Eureka type content improvements

[Kalise]

I kind of want to just put together a thread where people can talk about things to improve future Exploratory Missions such as Eureka and the equivalent that will be appearing in Shadowbringers.

More so than "Just delete it" or "Don't do it" that much of the feedback has been about it.

To me, the most significant improvements would be:

* Remove FATEs being tied to enemy kills.

Since this promotes people being AFK waiting for the spawn while people who are participating get the very boring activity of just farming trash mobs (The majority of which are less than max level and thus even more trivial than usual) for obnoxious amounts of time.

* Add in a consistent way to make progress.

So for example, don't make Crystals/Logo's only reliably attained through FATEs (Or ONLY attained through FATEs in the case of Anemos Crystals which are required for the final upgrade of Anemos armour)

Allow for other activities to be done. Be it "Hunts", repeatable quests, Leves... Whatever. Just something that isn't condensed into "Lul just FATE Train" as the primary way to progress (Outside of leveling, which is best done via Chaining kills)

Heck, you could even put randomly spawning Treasure Chests around the place that promotes people actually exploring the content.

* Don't make enemies so darn annoying to beat solo.

What with their current inflated health pools and punishing scaling beyond your level (Which makes fighting +1 enemies a slog, despite being required to complete logs at certain level ranges)

Yes, you want to promote people working together... But that's inherently done via the fact that 8 people kill things faster than 1 person (As well as FATEs existing) rather than being pushed by the fact that killing stuff as 1 person is just annoying/time consuming.

* Don't make the Magia Board again.

It didn't provide anything to the content. It merely made things more annoying, especially when adds were pulled, or when certain Notorious Monsters created adds with different elements. Mostly because of the limiting restriction on how often you could swap elements, where if you were actually doing things like target switching, you'd run out of swaps really fast (So it promoted just focusing the one target. If there's an add wailing on a party member? Screw it, let them deal with it...)

* Allow item levels to actually progress in the content.

This is mostly because of how sync'd gear ignores Materia. Which ends up tossing a ton of your stats out of the window when you basically lose all your Materia (Ironically, when you get literally thousands of Grade VI Materia thrown at you via the boxes from FATEs...)

It also has the secondary effect of making your work actually pay off in the content. As opposed to the only thing mattering being your level and being item level 300 and item level 405 has no difference in any area of the current Eureka. Which does not feel rewarding at all (Especially when one of the primary reasons to be in the content, is to farm out the gear upgrades...)

At the moment, gear is only relevant when you hit Hydatos and thus start getting the Elemental Bonuses, which makes it completely pointless in the beginning 3/4 of the entire content...

[MorbolvampireQueen6]

i agree with most of this however i disagree with the magiboard thats my favorite thing making elements matter is how ff is suppose 2 be

the only change 2 board is it shouldn't tell you what element is strong or defensive.
you should have 2 learn that the hard way.

also if ur on water fighting a water ur attacks should heal the creatures not do just low dmg not enough punishing for using same ele as nm or creature

[Kalise]

i agree with most of this however i disagree with the magiboard thats my favorite thing making elements matter is how ff is suppose 2 be

But it doesn't make elements matter.

It's literally "Turn the wheel to the sword icon" in all scenarios outside some specific beyond max level enemies where a Tank will have to use full defensive.

It doesn't actually do anything beyond that. It doesn't change your skill animations to be elemental themed. It doesn't give your attacks any elemental effects (Burning for Fire, Freezing for Ice etc). It's literally just, match the correct colours and do a ton more damage.

the elemental leveling system is to create a self contained leveling system, which acts as an incentive and reason to kill monsters. As well as create goals, and danger in the map.

Though, you can make reasons to kill monsters and create goals without that. Such as Hunts, Challenge Logs, Chain bonuses that actually give things etc.

Also, the way it's currently implemented gives a poor sense of danger. Since, you can just stick to safe parts of the map by farming level appropriate stuff and then when you hit max level for the zone, you can run around 90% of the zone completely free and then it's only beyond max level stuff that actually matters...

The problem with making gear matter more instead of elevel, is gear uses up space, and is a bit harder to give incrementally.

How is it an issue when literally, the primary reason to go to Eureka, is to farm to upgrade the gear?

With the secondary reason being to farm for the vanity items.

The tertiary reason being to actually see the story for the place unfold.

To say nothing about how easily the place gets you to the Tomestone cap, allowing you to purchase that gear to boost your item level in lieu of farming.

As far as new mechanics, Hunts work.... but arent hunts basically fates?

Not really.

Rank 1-3 and B Hunts are nothing like FATEs.

A and S are more like FATEs, but are also the minority of the overall currency generation from Hunts.

They kind of already have treasure hunts with the bunny fates, but they could reskin it, and make the treasure hunt spawning part be more varied and interesting.

But that's not what I was asking for.

That's "Do a FATE, follow a bunny to a Treasure Map type hidden chest"

What I was suggesting was, actually visible Treasure Chests that you can just stumble on randomly. That can make actually going around and exploring to find chests something viable to do, independent of FATEs or grinding mobs.

An example of this, would be in WoW's Timeless Isle. Which, did have randomly spawning chests about the place, with some of them being hidden or obscured (Such as inside tree trunks that you could only see into with your camera at a certain angle, or hidden between some rocks or in some dense foliage etc).

It allowed for a gameplay where you could earn the currency for the place by just running around looking for these chests that would often be missed by players.

Which was a welcome change of pace from the "Run around and hope to get into a party to take out a Rare spawn to get enough credit for loot" and "Get a party and mass farm enemies" gameplay that made up other parts of the content (Sound familiar? )

To be honest, the place also did have some (Albeit one time only) jumping/platforming puzzles that lead to chests too, which were quite fun. Especially given that some of them had you dealing with the enemies in the zone (Either killing them, or bypassing them because they were dangerous)

All of this was without the need for "Elemental Levels" (It just made dangerous places, dangerous for everyone. Not just low levels) or putting everything behind "Farm worthless trash"/"Farm NM's" type content

Which is actually the reason why the majority of players hated Timeless Isle, because it got boring to do those things over and over for the entirety of its relevancy. Also, this was with trash actually having mechanics too, such as the Frogs that stacked a debuff which when it got high enough would instantly kill you, the elementals that would deal massive damage attacks in odd patterns (Think Serket from Anemos), enemies that would spawn massive slow moving Golems that were invulnerable and hit like a truck so would force you to keep kiting them as you killed the enemy, enemies that could be killed easier if you had a buff from a fire sprite type enemy that would spawn in certain locations throughout a cave etc.

Like, one of the primary issues with Eureka, is that it heavily promotes just doing 1 of 2 things. Farming FATEs (Either regular FATEs with the Train or Bunny FATEs) or farming specific trash mobs (Which was also necessary to spawn FATEs...)

Which gets repetitive. With little to no alternatives to do at all.

While, I'm suggesting it should get more alternatives, that would get people doing things continuously, providing some variety and allowing stuff like FATEs to pop up randomly and then draw people in to take them out before going back to something else.

Since, I don't think having 90% of the instance AFKing waiting for a NM spawn was the intended "Jolly Co-operation" type of gameplay that was in mind for this type of content. Heck, even Timeless Isle didn't have AFKers (Not that it mattered, since Rares only scaled with the number of people hitting it, not that were in the zone) because there was always something to be doing. With the worst case being you just come in and do your daily quests for their reward and then leave, for people who wanted to interact with the content as little as possible (With Daily/Weekly quests being similar to the Challenge Log. "Kill X enemies", "Kill 5 unique Rares", "Get X amount of currency in the week")

[Halivel]

For me it would be perfect if they will make it solo-able (except Baldesion Arsenal, since it's an actual dungeon, kind of) or, at least, 8-person party-doable. Finding 8 friends for old content is much easier than finding bunch of pugs, really.

[Milea]

Rather than fates, make them S rank hunts that roam the map.

Also have smaller bosses, might consider them like A or B rank hunts.

Allow same level enemies you can solo and even farm stuff off of.

Have ele like gear from the start that upgrades kind like in potd.
You use it in this instance and become stronger in this instance.
Since they experiment with unique effects tied to logos and special gear, implement that fully.
Allow use to add stuff to our special instance only gear like increased sprint, chance to proc revive, chance to summon some uncontrollable pet that helps us fight, etc.

[Physic]

the idea is that its open world group content, so, whatever means of doing things needs to encourage groups. By its nature, this means killing alone will be fairly slow, especially for tanks/healers. Having the elevel, and experience scaling actually helps this a lot already. Groups should be targeting higher level monsters, which give them better defense/offense. I think fighting things your level gets a lot better by pyros, with better elevel, and logos. the very beginning is the worst part imo.

the elemental leveling system is to create a self contained leveling system, which acts as an incentive and reason to kill monsters. As well as create goals, and danger in the map.



The problem with making gear matter more instead of elevel, is gear uses up space, and is a bit harder to give incrementally. It could be done, but is it worth it? Well, they could try out a more gear based incentive system, with monster crafting drops, and gear upgrades, or some currency.

Note, there are actually already a number of items which do have eureka effects, like cassie earring, optical hat, speed belt etc. Also note you can get ilevel 300 gear and use materia on it, (some of these special gears are ilevel 300 for that reason)

As far as new mechanics, Hunts work.... but arent hunts basically fates? They could have some fates triggered by other conditions, but no matter what, the people who dont spawn events will afk and wait for events.

They kind of already have treasure hunts with the bunny fates, but they could reskin it, and make the treasure hunt spawning part be more varied and interesting.

They could design more goals for smaller groups of players inbetween fates, and make some of the spawning conditions less hidden.

[Vahlnir]

At the very least I think that they should change the markers for NMs and not keep the fate boss symbol. It would at least give people the illusion that it isn't a fate. Maybe have special map markers designed for Eureka (or whatever the next iteration is) or something.

[Physic]

At the very least I think that they should change the markers for NMs and not keep the fate boss symbol. It would at least give people the illusion that it isn't a fate. Maybe have special map markers designed for Eureka or something.

why do you think its bad that people think of it as a fate? Does fate have a negative connotation or something? I think of fates as group content that scales with players (to an extent) and provides markers on the map. In eureka they are almost all boss fights of some sort.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

why do you think its bad that people think of it as a fate? Does fate have a negative connotation or something? I think of fates as group content that scales with players (to an extent) and provides markers on the map. In eureka they are almost all boss fights of some sort.

The community hivemind has decided fates are bad, simply because they have an icon on the map and music announcing them, and a level sync feature. Remove those things and no one would complain somehow.


People are silly.

[Physic]

The community hivemind has decided fates are bad, simply because they have an icon on the map and music announcing them, and a level sync feature. Remove those things and no one would complain somehow.


People are silly.

but... for group mapwide content... dont you need an icon on the map and a level sync feature? Are you saying they want high levels to burn bosses before anyone else even knows they are on the map? Wouldnt that be very bad for mapwide group content?