Fan Fest in review

 Well i let this sit for a while rather than vomit out a word salad like a fair number of places i visit in the last week or two. All in all this fanfest has been an interesting one. We have an expansion name and rough release window, but we don't know where or even when its set. We have a new job, but we don't know what its for. We have new mechanics, but we don't know when we will be using them.
 Its not like people are upset, its just a lot more vague and i imagine some of that is because they dont want another thing like the previews to Heavensward that spoiled the absolute shit out of the shocking twists at the end of A Realm Reborn. I guess its just an unusual feeling for FFXIV to know about content, but also to know comparatively little when put up against the fan fest reveals of Heavensward and Stormblood.

 So anyway. Shadowbringers. Guess the leaks were legit thus far huh? What we know however is pretty slim. The trailer shows the highlander going through all his jobs from 1.0 Archer to 4.0 Samurai/Monk while talking about becoming the warrior of Darkness. We see Thancred with a Gunblade, perhaps as the rumoured Soldier job escorting a young girl and -something which i feel people haven't really touched on that seems important- both Thancred and the warrior of light are being attacked by Amdapori constructs. Last time we saw them was when the magic levels in the ruins of Amdapor were going haywire and the SB Summoner questline where you find out Kuribu was in part connected to a summoning ritual rather than just being an animated statue. I can only imagine the latest patch talking about the aether being drained out of the land is related to this. Beyond that very little story. We know Zenos/Elidibus will be the final big bad of Stormblood so thats no spoiler. It was nice to hear Sokens theme since Uematsu is on a break but on the whole it was a great teaser trailer that ultimately tells us very little and thats weird but new content is new content so thats that announced.

Now we come to the quickfire info:

"Multiple new jobs coming in the expansion" - Strange thing here being that BLU was announced, i'll get to it later, and thats not coming in the expansion. Its a patch job for Stormblood. So whats coming in Shadowbringers? we know a Gunblade user is confirmed but aside from that? nothing. Just 'multiple jobs' and with the leak suggesting Blue Mage, Soldier and Dancer maybe multiple just means two in 5.0 and Dancer is coming later and Soldier uses a Gunblade? who knows. Personally i'm hoping SLD is a tank and DNC is a healer as we have enough dps for now and could use more tanks and healer jobs for variety. Lots of mmos treat tanks and healers like second class customers and give them one new job every 5 or so years in general and it would be great to see FFXIV give them some more love.

"Level to 80 in all new areas" - Big question here was "where?". We have new zones listed. The Rak'Tika Greatwood which looks extremely similar to a locations from FFXII and is home to a certain race of note in that game and Amh Areng which is a destroyed castle dotted landscape similar in appearance to the final area of Dark Souls 3. Apparently a new culture, well a new old dead one that is, but beyond that we know nothing. Where are these zones? are they even connected to each other? we simply don't know anything more about them at this point. New areas are always exciting for me regardless but its odd to see an MMORPG expansion reveal without a big "and we're going to [BLANK]!" during said reveal. Maybe its Thavnair. Maybe its undiscovered parts of Aldenard. We just don't know right now.

"9 dungeons at launch and new raids and alliance raids to follow" - nothing too shocking but 9 is a solid number to start with. It feels like you only really do Sirens Song, Bardams Mettle and Doma Castle before cap nowadays in SB and the lack of variety really makes levelling alt jobs a bit boring so variety is very welcome. Big question is whats the raid storyline this time? theres no Alexander or Omega set up thus far and we don't have many large tier bosses from previous games to dust off in this regard. These speculation of time travel in this expansion so maybe it comes in there, but i feel that could just feel like Alex again even if its not clockwork and gobbos.

"Take the war to Garlemald while averting the greatest Umbral Calamity of all and become the Warrior of Darkness" - This ones interesting. I wasn't expecting Garlemald so soon and the trailer makes it hard to tell if we are the hero's or the villains of the story. Perhaps the Kuribu style entities are attacking to defend something rather than be mindless monsters attacking the player? When we were warned of 'the world being destroyed in overwhelming light' does that mean a straight up army of light aligned constructs like the amdipori creations?

"Nu Mo beast tribes, a familiar face from XII showing up in the final Ivalice raid and a new playable race" - So Nu Mo from 12, a certain character thats a 'fan favourite but not balthier' in the next patches raid and a race teased by a Bugs Bunny shirt? Hmm. I wonder what that could be? (yeah we all know its Fran and Viera, get ready for SE to make back those recent losses on Fantasia alone!). Overall its nice to see Ivalice love. Hope the rumours of 16 being a return to that setting but viera being the last race isn't that surprising. In terms of archetypal FF species they are really the only none beastial one left that could wear current gear models.

"TP is gone, freeing up the GCD and DRK getting a rework" - TP is interesting. Were it at the end of HW it might seem a bit more dramatic but considering a lot of the gauges are good for so little i can easily imagine those reworked to be a resource gauge like how RDM uses it for its melee combo attacks. As for DRK? well i've not had much issue with it right now as a casual tank but the people i know who main it and only tank have barely played Stormblood because they hate the class. Apparently thats quite common and we all know what happened to PLD and WAR in the past and with Shadowbringers looking like the DRK expansion as the current is SAM/MNK and the last was DRG/PLD leaning who knows how big the changes will be?

All in all it was some interesting stuff but nothing too breath taking. There are a couple of other things i will talk about in other entries to break this up but we all know it ended with a bit of a surprise thats left people 'mixed' in terms of reactions, shocking for the internet i know, but i'll get to that at another time. For now its more FFXIV and we have 4.5 on the way and thats also promising to make Stormblood go out with a bang so exciting stuff all around, but a bit more vague than usual and Yoshi alluded thats clearly for good reason. We just gotta wait for the next fanfest to see what it is!

No i'm not making a pun about the 'I'm Blue' song.

But lets talk about the Blue Mage Leak/Rumour anyway. According to said rumour not only is Blue Mage or BLU one of the Jobs for the next expansion but it will be a preorder bonus of sorts and will become available to players who prepurchase the game. Sort of like how Blizzard did with the Demon Hunter Class for World of Warcrafts Legion expansion.

So first off what is a Blue Mage? Blue Mages first appeared in Final Fantasy V as a new option alongside the traditional Black, White and Red. While Black was damage, White was healing and Red was a weaker blend of the two Blue Magic was essentially a form of mimic magic. In Most examples of the Job -even times like in FFIX where it was never actually given the name- the Blue Mage does not learn their skills from a mentor or a tome but by experiencing it themselves. Most often from Monsters. Fight a monster that uses the regen spell White Wind? well you can use 'copy' or a similar skill to learn it should you defeat the monster and you keep the spell forever. Notable examples being the Warriors of Light in V, Quina Quen in IX and most popular with fans Khimari Ronso in X. As a notable side thing the rumour also states Ronso are a playable race in 5.0. Perhaps they are the more tribal mages who created Blue Magic while the Amdapori and Mhachi worked on Black and White magic?

 So how did that work in an MMORPG? in FFXI Blue Mages showed up as a Job in the Treasures of Aht Urghan expansion. They were basically elite anti monster tanks, trained to become a monster themselves and take in the essence of powerful monsters while struggling to combat their "inner beast" lest they become a mindless force of destruction themselves. To any WAR's reading this i'm sure the concept sounds familiar to a degree.
 In gameplay terms they were a close combat, tanky mage. They had a few basic attacks and buffs to power up Blue Magic but by and large their focus was on -shock of shocks- utilising Blue Magic spells to deal damage and resist damage. Crazy i know! But unlike other mages they were regarded in two ways. Physical spells were close range, impactful magic. In XIV terms think something like a RDM's Enchanted Rapier Skills. Then Monster Magic or Monster Affinity Magic. None impactful stuff more connected to elemental abilities. For example you might fight a crab and learn a water element spell. Just like a conjurer casting Stone or Water. The big deal for BLU was how you got them.
Monster Magic is acquired by defeating, or being in a part with allies that defeat a monster using the skill you want. You just need to be a BLU and not get KO'ed while doing so. You them, based on level have a number of BP or Blue Magic Points you can use to spend on a hotbar of skills from your library of skills. Basically imagine the cross role spells of XIV but with the mod mechanics from Warframe. Have 8 BP free for your last slot but Bad Breath costs 10BP? too bad you dont have the points even though the slots open.

 Now how would i implement this in XIV?  Essentially i would use job quests to give the core skills and the hunt log to point you in the direction of what you can get skills from. I know they kind of want the hunt to replace the hunt log but it just seems like such a perfect fit. You leave your early town and can get your stun from the jellyfish outside Limsa Lominsa for example. You just take the hit, beat the monster and bam. Now your spell list has a monster magic spell to add onto your BLU specific version of the cross bar. Simple. Kind of.
I would make it a tank myself since magical cloth tank is a really neat idea, maybe give it evasion based stuff and use NIN gear? but knowing how popular dps are in online games over tanks i could see it becoming another BRD or RDM. I wouldn't care for it as a RDM main who already heals and res'es players in raids with no desire for another supportive mage job but you never know.


A lot of people think the leak is legit and honestly i wouldn't be unhappy to see BLU added to the game. It could fit with the Ronso and we all saw last time around the demand for it is really up there in terms of FF jobs yet to show up in game but honestly i also wouldn't be upset if it didn't show up this time. I can take or leave it.

What about you? excited for it? worried it wont be the role you want?

What kind of BLU do you want to see in FFXIV?

Happy 5th Anniversary!

Good lord. Half a decade gone by already? It feels like just yesterday the internet at large was having a laugh at Square -not popular at the time during its "decade at lightning" debacle- shoving out FFXIV 1.0 or "4.0" as it was known based on review scores at the time with people considering the game dead on arrival.

 But we all know what happened, or who happened, to FFXIV next and Yoshida saved the game and arguably salvaged the Final Fantasy brand that once again seems to be in need or another goodwill boon from just about every product but XIV again giving the consumer issues with the brand. roll on Fanfest right?

I've mentioned it to a degree before but i think the only reason i got into FFXIV as a Final Fantasy die hard that had finally written the ip off after its disastrous PS3 experiences was the novelty of getting a beta code to try an mmo on my PS3. I had to delete all the installed games and it ran like shit but playing that A Realm Reborn beta as a WoW veteran getting disillusioned with World of Warcraft i found myself exploring Gridania and the South Shroud and thinking "Hey now, theres something to this game. Maybe this is worth looking into on release?" and the rest is history. From Raiding Coil as a BLM with his brand new Stardust Rod to taking down Nidhogg on the final steppes of faith as NIN with my Sandungs Lux to Taking down Omega as RDM and just waiting for the big bad of the expansion to show up for a bruising its been a hell of a ride.

Now just in game however. I can gush about the art style, amazing music that puts all over MMORPG's to shame and the like but what keeps me going is also the community. People that unlike every other online game i've tried don't rage on the first wipe. Don't quit over the smallest things. They come together be it to solve a new raid boss, deal with a massive organised group of assholes trying to crash the server market in a bid to take over the economy or worse. This is a community that cares about being in this together. Its not the individual power fantasy or the single player game with optional multiplayer. These are names and faces you know, for years now. You wave when you pass. You recognise each other from memorable times in expansions past.
 To say nothing or outside the game. When i'm running into a Hildebrand cosplayer at Comicon and dancing the Manderville, playing the FFTCG at a local tournament and shooting the shit over what might be coming in the next expansion or as simply as having someone in a comic book store tap me on the shoulder, point at the Job Stone on my bag and say "Hey man, what server?" both inside and out its the first fanbase for a game i've ran into that feels like an actual community comparable to stuff like the FGC or TCG crowds. These are people with a passion and its the same one you have for the same virtual world we all inhabit and thats really the MMORPG dream, isn't it?

Now days from the next Fanfest and the expected reveal of 5.0 and while excitement for Stormblood has been honestly pretty muted over the last 6 months or so people are really revving up the excitement for what the future holds. Heres hoping they can keep this up for another 5 eh?

Its pre fan fest expansion predictions time! again!

 Is it really that time again? so soon after the shitstorm of nobody's paid stream working for the last one? boy how time flies eh?

 Naturally of course this means its time to speculate our hopes, dreams and far less exciting expectations for the next expansion in what at the time of writing appears to be Square Enix's only ongoing Final Fantasy project thats not some form of burning trash fire. No pressure Yoshi.

 So this time around i'm basically listing things two ways: What i want to see and What i expect to see. One is my personal wants no matter how unlikely and the other is what i honestly expect based on the games support up to this point. So lets cut to the chase and jump right in!

What i expect to see:

New Job GEO/Geomancer: Will be a melee ranged magical dps with support elements like BRD. With positional effects added to moves right out of FFXI. You hit from the north and a move adds a fire dot, hit from the south and the same move gives your nearby allies a small attack speed buff. Positionals have had a bit of a rocky history in this game but i dont see how else you use the job without making it just another mage -or conjurer for that matter. But the entire SB expansion has been dropping strong hints and while i can't consider any expectation set in stone this certainly feels like a job in XIV's future even if its not in this particular expansion

New Job SLD/Soldier: Not a personal want but something a lot of people are expecting and i can see why. In working with Garlean rebels -gunblade users included- we have an already very fleshed out set of flashy moves and story connection. If MCH's can make artificial job crystals in some sweaty workhouse in Ishgard is it so unlikely the Garleans havent made similar? Folks seem to be expecting Squall: the class, personally i'm expecting a tank like FFVI's magitek knight as a defensive equivalent to Machinist. Things like the SMN questline in SB in particular has started pushing the idea that allagans pre collapse were beginning to augment weak magical abilities with technology and that sounds like something Garlemald would dig up and learn to use doesnt it?

New Playable Race Viera: Its been in high demand forever, they have been namedropped in the Ivalice storyline and most importantly they modelled a woman with bunny ears for the Tsukuyomi primal fight. They know people want it and some measure of the works done already. I could see them before something like Bangaa or some form of beast tribe.

New Regions: Now personally i don't think we are heading right to the empires front door with this expansion. I think they are intending for rebellions and internal struggles to push Garlemald over the course of the next story arc to become the big bad. Perhaps in reference to FFXV they are put so far on the defensive they do something unspeakable to weaponise the innocent civilians to turn them into some monsters or resort to summoning like beast tribes? i think they are going to be pushed to cross some line and have yet to reach the point to be desperate enough. We need to fight back and break down their expansion for a bit longer to rationalise that i think.
 Instead i think we are going to head south to southern Islabard, Thavnair -with the expansion capital in tropical Radz-At-Han, home to the morden Eorzean school of Alchemy and the only nation to trade with Garlemald- and perhaps the end of Erueka will lead Krile and Alphinaux back west to the 3 island chain of Old Sharlayan?

Class changes: Instead of something like another meter i imagine upon hitting level 80 our signature skills will change. They started to implement this in SB. If you hit the right level of Summmoner Bio II becomes Bio III automatically for example. It scales down for level synchs but at max level is a stronger, more flashy version. I think thats the direction in general for lvl.80 abilities.
To use Summoner as an example i think we will finally see Egi changes with max level changing them so Titan Egi becomes Sephirot Egi for example. Its not as exciting to some as straight up new moves but it allows your character to feel more powerful without buttonbloat. You might hit lvl.30 and get your carbuncle replaced with an Ifrit Egi as a new player and then see a lvl.80 summoner with a Ramuh Egi replacing it and go "oh man, i want to get to that level of power!"
 I also think we will see a couple of class revamps. Not as dramatic as PLD and WAR have had in the past but i firmly think DRK, NIN and WHM are all going to get some form of soft rework as their participation numbers have dropped dramatically in Stormblood and the sentiment seems to be DRK is mindlessly easy and NIN/WHM are either boring or their new SB mechanics made them actively less fun to play. I think 3 jobs being left behind is something Yoshi and the team wont want to see left to sit and thats going to change.

Theming: I think, based on the writers past ebbs and flows and the current state of the MSQ while writing this that the next expansion is in some ways going to be a lean back to ARR in some aspects. I think Ascian influence and Allagan tech causing trouble will come back to the forefront. Perhaps as some kind of arms race, perhaps as Garlemald is put on the defensive it simply gives others more time to dig too greedily and too deep but i think 'digging up forgotten secrets' is going to be the active theme of the next expansion and theres nothing that represents that better than stuff like the Allagans. Maybe we will even get a new zone by Mor Dhona? Beyond that i think they can't leave the idea of 'overwhelming light destroying the world' to just sit. Something has to give and i think thats going to start happening soon. Something is draining aether out of the land and if its not Zodiark then perhaps its actually Hydaelyn? What if the 'Shadowbringers' rumour is true and we have to end up taking a role more akin to the warriors of darkness?

Raiding: This is a bit of a muddy prediction but i think something is going to chance. Again. People are getting very vocal about missing something like Coil and having "the baby raid where everyone wants a carry and wipes all the time" or "savage with the perception that its only for the hardcore" which completely ignores normal modes as anything but a training mode and ultimately hurts the raiding overall. Back in ARR we went into Coil for the story and the fights. Sure there was gear but it wasn't seen as a pinata like alliance raids but nor was the early coil seen as the hardest of the hard stuff like savage that drove people away. Anyone who was playing at the time remembers the huge crowds at Wineport as pick up groups got ready to take their first steps into the Binding Coil of Bahamut and while few got to the end it was a memorable experience for all. In the current system it seems like the options are brainless loot farm -though i think the last Ivalice raid that released was a nice balance in terms of difficulty- or savage that people view as the elitist content and by and large dont bother with.
I'm not sure what the easy remedy is to be honest but i feel like the raiding model is going to change once again. Raiding proved far more popular in its domestic market than anticipated and they want that draw to still be there. But if you arent a savage raider it seems like the overwhelming majority see extreme primals as their endgame and for one item per job. I just dont see them settling on that as the happy outcome. I dont know what the change will be but i predict there will be one.

Gimmicks: The little things, the quality of life changes, the things you use to sell the casual player. These aren't the big sweeping changes but the things that add a little something to the core to expand upon it. We've had flying, swimming, diadem, eureka, treasure maps, squadrons, housing. What do they do next?
 Personally i don't think we see a new transport gimmick. Flying is already suffering from 'the warcraft problem' where upon its introduction it was like getting the Zoras Flippers in Zelda. Now places you could never reach are easily accessible and thats great. Its feeling like you reached a new tier and all these new secrets are waiting to be found. Then in SB i'm basically using it to reach mining nodes and otherwise just to skip gameplay just like modern WoW and to be frank that sucks. Swimming even more so. Without underwater combat swimming only serves to collect items for quests and thats so bland. So i think they have no ideas for them as gameplay ideas and probably wont try new ones anytime soon. Perhaps bring back real time airship rides and have them fly over zones with the option to jump off to get to out of reach places or something instead?
 I imagine housing might get a new area or simply new wards but i would love some more interaction with them. Technically you can make your house a item shop, blacksmith or cafe but why would players go there and how would they even know it exists? that needs work.
As for another Diadem/Eureka? ehh i think its been a failure as an experiment. Personally i think its more rational and logical to expand on successful systems like the Hunt or Khloe's diary instead. It just feels like time to revamp and improve existing systems instead of another time consuming experiment and while SE is not exactly doing so hot nowadays it makes sense to improve your core rather than waste time on another risky potential for failure.

Now thats all i expect to see. There may be more stuff i havent mentioned or maybe less stuff changed with more dramatic changes but what would i actually want to see but dont expect?

-Puppet Master as a job. Some kind of pet using tank that has constructs hold aggro while you lay traps and use the puppets to bring them into their path. With some kind of gothic/baroque aesthetic like the clowns/jesters from devil may cry.

-2 announced jobs and a 3rd kept secret. This would never happen with dataminers but i love how in FFXI there were times i just want into the quest to unlock a none starting job like DRK and it was a nice surprise to show my friends i was this new job they didnt even know was in the game yet. It would be spoiled in hours for most of us that keep up with the game news of course but i still love the idea of finding some old dude in trouble and getting a BLU job crystal as a reward and freaking out.

-Replace triple triad with an ingame version of the FFTCG like Hearthstone but for XIV. I like triple triad, but i love the physical card game, my XIV deck in particular. Trouble is finding people to play with is a hassle but if the ingame card game wasn't a 30 second steamroll i would be more inclined to play it and collect cards. Will never, ever happen but i can dream can't i?

-Give us a reason to fly and swim. Underwater combat, High up villages like some native people that live off the land you can only reach via flying for new endgame content. Stuff that makes us use the mechanics as something to move from A to B to collect something and avoid the mmo gameplay we pay a sub fee for. Give me adventure and a reason to explore!

-Highly unlikely but with the Ivalice stuff in game i would love one of my favourite underrated games to get some love with Vagrant Story's Sunk City of Lea Monde as an underground, inside based quest zone. We've had a sky zone, a sea zone and deserts, forests and more. Why not underground? and why caves when ivalice has a perfectly explorable buried ghost town right out of demon's souls?

But these are things i want that i also know are never going to happen. Its now a couple of days to the US fanfest which will at least be an expansion reveal and a trailer, maybe they will be kind and give the Americans a job reveal or something for once but who knows. For now we can only wait and dream of what new jobs and adventures we will be getting in the next major expansion pack to our mmo of choice. What are you expecting? What do you want?

A quick break from our usual content to talk about Vanadiel

 So ain't this something? Square Enix has announced that accompanying the FFXIV Fan Fest we know and love there will be a smaller 'Fan Event' for Final Fantasy XI.

This is interesting for two reasons. First 3 years ago they effectively said the game was dead and going into maintenance mode, i even made a video about it on my youtube channel at the time, and with this announcement all official fan events came to a close. It was sad but after 13 years and the game becoming a straight up Ghost Town it was a sad but understandable development. Yet here they are 3 years later where the game saw some level of resurgence, both in player interest and in development of new small scale updates, and once again this 16 year old game has news to announce.

 Secondly a lot of people either forgot or never saw it to begin with but there was in fact confirmation of a mobile remake of FFXI in the unreal engine that had a few screenshots leak but then it vanished and years later has never been heard from again. Perhaps its not as dead as people expected?

Personally i see SE going out of their way to do this after years without for two reasons:

1 - The game is actually dying this time and this is one last hurrah to toast the players that stuck with it for 16 long years.

2 - The Unreal Remake is finally being revealed and its not just coming to mobile anymore.

Now i'm a cynical bastard and would usually lean to the former. If not for the state of the mmorpg industry since the 'soft maintenance mode' announcement 3 years ago. Classic/Progression servers are a thing thats growing in popularity. Even Blizzard is doing it with World of Warcraft. So maybe Square is looking at that project thats been on the downlow for mobile for years and thinking 'hey, the markets changed, maybe theres money in this?' and a FFXI resurgence of a sort is on the way?


Honestly i have no idea but the concept of them touching on Vanadiel again is always a welcome one.

What do you think they are up to?

The Final update to Eureka and Good Riddance!

 Now its no secret i have a dislike for Eureka. Intense isn't quite the word since my general sentiment to it is "Why would i waste my finite free time playing a gold farming bot simulator?" and as such its not really some smouldering outrage and more a simple case of regarding the content as utterly redundant and having no reason for me to engage with it.

Personally i've said more than once while talking about it to other players that i feel it was intended as the "laidback, chill grind" filler content to launch with the expansion and serve as the backbone of the whole experience. However it came out late after multiple delays. The experience was boring, monotonous and all around a chore to take part in. From everything i've seen the drop off levels appear to have been pretty spectacular. Very few people i know, play with or just see regularly on the forums and the subreddit stuck with it into its second area. Their reasoning being "well the relic will probably be some 390 weapon with amazing stats, right?". 

So about that.

Now that Pagos is out and datamined to be giving 385 weapons with randomised stats those people are now understandably less than enthused with the idea of joining in on the grind for a third time. Meanwhile one last Omega run today and i got my 380 Rapier for RDM with great fixed stats and it took me a grand total of around 10 minutes per week for 7 weeks. So just over an hour for a great weapon that will last the rest of the expansion versus hours upon hours of grinding over the year for a chance at a weapon that at best is a nice model and will last a few levels into the next expansion as your levelling stat stick.

Personally i don't think the trade off is worth it.

Bare in mind i got every relic from ARR and HW. Including all the Padjal Weapons and the like. To say nothing of all the gear from all the tomestone and wolf mark vendors. So grinding for rewards is a total none issue to me as long as i am having fun doing it and the reward isn't randomised. Compounding the issue of lame rewards put simply i have had no fun in Eureka. At all.

Now you have to ask yourself 'whats the difference between this and things like Diadem right? Is it the variety of fates and monsters leading to different situations? not really since eureka has that. Is it the ability to go in as a Disciple of Land/Hand and actually do something other than killing mobs? perhaps thats an element. But personally? i think it comes down to two things based on the type of player: the explorer vs the chaser.

The Explorer plays games to dig in every nook and cranny and find secrets. Wether they are rare treasure or simply easter eggs to find this is a more meta level experience where you appreciate the craft of a virtual world made from nothing and all its nuances. Doing things as a NIN main at the time like using Hide to go stealth and sneaking through caves and such to find chests full of rare treasures for the entire group was a satisfying experience. I was using my class abilities to do a thing completely separate from the completion state goal we set out to do and sneaking around finding treasures for the team. That was great. Can't really do that in a bland instanced island full of trash mobs and nothing else can you?

Meanwhile the Chaser has a goal and works towards it. Maybe they plan, maybe its organic but for them the fun of the gameplay is working towards a specific goal. In Diadem it was "okay team we got X, Y and Z to do. Lets jump on it!" and they got a structured experience without the stress of organised raiding and with some more free roaming than a linear dungeon to let them have their fun. Place the same people in Eureka and its like they went from a day of regular grocery shopping to trying to get that super cheap flat screen on Black Friday and theres 20 for sale and 300 people after it.  You are not just given your goal. You are given competition. You may as well log back into FFXI and get your 2005 on standing around the spawning spots for Leaping Lizzy hoping you can tag her before all the farming bots do. Its basically the same thing but with a little more moving around involved.

All to say nothing of a story that nobody i know is experiencing purely based on the off putting gameplay. I still see folks like Sly on State of the Realm say stuff sometimes like they "just never got around to Scholisticate" and i go "what? come on its story how can you just ignore it!" but here i am with Eureka and i went in wanting to discover what that building was and why Krile was on a personal mission there. Yet i never did. The guy who has done every quest no matter how monotonous -see my Whisper-a-Go-Go mount for proof- and loves the story of this game and i just found the gameplay so off putting its the one thing i dont think i'll ever see myself. So its a case of of the gameplay being so dull it actively dissuades my far greater interest in the story. Thats bad.

Regardless of what personally rubs you the wrong way the crux of the issue is you are not having fun doing what you did in Diadem because of the way Eureka is structured and you can't fix that with patches. With time and the drop off of players who like myself simply consider it not worth the time this has only gotten worse as the groups in it for the long haul are getting more aggressive with each other. Every time a player from another group 'steals' mobs around you thats your combo going down. Thats resources taken from your group. Thats extra time you need to spend. Thats time and again constant negative reinforcement tailoring you to see other players as "assholes interfering with MY good time" and its not even a good time to begin with in this case!

 Now Pagos is the apparent end to Eureka's storyline and content i sincerely hope that Yoshi and the team take a good hard look at the thing in its totality. Player retention, player reaction and sentiment. This was multiplayer game poison on a level not quite there but comparable to WoW's "Garrison" system that left players sitting in a soft instanced solo hub that did everything for you if only you sank time into the monotony of it. That lead to the biggest critical bomb in maybe Blizzards entire history as a company (before a certain Diablo announcement at this weeks Blizzcon that is) and there really seems to be two possible extremes here:

1 - The userbase abhors Eureka in such significant numbers that its never touched on again and its time and resources are spent on either additional options for existing content or another new experimental idea.

2 - Either enough stuck with it, god knows why, or in terms of time and resources it was so cheap to make that they consider it a worthwhile filler which means we continue to get less content like dungeons and new minigames and just more of this nightmare.

I'm kind of hoping its the latter and some of that "we can admit when we shit the bed" sentiment is still around so the typical corporate shaming doesn't make them double down like other developers do when mistakes are made. Because its not like this is the kind of thing that leaves people screaming "heads must roll!" like yet another angry mob on the internet falling for the outrage culture meme. Simply put sometimes you experiment with new ideas and they don't work for the majority of your core audience.

But who knows, perhaps when the next FFXIV census does the rounds the number of players with the endgame achievements for Eureka will be shockingly high and i'm full of shit? but based purely on player sentiment and what i'm seeing personally the thing is dead and obviously they had to release the whole thing rather than leave it unfinished and abandoned but even the devs seem to have lost interest about it in live letters compared to the first big reveal where they were so excited to talk about the elemental levelling system.

The best we can hope for is that it was a learning experience for the future. Its looking like Stormblood has been somewhat less popular compared to A Realm Reborn and Heavensward and i think some of that -when not putting blame on trying to divide the team over two core stories at once- is things like eureka eating time and enthusiasm. No dev wants to work on something, send their baby out into the word and get back a resounding "yo shit sucks man" from their users and that kind of thing, especially if this was intended as a core pillar of the expansion can be a real defeating moment for developers who wanted to try something new. All i can say is sometimes you try something new and it is bad. It is just not a fun time. Yet if people didn't love your game and believe you can do far better we wouldn't still be here paying a monthly subscription fee would we?

For now at least we can, some of us at least, be glad that Eureka is done and dusted. Wrap it up, tuck it away and lets quickly move on. We've got the final Ivalice raid, the conclusion of the Stormblood main story thats really heating up and Fan Fest on the way!

and in the longrun who's going to care about totally optional timewastes after they lose their relevancy in terms of gear rewards when the Big Bads are on the horizon, both far more intertwined than we possibly imagined.

So long Eureka, you should have stayed Forbidden!