied my memories of FFXI leveling was to those days. I swore off Eureka as a whole for a time.

A patch eventually came to improve the exp. of the Notorious Monsters and, at least according to the patch notes, the spawn rate of the NMs. We would discover within the week, thanks to an interview YoshiP had, that the spawnrate increase was a load of crap. Thanks to that same interview, many of us also got a sense of arrogance from YoshiP as he said we needed to learn how to play, rather than complain that this style of gameplay is not to our liking.

Almost pictured: Yoshida in regards to us players

With the experience boost, however, people relaxed their fingers, or rejoined Pagos, and took this opportunity to reform the NM train. A couple people I argued with about Eureka—one of which was partly responsible for forming the original Anemos trains, but totally forgot why that was so successful or happened for people in general—stopped doing Pagos. So many of us hit level 35, but then hit the next little snag in the development of our weapons.

Not the armor, though; the “relic armor” was put on hold without a guarantee to when it would be continued.

We still needed to grind out light for our shoehorned kettles. This meant going back to chaining against monsters. Dragons were more frequent in ticks of light, but the light was moderately weak for Feeble (because “Feeble” couldn’t just mean one amount) and there were really only a couple feasible spots to farm those sleeping dragons. There were griffins by the geyser, Morbols as well (though they hit harder and kill party members quickly), and chimeras inside Louhi’s cave. On the other hand, despite their light being stronger, it ticked half as often or less, because the RNG element was so damn strong.

One of these days, I ought to write a post about locking progression behind heavy doses of RNG.

That’ll be a long day, far into the future from now, if ever.[/IMG]

I will say that RNG has its place. You don’t want people earning things too quickly, and you don’t want the thrill of winning to die out even faster, so low risks are fine for progression. I stomached four Elemental weapons, finally relics after so long, which might have been four too many. I did so, so that my four main jobs could stand a better chance at running content to receive better weapons a few short weeks later.

Square Enix, you love using RNG to stall people from beating content too fast. However, Pagos came out so late, the fix to exp. from NMs came even later, and the weapons were barely still relevant. Consider that. I mean really, truly consider that. The time and energy people put in at that point makes heavy doses of RNG totally unwelcome, in general (Related: Portnow’s Postulate, as presented by Extra Credits on Youtube).

Well after I was done with Pagos, the amount of light given by monsters and NMs was increased. This sounds nice, in fact I went in to take my screenshots and did Louhi just to see the boost, but that honestly should have accompanied the experience boost, and both should have been there when Pagos came out, in addition to other tweaks to any combination of monsters’ health, chain timers, or the ability to share monsters without detriment to multiple parties involved. Farming dragons should not have been as long and painful as it was for me, be it finding a party plus farm spot or doing so much of it so close to i370 losing relevance, and trying out other monsters should have been more reliable for light. Yes, that includes the likes of sprites.

(4 of 5)

[Aster_E]

Moving Forward
Now then, there has undoubtedly been a drop-off of players interested in Eureka, though not nearly enough to make Pyros an outright failure on Day One. However, Pagos does remain in the way to getting to Pyros. Pyros can be the most amazing content ever, in a hypothetical situation, but people won’t be able to enjoy it unless they get through the frozen waste chock full of poor design choices.

For what? A weapon matched by Suzaku Extreme? Armor beaten by Genesis tomes or Savage raids, or only barely beats crafted i380 gear for meld slots? That’s assuming that getting the stats you want will be easy or quick enough. If what I heard about Pyros so far is true then we’re going to have a very obvious problem; obvious because there is precedent, three times, across two major MMOs including this one.

Here’s what I am referring to. It is looking like the Pyros weapons and gear will take the place of the stat customization step, which is usually a step that shakes people from relic lines. This time, however, it isn’t so much direct customization as it’s rolling for randomized stats, and hoping for the best (or else re-rolling). I have three examples to why this is a terrible idea, if true: Diadem v1 in FFXIV, Tanaan Jungle in WoW: Warlords of Draenor, and the current gear grind in WoW: Battle for Azeroth. Note the lack of popularity involved with these things that I mentioned. The need to roll for good stats for gear was, is, and will continue to be a major contributing factor to how game content can fail. I most assuredly hope that what I heard about this relic step is false. If it isn’t then I also fully expect people to stomp their feet and tell me this is just an anecdote as though that means my prediction for Pyros won’t come true. It’s called a pattern of behavior. Just because a thing doesn’t work the first three or more times it is tried doesn’t mean it will work a fourth.

Before someone chimes in with the urban definition of insanity, no, it’s not as that Far Cry villain said it is. Insanity is, however, being removed from reality, and expecting randomized stats to fly is totally removed from reality.

We do not need Eureka. If anything, Eureka needs us in order to keep going. If we grab the crafted i380 weapons, Suzaku weapons, Genesis tome weapons, or raid weapons then we will be set until the next expansion when it’s time to level up again. Eureka will still be capped off at level 70, i310 or whatever it was, and specific Elemental Levels per area (20 for Anemos, 35 for Pagos, and so on), so going back for the weapons for achievements or glamour will not be as feasible as older relic weapons are now. We do not need to sit through content we do not like for something that isn’t necessary for progression or further enjoyment.

That said, so much time was put into making Eureka. So much time and resource was taken out of dungeons with the promise of new and exciting content. When I started playing this game in 2.4, we got three dungeons that were decent, a major primal trial (Shiva), Hildebrand had multiple quest lines by then with additional, optional trials, and more that I can’t even remember off of the top of my head. 2.5 gave us three dungeons (also decent, despite my complaints of Keeper at the time), World of Darkness, Chrysalis (blegh), another Hildebrand related trial, and still more without even mentioning 2.55, which gave Steps of Faith, the Gold Saucer, and Eternal Bonding ceremonies. Maintenance also happened to be a few hours per content patch instead of a whole day, but that’s another matter. It wasn’t until Heavensward when we started to get less.

In Heavensward, dungeons were cut to two a patch, most of them good (save for Neverreap), Hildebrand was brought in by overwhelming demand from the fans, but underwhelming supply from the devs, and we got two iterations of Diadem. The Scholasticate quests were a thing, that honestly came so close to putting me to sleep.

Here we are in Stormblood. Sometimes we get one, sometimes two, dungeons in a patch, Fashion Report was a sham, the dresser came out looking, indeed, like a commode, housing shenanigans ensued that led to a system change that should have been put in years ago, the only trials we’re getting are the normal and Extreme/Mistral modes of a handful tied to primal mounts, two Ultimates that cater entirely to the hardcore crowd (which wouldn’t be so bad if the rest of us got more), and Hildebrand is a little better but still doesn’t have another trial or unique fight.

Maybe not Greg again, but maybe Jim. Keep your fingers crossed, big guy; we’ve all been had.

No, I don’t think Eureka is good content. That’s not even bringing up how it is so instance locked. That didn’t even point out the lack of gatherers grabbing items around the zones (again, I wanted to fish at that one waterfall). It even left out something we have all been requesting or demanding since Anemos came out.

Party syncing functionality. Look, Yoshida, we’re not asking for anything else in regards to syncing. I say that because, in an interview during Anemos’ relevance, you didn’t seem to quite answer the question that was being asked. Here:

If a person joins a party that is too high in level for them, or too low for that matter, then this feature we are requesting would temporarily adjust the person’s level to match the rest of the party. This way they can contribute without level disparities ruining the experience or the like from monsters. Final Fantasy XI added this well after I left the game. City of Heroes/Villains had it when I left FFXI for it. The concept is not a new one, by any stretch. If you want us fighting monsters as groups then this is a necessity due to people out-leveling one another on a regular basis. Let friends help friends. Let people make new friends or allies. Let this be a thing in Eureka, if this form of content is to continue, please.

My subscription is about to run out, so I won’t be able to step into Pyros if I wanted to, not until my return to this game in, hopefully, a month. I hope for so many fixes to the Eureka we already have, and for so much better with Pyros, but I am hoping that everyone reading this does the smart thing with their time and energy if you find that Pyros is not to your liking. Saying you don’t like a form of content, only to take part in it, doesn’t help it improve (see also: DC movies of late).

I would like to thank everyone who read all of this. I meant to get this out onto the official forum before the sub expired and I was no longer able to post it, and it’s only a few weeks later than I intended to write this, post-Pagos. Until next time, y’all, have fun and behave.

(End of 5)

[Rasler_Heios]

This is like reading my mind about Eureka. Very well written, from the maps, to the combat, the abysmal story, down to pointing out that it was fun for some few people out there but not for the majority (I got in to an argument about that one in another thread).

One of the few things I didn’t agree though is that sample using FF8 and Chrono Trigger..

Other than that I hope improvements really do get implemented.

[Xion136]

I read it all. And this is a well constructed, honest, calm response to Pagos, hitting many of the points that make me dislike the place.

I hope SE reads this.

[Kuroka]

Lol yeah right and then they'lll even listen to it^^


But yes this was very well done.

[Reynhart]

What we were told, as a community, was that it would be a fun diversion from the game as a whole, such as going to a theme park.

Little misunderstanding there. FFXIV as a whole is the theme park. Eureka is the "horror house" of FFXIV.

Y: I usually compare FFXIV with a theme park, but the Forbidden Land of Eureka won’t be a place where everyone would want to go. For example, there are people who don’t want to go to horror houses because they don’t see the point in getting scared on purpose. For example, on a date, the boyfriend might want to invite the girlfriend to go the horror house, but the girlfriend just doesn’t seem to find it fun. In other words, it’s not like everyone wants to go to the horror house, but there are people who just love the adrenalin rush they get from it. Think of Eureka as something like that.

[Kuroka]

Little misunderstanding there. FFXIV as a whole is the theme park. Eureka is the "horror house" of FFXIV.

Yes and yet they went and put the kitchen right into it >_>