Patch 4.4 in review

I'm pretty happy to say this has thus far been a much, much better experience then the previous patches for Stormblood. Better fights, better variety in music, more going on and generally it just felt more focussed than it has since Heavensward. Again i have to say i believe in part this is because with the Ala Mhigo and Doma stories wrapping up they are no longer so divided in terms of workload in this regard. We are back to the Empire/Ascians and that focus allows for a more linear creative process that allows most of the work to flow better. Though that said i do have to comment on just how many spelling and grammatical errors there are in the English translations on screen. Not only do they often not match the voice actors but there are straight up misspelled or duplicated words like "they were were" as the VO says "they were" for example. Its the first time i've actually seen an mmo do it this much beyond beta testing. Perhaps there were issues with the team, some were sick and the rest got overloaded i dont know. All i can say is it was noticeable on more than one occasion and this many years in you would think the scions names would be spelt right in conversation text.

 So onto the content. I've got it all out of the way bar the Savage Omega fights, and any Eureka content because i simply refuse to waste my time on it, and all in all i can say its good but like usual i'm going to break it down a little below.

The Story
 Quite honestly the story hasn't interested me in Stormblood much at all. They could afford so little time to both regions that Yotsuyu was really the only standout and beyond that most of the story was forgettable and completely paled in comparison to ARR/HW in general. This still suffered from a lot of "walk to this person to start a cutscene" just like SB has in general but much like the finale of the last patch did with Alphinaux this patch gives other characters some time in the spotlight and it was very welcome. As time goes on i find Lyse and Hien increasingly uninteresting. Likeable characters to be sure but storywise what are they bringing to the table compared to what the likes of Nanamo or Ameryic in their storylines in the last few outings they had? so far not much and since they were the focus of so much i found it hard to care. Here we return to familiar characters and give more time to folks like the Xaela tribes on the Azim Steppe and it was a very welcome change of pace.
 Beyond that, without heading into spoiler territory, this saw a refocus of the story on what i consider the 'core' story to Final Fantasy XIV rather than just the contained story of the expansion. The Ascians are making their moves, we get some character reveals and a tease for what i assume is a certain Big Bad we haven't seen mentioned since like The Chrysalis or earlier. Overall it felt a little more substantial even if it does still suffer from 'talk to the cutscene npc' syndrome a little too much still. I was invested in the events, exclaimed out loud at certain reveals and was genuinely bummed when it ended because it left me wanting a lot more which is always the sign of a story patch doing its job well. Something i found myself really saying for the first time for this expansion so all in all not perfect but a total improvement and step back to the quality HW taught us to expect.

The New Dungeons
 Now these were interesting. Overall they are fine dungeons, MSQ one is a bit too linear feeling and the other a bit too flat in terms of layout, but other than that i've done both multiple times and enjoyed every run. Compare that to previous additions like the Drowned City which i did once and its another case of the update feeling less simple. Like they saw complaints things were too easy, people were bored and not bothering to run the content and they spiced things up again which is great.

The Arboretum Hard Mode is honestly easier than its Normal Mode if i'm honest. Copperbell HM it is not! but the bosses, second and third in particular, are good fun and there are a fair few great new mechanics both in battle and out. For example all the mobs are covered by a mud based formula making them hyper aggressive but if you hit switches for water valves it swap the mobs model out for a clean version thats less aggressive and easier to fight. That kind of fight control thats entirely up to the players to shift difficulty should they choose reminded me of the similar systems in WoW's critically acclaimed Ulduar raid. Something people always lamented was never really brought back. Its nice to see them experiment with that here. Along with some new ideas like telegraphs not for damage but for effects that physically move you around could really lead to some interesting fights in the future if the ideas prove popular enough. Its a nice enough dungeon but the music, a broken scratchy version of the original like a run down malls spooky intercom still playing old ambient shopping music when its long abandoned, does add flavour to the scene but also gets pretty annoying as the dungeon goes on. Still its a fun if easy run i would compare to Xelphatol or The Vault.

The MSQ however is great in a very different way. As a dungeon its basically "take X boss and their mechanics and spice them up, but its still very much like fighting the same boss" -a theme that ran through the whole patch but more on that later- and its very point A-B as you clear a lot of trash that only really serve to pad the place. Where it shines is the visuals. You go in knowing theres a giant monster on that part of the world map, you go in seeing teasing signs of said monster, you are sure knowing SE its just that and its a lame attempt at surprise but then you crest a hill and the party just stops dead. Its exactly not what you expected and then when you realise what IS waiting at the end the reveal is all the more exciting because it set up your expectations then completely pulled a 180 on them. Its a eye candy dungeon thats great but trash heavy i would compared to The Fractal Continuum or Amdapoor Keep HM. But boy is that final boss Stone Vigil 2.0 in terms of a hard story wall for people with bad connections i tell you what!

Suzaku/Pheonix
 A lot of the stuff is just described with a shrug and "hey its signs of improvement" but good lord this is the best trial since Nidhogg hands down. Great looking boss, great arena, great music. Throw in some Rythmn game style mechanics -a sadly dwindling genre i adore- and this was all around a delight to run and i can't wait to do it again. Story is still completely barebones and uninteresting for the Four Lords stuff but but is this a step up compared to everything but Shinryu in the Trials category for Stormblood. Totally worth running just to see it. Unlike Byakko or Tsukuyomi this didn't just feel like the "storymode for dumb babbys" and it was easy to wipe in and people had to do the mechanics rather than get carried through by a healer. Fantastic fight and can't wait to try the harder version.

The Raid
 Omega has been a mixed bag for me. Yeah its great fan service but a lot of the first while visually cool are a bit too simple. For every Phantom Train theres 3 or 4 thats just 'a thing in the middle of a flat area' and after so much of that in Alexander i preferred the stuff that stands out. Thankfully -and i will not spoil the reveals- the fights for Omega's final ark are very satisfying. An easier final fight than Alex but on the whole the difficulty spiked up to a more satisfying degree. Making it feel less like a chore and more like a challenge which i the longrun is what feeds that need to conquer content and chase gear to increase your power an MMORPG needs for longevity. Part of why so many people seem to have dropped off in 4.1/4.2 was because the content was all pretty damn easy so there was no need to gear up much. Here across the board theres a minor but noticable increase to what i would consider closer to 'just right for an rpg challenge' instead of the previous 'dont pay attention its here for the cutscenes really' monotony of the difficulty in previous pre savage difficulties.

 The first fight is A pretty simple stance dance i would compare to Titan HM but with a faster beat to it. The second is the same for Nidhogg while the third feels like a lot Alex mechanics tied together and the finale is just kind of Kefka meets elements of Sephirot and Cruise Chaser. It starts simple, ramps up and up and then gently inclines down with a victory lap finale. It was just challenging enough for a blind pug to 2 or 3 shot everything but feel accomplished rather than checking off a objective when you did. I don't feel there are any like the Gravity fight in Deltascape that i simply just don't want to do after clearing because its anti fun for me. It was all a bit rounded in mechanics but fun. Sometimes you don't need a gimmick fight in a tier and thats just fine.
 As for the story? well its mixed. Its not as satisfying as all of Omega's build up was but at the same time feels a bit more thought out and deep compared to the earlier sections or parts of Alex. It almost felt like an episode of an anime, the ending in particular and while its a shame they don't expand more on Omega's origins some characters show up you don't expect and it really feels like a nod to the people who have been pretty vocal about missing the themes and tones of Heavensward ever since it finished.
 Still it left me wondering: Where the hell did Estinien go?

So overall i'm happier with this patch than the last two. I had a lot more fun and i think thats because of a number of things. The story is no longer split and as such can focus again, theres are new mechanics being experimented with -no doubt for the expansion being revealed at Fan Fest- that freshened things up and personally it feels to me as though there has been something of an ethos shift in the design team. They seem far more comfortable with challenging players a little more at the entry difficulty levels which is just fine by me. The content felt more satisfying to beat and i found myself going 'okay when i come back with better gear-' which is music to an MMO devs ears as thats a subconscious commitment to play more, because you want to.
 It also feels both in story and mechanics a lot more like "lets try to reinvent what we have" compared to Stormbloods thus far "lets try and make up new gimmicks". So many fights in this patch are "Oh this is Titan, but better", "Oh this is isgebind, but better" or "Oh this is Nidhogg, but better" and happening so many times feels a little too common to be just coincidence. It feels like they are looking at what worked and what players enjoyed more than throwing extremely casual content out and telling us we need to enjoy it wether we like it or not.

 For the most part 4.1 an 4.2 left me somewhat worried about the future of the game and my interest in it. 4.4 and to a lesser extent 4.3 has reinvigorated my interest and i am not alone. Its still a shame Eureka is getting so much focus and we never got a true relic questline to go on an adventure to get rather than a reskin from a mob grinder but on the whole this is the perfect time for this when buzz about the next expansion is starting to show. How many patches do we have left? personally i'm guessing 2 majors. One for the final Ivalice, the other for the end of the Four Lords and the story trial. Perhaps one in early December and the other in late March with another summer release for 5.0 in 2019?

 Its all speculation really, we don't even have the job conspiracy theories doing the rounds till we see the shirts Yoshi wears at Fan Fest in a few months of course, but people are back playing, people are enjoying the content again and personally i'm logging in to cap tomes, do my roullette dailies and i'm having fun doing so. Something i really burnt out on doing for the last few months PS4 meltdown or not. This is a hopeful sign of better things to come and if you have burnt out or taken a long break i recommend maybe paying for a month of sub time to check all this stuff out for a good time. The quality of life changes were nice, the new GATE at the Golden Saucer is fun but probably not for too many repeat tries but i'll still take it over the damn jar one thats not thankfully been replace with this one. As a RDM it was great to get buffs, not so great to see the FOTM crowd naturally jump on it and need all the gear i'm chasing in the new dungeons while bringing back the 4.0 "ummm, ya, no im a mage? why would i ever do melee attacks? lol" stuff that means i can be with 3 others in a trial and i'm the only one casting Verholy/flare because they simply don't know how. Thats not so fun. Overall its mixed but satisfying. Hopeful but still wanting more. Little more vague overall i know, but boy are we getting into end of ARR level spoiler stuff with this one folks which is making it real hard to talk about some of this stuff, but i guess that shows its still investing folks in the material, right?

Coming back from my Azeroth vacation

 So not only did it take forever to get my PS4 repaired but then i had to redownload the client, the hard drive died, then i had to redownload it again on crappy country wi-fi, yeesh!
 Downside is i missed my first seasonal event, upside is it was a jumping puzzle which on a PS4 is a goddamn recipe for frustration so i cannot say i'm that bothered. It was a change however to try the new World of Warcraft expansion to compare and contrast.

Overall Battle for Azeroth was 'fine' but really just fine. I never missed dropping the faction conflict idea when i picked up FFXIV nearly 5 years ago after Mists of Pandaria felt like the end of my interest in WoW as my main go to mmo and revisiting it now i can say my opinion hasn't changed. The questing was neat, certain elements like Wavecrest Manor almost certainly influenced by a certain Gridanian Manor house falling to ruin were a case of Blizzards infamous 'take successful ideas and make them your own' design ethos but on the whole? not a lot to do really. I outgeared most of the content that wasn't a weekly lock out and just kind of felt like the game wanted me to swap to another character after a week. Throw in crafting being something you can effectively be done with in about an hour or less depending on if you use the AH or rely on mob/node drops and that was completely uninteresting compared to the lauded crafting system in FFXIV where you actually feel like you are making something. Shame all my UI and macros were lost in the hardware failure so i gotta set that up to get back to it but you get the idea.
To sum it up i had some fun, but not enough to warrant a sub fee so i got my loremaster and pathfinder achievements in a week and considered it done. Maybe an interesting update can pull me back but i still left it feeling like FFXIV is my main MMORPG.

 That said of course i can't say its all sunshine and roses in my 'home' MMORPG now either. Upon logging back in i discovered the Rising event was on! Fun times and a complex event right?

...Right?

 Sadly no. The Rising this year was a quest where you talk to 3 npcs then turn it in for a thank you cutscene starring Yoshi P. Not to sound ungrateful or disingenuous but half a decade in this is starting to go from 'touching outreach from the developers to a userbase they are grateful for the patronage of' to 'uh, yeah dude, we get it' and the lacklustre nature of the event kind of felt like one more in a tiny list of disappointments that i think are why i've been playing -and obvious writing- less about FFXIV even before my hardware issues. In short i think the game is being spread to thin right now.

Look at everything we have gotten in Stormblood and a running theme for the most part is 'more stuff than HW, but less of each option'. Less dungeons, less floors in Deep Dungeon even, less quests, less story, less content for crafter/gatherers. In short the way it feels is like the Golden Saucer: Theres lots of things to do but depending on the person each person has only a little to do. You like Triple Triad? great. But that means nothing if Lords of Verminion and Chocobo races don't interest you at all.
 A lot of people argue that this is a problem because the Doma and Ala Mhigo stories should have been their own expansions and by trying to do both they split the art teams into twice the story, twice the art assetts, twice the everything, right?
 I can agree to a degree. Personally? i don't think its just that, or as others said the devs running out of new ideas. If i have to point an accusatory finger at any aspect of the game that i consider a detriment right now it has to be at Eureka.

 Now you should know by now that i love me some stupid grinds. I got all my Relics and Deep Dungeon weapons. Surely i should be eager for the grind right? its totally a nostalgic throwback to FFXI right? right??

 Wrong. Holy shit its so wrong. Think back to playing FFXI. Using switches to open hidden doors, guessing numbers and solving riddles to open chests, exploring to see whats hidden around every nook and cranny and so on? nope. You just kill mobs on an instanced island. Thats it. I cannot stress how much this shit is not made for me.  It is soulless, hollow, mind numbingly dull. Worst of all? I think this was designed as the structural backbone of the entire expansion and if thats the case? whoo boy they messed up.
 Remember me ranting about where the hell the new relic questline was? turns out its here. But its not a questline. Its farming one item. Forever. You just keep turning it in for upgrades. This is a horror show of monotony. I'm not doing X number of dungeons then X number of hunts then X number of raids. I'm killing mobs. Forever. I think i got to level 4 in its unique levelling system and straight up said 'sorry, i'm out' and never returned. To this day its had a new update with Eureka Pagos and i have never even visited it. I'm the typical 'heavy user' MMORPG player that consumes content voraciously and i simple wrote this off as redundant and not worth my time. I did Kuja 7 times instead, got my RDM weapon and that was that while my friends and people i know online were lamenting this hours of suffering where a death cost xp and reinforced this negative feedback loop. Constantly.

 I know its now how everyone plays but i play MMORPG's for exploration, crafting and working with a world of players together. Not sticking in one place and farming something forever. I play these games for fun and enjoyment. Not to pay to act like a farming bot which is essentially what Eureka is in execution.

 Now look at the last year of content and what if the reasons its spread so thin and numbers are dropping (last night i saw 2 people in Rhalgar's Reach and 3 in Kugane, the lowest i've ever seen in an mmo hub including current year FFXI Windurst and Bastok!) is because Eureka has been an experiment in design that was a mess behind the scenes, a mess in execution and everything outside the raid team have been hampered to facilitate this hot mess.

 I know its coming back on a bitter note but hey man, if you don't love the game you leave, if you care you voice your worries right? For me this is the first time i have worried about FFXIV. I considered it totally stable, chugging along as the 2nd place sub MMORPG to WoW. But now? what few people i know that are still playing either just gear up from raids, have nothing left from crafting to do and so chase achievements or are simple still logging in to keep their virtual house. Everyone else -and im talking people that have their Encyclopaedia Eorzea and Job Stone key chains and everything- have just stopped and said 'i hope they learn from this and improve or i'm just not coming back' and all i can think is 'hope do you burn so much goodwill in a single year?'

 Personally i'm still playing. I'm waiting for 4.4 where hopefully i can get back into it in a big way after the current period of trying to remember 20 odd classes hotbars, macros and subtleties again. That said i am really worrying if they are expecting Eureka to be the backbone of Stormblood that keeps players busy till 5.0 because personally? i'm never touching it again and don't know anyone personally who will either. Which is genuinely sad that this world we all love is chasing us away like that.

 All we can hope for really is that the team takes notice of any significant drop off and sees what is pushing people away. If not i don't think Eorzea can stand another Calamity and neither can the dev team.

-but hey at least they reverted that bloody Awful raid loot change. Did that even last two lockouts?

"Hey did you quit FFXIV?"

Quick response post to a question i got messaged a lot. No i haven't i just play on PS4 and my console straight up went into meltdown with the monster heatwave we are having and died. Can't replace it right now so unfortunately can't jump into all the recent content which sucks since i've been after more Deep Dungeon for ages.

Hopefully i can sort it out before my house is destroyed :p

Ever danced with Diablos under the pale Moonlight?

Man. People are not happy. They already weren't happy with Eureka. I mean i get it. I outright hate Eureka and have not touched it since my post about it. Its an anti-fun void i want to avoid in favour of time spent in Monster Hunter World or Warframe instead. Heresy i know!
 Like most however i was eager for news in terms of the next update. More story, more raids, all that good stuff right?

R-right?

Eeehh its been better lets put it that way. Or just say the reaction online is -shock of shocks- "Mixed". We have a name and a rough date. Under the Moonlight is the next major content update for FFXIV and its coming in the last week of May. Yes that means another month of nothing but Eureka. Yayyy... But theres a bunch of new things coming. Trouble is pretty much all but one or two come with a massive "buuuuut" followed by news that is leaving people disappointed, incredulous, apathetic or outright buttmad as the kids say.

So lets do the rundown:

-Patch 4.3 will be the end of the 'Doma story' but will continue afterwards in a rebuilding campaign. 
 Its odd that it feels like Stormblood has been around forever and yet still its story feels like things are wrapping up too quick. Most likely from splitting focus in two very different ways compared to the much more focussed -and in retrospect- superior experience of the Heavensward Main Story Quests. Thus far at least. As someone who used to main NIN i'll be a bit sad to see Doma wrap up but to be honest its also been quit a bland story so far and i would rather it ramp up and go out with a bang than just feel like overstaying its welcome just for busywork. The rebuilding is interesting as maybe this is where Rowena is going to set up her next shop to give the Relic quest? (please anywhere but Eureka!)

-MSQ with a trial that is being kept hidden and even being left out of the trailers.
 Lotta fan theories about this one. Is it Yotsuyus brother? is it fighting the newly crowned Doman King to protect her and stop him becoming a murderer? is it a certain someone shown at the end of the last MSQ's cutscenes? we just don't know and we have a wealth of choices this time. Of all the news in this somewhat sour liveletter this is easily the most exciting. Especially since the primals this time around have been considered a bit bland and this 'mystery' fight could be anything and with an extreme already confirmed folks are hoping for something special.

-The Four Lords story continues, but without a Primal fight.
So instead of the expected 'next on the checklist' animal spirit primal we have what looks like a single player trial against a familiar turtle in a half shell gone a bit gammy. Its been a while since 'The Wall of Rahbaun' so maybe it won't be a nightmare this time?

-More Hildebrand quests.
This is another high point. The last ones were an improvement and once again got a out loud chuckle or two from me. Can't wait for the detectives next chapter!

-Namazu Beast Tribe Dailies.
Honestly i don't know many players personally who kept up with the beast tribe dailies this time around. But people have levelled far fewer jobs so maybe the incentive isn't there anymore? personally i'm doing them now and then but the 'every mount must fly' ethos is getting a bit ridiculous when its stuff like a white elephant. Just my tastes but its a bit silly in a way that feels more 'videogame' than 'fantasy story' if that makes sense. Still there will be crafting and gathering this time around which -while i've capped all of mine- is a nice way to to have more stuff to do bar farm useless scrips.

-New instanced dungeon "The Swallows Compass".
Another dungeon set in the Doma region is a nice surprise but i guess if the story is wrapping up it makes sense. Being just the one i wonder how rewards will tier between current content and the new stuff that comes with it in the patch. Will it be a one and done for anyone not playing gear level catch up.

-Return to Ivalice part 2: The Ridorana Lighthouse.
More Ivalice story, this time more XII than Tactics but boy does the inside look better. The 'Lighthouse at the edge of the world' from FFXII looked great on the outside but inside was a lot of repeating tilesets of the same blue-grey stonework. All the clockwork and gears seems a lore more like Pharos Sirius on steriods and thats great. Buuuuuuuuut -and this is a big one- its coming with a new raid system. The 'only greed' system. Remember needing stuff for your job/role? yeah thats gone. Need is gone. Instead you can greed everything. Like everything everything. Dps that wants an easy queue? go Healer but roll on the Dps gear, to spite the Dps players competing more for their gear. Or go Dps for the larger number of spots to queue for and steal that tank gear the 3 tanks are now competing with everyone for.
Quite honestly i have no idea why they thought this was a good idea and we all know the incoming reaction will be "you rolled on my tank gear, fuck you i quit, find another tank to ninja" on repeat. This is maybe the worst idea the team has had since ARR and i can only imagine the inevitable shitstorms will hotfix this back to the current system fast.
But news of crafting and gathering tied into the raid is a neat new idea i will give them that.

-Deep Dungeon 2: Heaven on High.
Finally we get info on the new Deep Dungeon and surprising nobody its that giant tower of interlocking caskets in the Ruby Sea. What is a surprise is the apparent 31 floor main story levels and the following 69 are the intended for premades hard floors. Instead of the current 1-100 and 101-200 hard. Maybe its going to be super short, maybe the xp will be super great and finally an explosion of alt levelling will occur? Either way its something i loved in Heavensward returning far later than i hoped but better late than never.

-Eureka part 2: The Pagos Expedition.
Well i can't say i'm excited for this. More mobs to grind but in a snowy, coerthan looking map? great news for some but for me its just more content i will not be touching. I know im a grouch about it but in a game full of optional content its the only one i actively dislike after experiencing it.

-Ultimate Ballad Ultima Weapon.
Not quite the same mouthfull tier as "Super Saiyan God Super Saiyan" but we are getting there. Nice to see a beloved 2.0 fight return but apparently very different in ways not yet explained. Maybe Gaius plays a part? or the primals themselves?

-PVP updates.
Not groundbreaking but improving on it is no bad thing. A lot of games, even the giants like WoW, have a bad habit of shitting out pvp content and not working on improving it till the next paid expansion pack unless theres some truly game breaking or retention tanking content. Gotta admit they show pvp more love than most hotbar mmo devs do these days.

-The Final Fantasy XIV Companion App.
and heres the next shitstorm. Remember the app thats been in the works for over 2 years? well its finally showing up. With "funpay minibuys". Thats right once again Square Enix is taking a game you already buy the game, the expansions and pay a sub for and adding in more activities reliant on microtransactions.
 In this case an additional sub fee gets you 'kupo nuts' to use as premium currency to buy and sell on the market from your smart phone or tablet. In the grand scheme of things its lame and no big deal. As the latest in an increasing series of additional charges? players are starting to lose patience. Of course you can ignore it, it isn't game breaking and wont show up in game like cash shop gear and mounts. Still its getting close to that 'straw that broke the camels back' period for some people as they see another thing hyped up for ages be stained by the inclusion of real money transactions that not everyone can afford and definitely not everyone wants to support.
For some it is a none issue and there are cries of 'entitlement' and 'whining children' but personally i see it as gross. But i feel the same about a lot of systems like the retainers and character limits per server. Right now of course they aren't deal breakers and the core experience keeps us entertained. But this is a balancing act and every new micropayment makes us worry that one day that balance will shift and the love for the game isn't as great as the distain for greasy microtransactions. Its nothing right now to worry about really in my opinion. Still its a let down to see SE feel they need to resort to it at all.


so yeah. Mixed bag right? some neat stuff. Some disappointments and a couple of "what the hell are they thinking?!?" ideas that may bite them in the ass. Theres been a few comments of late about Yoshi having one expansion left in him and i think part of the freakout going on is the worry that maybe these strange choices are a sign of the 'saviour' of the game -and to many the entire brand- taking more of a backseat to new voices that don't have the same love for the product as anything but a money farm.
Could be worrying for nothing of course, but if people didn't worry they wouldn't care and thats one thing we all have in common when it comes to Eorzea, right?

"Magnai Fantasy XIV?"

God i miss when Square games used sprite art.

That is all.

Eureka: Maybe it should have stayed Forbidden?

 I'm not one to bitch and for once i am really tempted. Starting off great eh? but Eureka has arrived and i think its fair to say the reaction is 'mixed'. A big factor, in my opinion, behind the polarising nature of the content is quite simple: There isn't actually much content.

 You meet up with Krile in Kugane and start the quest to head to Eureka 'The Forbidden Land'. You take a boat to a newly discovered island in the Sea of Glass to investigate its mysteries. What does that conjure up for you? intrigue? treasure? adventure? yeah me too. By the time the intro cutscene ends those reveries are cut short with a pretty big "wweeeellllllll..." as you learn what you actually do on Eureka.

 Eureka is an island covered in mobs with a small hub settlement of 7 npcs and 3 aetherytes around the perimeter. You have a unique level here like Deep Dungeon gives you with Palace of the Dead but with a interesting twist. You find magicite that as you level lets you use a Magia Board to put points into it thats empowers you with one of six elemental choices. You have points in thunder? well thunder enemies do less damage and you do more to water but take more from earth. Basically two rock>paper>scissors rotations for the six elements. Neat idea right? you level up and gain new elements and then?

Well thats the question.
And the problem.

 See Eureka right now is basically this. Form a 8 man murderball and kill mobs to grind xp and a new collectible crystal currency to upgrade your lvl.70 artefact gear. Sometimes a rare mob or fate spawns and you zerg to it. You kill it for some stuff and lockboxes and then back to the grind. Thats it. Like thats all you do. Thus far at least.

 There is a questline of sorts with Krile but in my experience i've reached a point where each one has been 'go to X location to pick up a thing and come back' and beyond that it seems designed from the ground up to dissuade exploration. Those aetherytes around the island? i made it to one and promptly got a "you need to be level 9 to use this" message. Nothing to do but return back to base and get back to grinding. Grinding where the xp requirement appears to outright double per level, so naturally so does time to level. You might want to explore other areas right? but there are two issues. The first is monsters have huge aggro leashes and most ways are blocked by either monstrously high level mobs or intentionally placed opposing elements on mobs near choke points so the first element you pick to get through the starting mobs around town ensure you are weak to these stronger monsters and therefore you die easy. Second issue is the worst in my opinion. There is nothing to explore for.

Now i know the draw of an MMORPG can be different for everyone. Some want to raid. They want a large group based activity and a wall to climb and conquer. Others want to craft. They want to be the suppliers with a reputation for min maxing and playing the markets to be the go to merchants on their server. Everyone has their tastes and i get that. For me? exploration. I have a lot of flaws with the later expansions but the big draw of World of Warcraft for me was simple. You liked Warcraft 3? liked exploring every nook and cranny of those maps? well heres a complete open world version to explore to your hearts content! Throw in a huge chunk of environmental storytelling littered around the world thats just there so theres something neat to find and theres my draw. My passion for videogames to a T. Exploration because you never know what you might find. So when the answer to that here is a big fat Nothing you can imagine my disappointment. It may as well be an empty zone for me really.

This is of course to say nothing of the on death XP debt system which honestly i don't mind. I played FFXI and Maple Story so its not a big deal to me. But i can imagine it is to others when they don't have the carrot making the lost time seem worthwhile. Sure there is tiers of upgrading artefact gear that will take dozens to maybe over a hundred hours solo to complete but i look at the top tier weapon reward and just think why not get 10 tomestone tokens and do 7 kefka fights in party finder for the same or better?
 Folks who know me know i love a grind. I got all my relic and deep dungeon weapons after all. So hearing me of all people complain must seem strange or even hypocritical. Thing is its not the grind thats the issue but the structure. Think of it like cleaning your room as a kid. You see the whole as a daunting task eating up your after school time so what do you do? you compartmentalise. You see your desk as a job. When its clean you did the job. Then under your bed and so on. You make it feel like manageable little pieces of the whole so the job in its entirety is easier to get through. Thats how the Relic grind works. You aren't farming a huge checklist of all the items for one long turn in going from a lvl.60 blue to a Lux Anima relic in HW content are you? well, maybe nowadays maybe but at the time? of course not. Its tiny chunks. Waystops on the way to the final destination with their own tangible rewards. Even if its just a unique model. It makes the journey feel worth it. Right now Eureka does not feel worth it.

  To further explain i'll use two comparisons. Diadem in Heavensward and The Isle of Thunder in World of Warcraft's excellent Thunder King patch during its Mists of Pandaria expansion. In Diadem you literally grind. You fill a bar as the singular core objective with some rare prizes from fates along the way. Yet we also ran around looking for hidden chests didn't we? theres treasure in them thar hills if only you can be the player who finds it. Same thing to a degree in WoW. The Isle of Thunder is an instanced island off the coast with lots of mobs much stronger than the mainland and players grind activities and daily quests to unlock wings of a raid as a server. The island itself was a foggy old ruin littered with treasures and toys to find. You were just doing repetitious mob killing to fill a bar but you didn't care because minute to minute gameplay was based on exploration for those treasures. Filling the checklist of objectives was just to facilitate that experience. Not the sum of the contents reason for being.

 Yet nothing like that exists on Eureka at the time of writing this. Nothing. Its a field of mobs to kill. Something you can do in dungeons for your weekly tome cap. Something you can do out in the world for hunts or fates to level alt jobs or get hunt log rewards. Its just a overwhelming and constant sense of 'this is time better spent doing any other in game activity. Or worse a feeling of "i don't want to play this at all, i think i'm going to play something else and take a break from FFXIV for now" and its been days and i'm already seeing that.

 I began this saying i'm not one to bitch and often thats true. However we have been teased this content for over a year. A real world year of "Diadem 2.0 coming soon and the futures so bright you gotta wear shades!" and this is what we have as the result of a year of R&D on how to improve Diadem?

 Maybe theres more switches to throw to unlock stuff as enough players reach the caps. Maybe there is some secret trial waiting for players to discover. Maybe theres a patch to shower us with an embarrassment of other activities like the Relic Weapons that still have yet to surface that will make this seem like nothing but ground work for the future.

 But right now? this content is bad. Real bad. If you love a game and want to see it improve you have to rip the band aid off and say something isn't fun. You pay a subscription fee to access this stuff right? sure theres always the binary crowd that believes there are two camps of "true fans" and "evil haters" and nothing in between but sometimes even the best teams can simply disappoint. For me this is the first time the FFXIV team has disappointed me and thats sad to say. I hope it improves and god knows if any team has shown they can turn something around its this one right?

For now at least i think i'm done with Eureka. I hope i have a reason to come back and explore someday but this is a firm 'no thank you' on this content from me and if you like it more power to you and i hope it keeps you entertained but me? i think i'm going to stick to Chocobo Racing, Lords of Verminion, Treasures Maps or something, anything else but Eureka.

They sold us a return to FFXI style mechanics and after a few days my only reaction was "i would rather be playing FFXI right now instead". If thats not a failure of the game designer in terms of consumer reaction i don't know what is and thats the saddest thing about all of this.

The Sigmascape in review

Boy was i excited for this one as a big FFVI fan. Just like Ozma in Heavensward i have once again not been disappointed. Which was a nice surprise after i honestly did not care for Deltascape at all. Choice of bosses, style of fights -the gravity manipulation fight in particular was so one note and dull- but also in theme. Conversely here we have something that felt far more faithful to the tone of the game it was lifting from instead of just 'HEY REMEMBER THESE!?' which i find always reeks of lazy design choices when its something from an earlier game but not matching the 'real' versions tone. It was a big nitpick i had with games like Dark Souls 3 that were at times overly reliant on predecessors to name a particularly egregious example.
 This time though? i dug it. I enjoyed myself and found myself going 'oh man thats cool' a fair few times as new mechanics appeared instead of just reskins of primal or coil boss abilities showed up. I think its a little easier than Deltascape but that could also be after multiple patches to balance jobs and let people do the numbers on the jobs -though its odd i have not seen one SAM in Sigmascape thus far but multiples of everything else. Personally i'm not 'done' so to speak with crafting and gathering and working on pve jobs again but still stuck to RDM for this raid. In PUG's (pick up groups) i have found self healing and -more importantly- the combination of Swiftcast and a res invaluable since no bloody SMN players seem to remember they can do it nowadays. So bare in mind this is the opinion of a ranged dps with self heals and a res that saved peoples bacon far more often than i expected as i talk about the fights.

Boss #1- The Phantom Train/Ghost Train:
So i have to admit i am predisposed to love this fight. The original in FFVI is easily one of my favourite moments in that game and the series. The use of different layers of Paralax Scrolling as this rusty old train packed with Ghosts rolled through the foggy woodlands in the Doman Countryside was mindblowing back on the SNES or even later on the PS1 as an example of sprite art at its best. The music, the mood and the fight ending in something Godbert Manderville would be proud of made it a great moment in Final Fantasy history. So when i see the train rendered on PS4 in full 3D with the same spooky music fading into the FFVI theme as you ride through those same foggy woods i had a huge grin on my face. That said this is easily the most easy to beat raid fight in FFXIV since maybe ADS in the First Binding Coil or Oppressor in Alexander. You use light to purify ghosts, avoid aoes and thats really as hard as it gets. It reuses the Alex idea of separating players for a small dps race against a ghost which was visually really neat but again very simple. It is a fight that is mostly just pure fan service. Its easy but if you love the original it pays homage to then its also extremely enjoyable.

 Boss #2 - Chaddarnook, Demon of the Painting: Talk about a step up in mechanics. This is one of those fights like Ifrit Extreme where you know some PUG's will find someone screaming "God dammit no, listen! you cannot skip X mechanic or we wipe!" where you simply cannot go in blind and brute force it. 
Like Catastrophe in Deltascape or the Vrill mechanic in Lakshmi this is a 'keep your mouse/touchpad on the extra button fight' where you bring paintings to life in a Reverse of a certain P5 fight to generate counters to the abilities Caddarnook is granted by possessing certain paintings. It is a step up in raid awareness -as i think the second should be after the dps check of the first in most raids- and while visually i wasn't a fan it keeps you on your toes and moving. There is always something to watch out for so you cannot 'go tunnel vision' and just go through the motions of your rotation and hope the group can power through damage. You simply can't and boy did i have to cast a lot of Verraise in this one. Much to the healers exasperated thanks. Great boss in terms of mechanics and difficulty but visually its a dude in a robe and thats kind of bleh.

 Boss #3 - The Guardian: Now personally i found this much easier but i think that could honestly be because the mechanics of Chaddarnook are just much less well explained than Guardians.
It has a monitor behind it that shows what FFVI monster its about to use the ability of and/or summon. There are new mechanics like tracking missiles, bomb defusal and so on but because its so clearly explained then its kind of a breeze to actually get through. The boss itself is a generic-ish magitek walker and its mechanics are simple and well explained through gameplay. It is a fair, competant boss but ultimately forgettable and thus far is maybe one of the weakest bosses in Stormblood interms of staying power after the instance is complete. Not great, not bad. Just very vanilla 'MMORPG raid boss' in every respect. It gets the job done but never excels at anything of note.

Boss #4 - Kefka: and here we get to the boss everybody was most interested in. Kefka Palazzo. Not unlike certain characters we have already encountered in FFXIV he was a high ranking general for the Empire that destroyed Doma in FFVI. But he was bloodthirsty and took malicious joy in the suffering of others and ultimately turned on not just his emperor but the entire world. Ascending to godhood and remaking the world into the 'World of Ruin' that made up the games second overworld map. So how do you make that into a raid boss? basically the same way they did with Ozma. What is it? what is their nature? what are their abilities? now lets ignore their original boss fight and make an mmo fight around that instead!

Kefka is a liar, a cheat and a bad comedian. The fight reflects this and gets across his character while at the same time does kind of downplay his actual scale and scope in much the same way X Death was treated in Deltascape. Its not terrible mind you. Seeing a certain giant pillar from FFVI rise up around the arena was great but ultimately there are very few interesting mechanics beyond 'if the aoe mark as ? in it then you get IN rather than OUT of it. Beyond that you look away from the tower when it does its gaze or look at it if its yellow. Its trying things that might be novel if we hadn't just had something basically identical with the final boss of Rabanastre in the last patch. Don't get me wrong the fight is an excellent encounter and is much more enjoyable than X Death in my opinion. It just feels like it could have been Ozma 2.0 and instead we just got a mix of 2 or 3 primal fights in the same patch we have a dungeon boss that is literally a mix of 3 primal abilities.

It just feels like a good fight that would be far more impressive if it came out before all the things that in hindsight were probably testing the abilities he uses in the previous patch. Its just a bit of a shame one of the biggest villains in the series gets just a "solid 7.10" experience for his fight. That said i still can't wait to do it on my next lockout so thats really what matters in a persist, repeatable structure of content i suppose.

 All in all i think Sigmascape is a bit of a mixed bag. Its never bad i will give it that and when its good its great. Its just not the slamdunk i feel it could have been and thats a bit of a downer. I still enjoy it more than Deltascape mind you. So its easily a step in the right direction for me. I just worry a bit about whats next. A lot of people are expecting Sephiroth or Ultemicia as the next 'scapes final boss and how do you make either of those into some kind of fun fight without turning them into just X Death again?

Its again just my opinion but i feel the final bosses of each tier should feel less like another raid boss on a ride and more like a hard/extreme primal interrupting the flow. They are the end. For a tier at least. You should be challenged by them to a degree even in the normal mode and my big complaint for Omega's raid across all 8 fights is that it doesn't feel like the events match the gravity of the story its trying to tell whereas Alexander -love or hate some of the fights- really did feel like a complete experience rather than a 'greatest hits' of Final Fantasy in a Dragonball Super style bland tournament setting.

I know thats ending on a bit of a downer and i did like what happened at the end of this tier of raid content with Midgardsormer but it just feels like another side story raid like Void Ark rather than the next Coil/Alex and we already have the honestly more interesting Ivalice storyline for that so for now at least Omega just feels a little inconsequential and disconnected from the world proper and i hoped this tier would remedy that somewhat. 

Question now of course is 'how many tiers left?' because Yoshi is being pretty coy about how many content patches Stormblood is planned to have. Its the beginnings of Spring 2018 and still no Eurea, still no Relic, still no story resolution in sight. We don't know what will be our Nidhogg this expansion, what our endgame circa final patch will be. We only just got a hint at what this expansions 'rebuilding settlement' will be in Doma and it feels at this rate as though maybe theres not one but two or three more tiers left in this and maybe that can make me care about the story more?

I hope so.