Newcomers Experience Of Eureka

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Hey, I'll start off by saying I've just finished Stormblood and I'm in to the post SB content. I wanted to get my first relic weapon for my main SAM job so I thought I'd give it a go. I'm no stranger to a grind. Having played WoW for a couple of years a while back and having a background as a bit of an RPG completionist I'm usually happy enough to work for some rare items.

I hear Eureka was a real pain before the patch and a lot of veterans are talking about how 'easy' it is now. Well... I'm at Pagos at level 25 and I feel like I have a decent grasp on the difficulty and grinding aspects of Eureka.

The good

• The fact that I can mount and not always get aggro from random mobs means I can join teams and fates much easier. It feels very accessible for the most part. There are still higher level mobs where it's probably borderline suicide to try to run past but I've heard it was A LOT worse.
• Converting Anemos Crystals to Proteos Crystals in the first zone made the grind so much easier. That being said I think the amount of time I spent in that zone was just about right, considering there are 4 zones in total. I was there for maybe 3 evenings totalling maybe 15 hours. Doing the math (and assuming the other zones are just as long) I'd end up spending 60hrs or so to get 1 relic weapon.. thats the total length of most JRPG games, start to finish... think about that.
• For whatever reason, it just feels much more social. The way an MMO is supposed to be. I come from WoW where chat bubbles are everywhere and people fight naked in Goldshire. FFXIV has been a largely solo player game for me with the exception of duties and trials. The social systems feel like they fight you trying to make friends with restrictions to trade in duties, and talk to players cross worlds once you've left. Thats a diferent topic, but the point is in Eureka it's much easier. I've had more random encounters in these two first zones than I have in FFXIV overall. Helping a player runnning away from mobs before he dies, grouping up with random players you bump into, only to end up running around and farming mobs and fates together. Dying together and begging for a rez from anybody who will listen lol. Then making friends with that healer and just generally enjoying a real multiplayer experience. It's fantastic in that respect. You end up levelling up with a lot of the same people across zones and you bump into eachother often. It adds to the multiplayer experience so well and I feel FFXIV has generally lost this due to having heavy reliance on cross world parties for duties.

The bad

• Exp loss.... why oh why.. the grind is hard (and long) enough as it is and sometimes you get 1 too many enemies and just get unlucky. While you're dead you shout for a rez. If you're online during sociable hours theres a chance someone may come and help. You have a pleasant convo with them and maybe a few laughs. I guess in a way this is good but the penalty for not getting a rez is huge. Losing a crap ton of hard earned exp pretty difficult to swallow if nobody helps.. or worse.. nobody who can help is online. For someone to ressurect you they have to either already be in a healer job, or travel back to base and switch to a healer assuming they have one. Then they set out to the nearest Aetherite to run to you. Hopefully the timer doesn't run out. Coupled with the fact that it's content that is heavily reliant on other players, imagine what happens when the zone is near empty. You're in there with only you're group of maybe 4 people. You get over run by mobs and die (happened to me yesterday). Now you have nobody to ask for help. You have to take the hit and lose EXP. You beg the healer to take the hit and then hope they come and run back to Rez the rest of the team without dying AGAIN. I'm not saying the exp loss is a bad concept but the penalty is still far too big for old content.
• The grind is still very long. Considering I'm only on the second zone, I had to level from 17 to 25 before I was able to start collecting the required items for my weapon due to quest restrictions. Thankfully a group of players helped me level but it cost me an entire evening of my life (maybe 4 hours). Some of you will say "Thats pretty good for 8 levels" but I'll counter with the fact that I still have to kill the same fates again and again to collect stuff I could have started collecting when I entered the zone. All of the fates I've done thus far in the zone were only to collect EXP.. and I lost out on all of the "Light" I could have gotten. I still have no idea how the last two zones will work but it feels needlessly restrictive in this regard. It should be more accessible. Maybe the quest to begin collecting fate rewards could benefit from being available earlier.
• I'm hearing a lot of negative talk about having to rely on 54 players in the final zone and I've been told people usually use Discord for this. I hope I don't run into more problems when I get to that part but it's worrying.
• Fate trackers - I still have no clue how to know when a fate is coming, or which mobs to kill to spawn a fate. It would be great to see some sort of key or symbol on an enemies head telling you that it can be killed to spawn a Fate. Playing on console doesn't help as you cannot click a tracker link either. The experience is heavily reliant on PC players pitching in and guiding everyone else.

The ugly

• WHY CAN I NOT ADD FRIENDS IN EUREKA?! Despite most of the folks there being from my server/world I can't add them. This is the first zone in the entire game where I've felt it's easier to have random encounters with players and end up questing/killing mobs together while having a few laughs. It's a much more wholesome experience when you find a decent and friendly player. In a lot of cases you'll keep bumping into the same players across all 4 zones because a lot of people are progressing/levelling together througout. So it's abismal that you can't add them as a friend unless you both leave the zone entirely and add them from Kugane.
• Some players are still toxic AF. People who have a problem with waiting for other players before engaging Fates out of some sort of feelings of entitlement. "We killed the mobs so the fate is ours". Everyone is usually happy to chip in if they are with the 'Fate train' but not everyone is there or even knows where it is half of the time. I find this attitude pretty disgusting in an MMO. Instead of advising players how to help out these people want to punish players for not being there in time. Thankfully this has only happened in 2 instances I've been zoned into.

All in all it's an enjoyable, but tedious experience. I hope there are further adjustements to the grind but I won't hold my breath. I look at my stage 1 relic and think... was it really worth it? maybe.. but maybe not. Being a fully grown adult I'm at the stage in my life where I'm wondering if I should be doing something more productive with my time. Looking at the amount of time the grind takes I feel like the answer is... yes... I should be. Putting it up against my JRPG record of things like defeating all dark aeons in FFX in under 150hrs in total playtime I feel like MMO gaming is going in the direction of making things longer for the sake of getting more subscriptions out of players. I understand that having the rarest of items should be an achievement, but this is where the word "challenge" should be replacing "grind". Nobody wants to spend hundreds of hours for 1 thing.. but a challenge to 'git gud' and play well would be great and the reward would feel much more proportional to the effort.

submitted by /u/IceSaber
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