Eureka wasn't so bad, but endgame in ffxiv is lacking without eureka

[Vahlnir]

Ah, I never persisted as far. I had heard multiple times Pyros and Hydratos are where it gets better and that BA is great, but as a friend who did it all to get the Ozma mount said to me "but it's not worth it". I think they found BA to be great, but not so great that it's worth suffering through all the grinding to get there.

I can see what SE were trying to do with Eureka, bring back the old MMO vibe of endgame content, like in FFXI. I was excited originally, but I think the biggest issue was that it was a big FATE train. I don't think it was intended to be, but the game facilitated it and made it the best method of getting stuff. But the content being a glorified FATE train doesn't really capture that feel. Because it feels like ARR levelling, Atma and I think some of the later relics too where there's a big FATE grinding session. So I'm already burned out on doing them.

The Fate train was actually unintended, and the devs wanted people to level the "old school" way. Oddly enough though, as bad as more Fates was, it is what made the grind more tolerable. They tried to remove the train entirely with Pagos but were met with severe backlash (and I'm guessing way less players in Pagos than in Anemos) so they put it back in. Pagos also saw nerfs pretty frequently, though it was still awful regardless. Pyros was probably the best designed area of the whole thing. Leveling wasn't bad, the grind was tolerable and the map wasn't too horrible to navigate. I did NOT like the light grind for random stats, however. Hydatos? I didn't spend much time there beyond finishing my relic, grabbing the glowing Fending set and leaving...never to return. I was so done with Eureka and wanted it all to be over by that point. BA wasn't worth the effort of getting into, though it wasn't as though I didn't want to see it. I really did. But...it wasn't worth the time, really. Not after everything I had to put up with to even gain access to it.