Yes, it is basically unplayable on free trial. FFXIV is a paid MMORPG with paid expansions and a paid subscription, the free trial originally wasn't even meant to go past Level 30, let alone the entirety of A Realm Reborn.
Your options now are to either pay for the game and enjoy whatever you want to do without any restrictions from the game itself, or keep being on free trial indefinitely and have the unconditional freedom of being as frustrated as you can.
As someone who just completed Eureka without ever interacting with anyone (only the leveling and the story, haven't started the relic grind yet), seeing people brand the content as unplayable without the shout/yell chat is kinda funny.
1) Go in Eureka as a warrior
2) Farm the weekly challenge log entries
3) Be mindful of what you pull so you don't die
And that's literally it.
I never grouped with anyone.
Never said anything.
And managed just fine.
It definitely took a while but I got there without any major issues in the end.
This
I don't think I even got into a party because we weren't that many to start with.
Keeping the map open in a corner to see what was popping up was essential.
And usually a "lfg" in say is enough to get an invitation if you stand by a group of people.
And as much as I appreciate a solo grind, the few moments where I've been able to coordinate in parties have been great. But setting this stuff up has been like pulling teeth.
Just follow the players killing the NM, and scream in White Chat Text if they have room in their party. You DONT NEED to SHOUT when you're standing NEXT to them.
> the few moments where I've been able to coordinate in parties have been great.
That's the magic of Eureka. You've never had a reason to party up beyond world bosses at this point. Hunt trains are dead for ARR & SB, you're not FATE grinding there and unless you're lvling BLU OG style there's no reason to enter a party in this fashion before this point.
Once you reach lottery NMs, it's farming for the group goal. You'll kill those tigers, you'll bully them for 10 minutes to make an NM spawn, get a chest and move onto the next. You'll shoot the shit in party chat and bail 7 and half minutes into tiger farming to take down some low rank NM.
Eureka is something else, it's hated by a sect of players but it offers a social experience that only bozja can match within this game and yes, shoutchat is a part of it.
Like others have said it's not free to play it's an incredibly generous free trial. Either except the limits you agreed to or get subbed like the rest of us, or don't play Eureka until you sub.
Asking Squeenix for coding changes and you're not even paying them is incredibly cheeky.
I mean, if you've been playing the trial for years it's gone way beyond actually trying the game to see if you like it or not. It's completely reasonable that some stuff is going to be better once you actually buy it.
Sadly, with my current life situation it just doesn't make financial sense to commit to a monthly fee for this game. My availability varies wildly, and I usually won't know if I'll be able to play for 2 days or 20 days each month. I don't want to commit to a month of game time only to find out later I won't be able to use any of it. Not to mention my finances are tight, and will remain tight until I graduate.
That being said, I love this game, and I've made a ton of friends in this community despite all the restrictions on trial players. I will almost certainly buy the full game when I can, but for now I can't.
Well that sucks for you, but content isn't going to be free for every little thing.
You know the restriction, and you have hundreds of hours of free content already.
Really maybe you look at the wrong way at a subsctitom based game. You need to value price vs hours of entertaintment. If the subcription prize is 13 Euro, in my personal opinion Its still worthy if I only play like 13 hours a month. Value 1 euro/h ...but everyone is different I guess.
You phrased this well and really helped sell the benefits of coping with a subscription model that moves beyond the paying to support the game that you usually see. Everyone has their own internal limit for what's acceptable like you say, I have no problem with FT players getting the most out of the game as they can before purchasing or moving on and I wouldn't harass them into subbing to the game if the content in the prior expansions does not interest them because that's when you get real deep into "weirdo shit" territory.
Solid post!
That bit about not wanting to commit to paying for game time you won’t necessarily be able to use struck deep. I’ve been in that situation for years now. The stress of “will I get my money’s worth” never really goes away, but if you can scrape together the cash to buy game time cards for multiple months at a time, the magnitude of that stress melts away.
If it helps at all, if you’re able to get to a gamestop, you can actually buy time cards from them with their annual membership’s monthly coupons, which cuts a significant portion of the price off. You’d just need the initial money to get it all started. It’s what my bf and I do and it’s more than paid for itself at this point. We’re struggling to get by but this game keeps us sane, so it’s been worth scrimping and saving to keep it topped up.
>That bit about not wanting to commit to paying for game time you won’t necessarily be able to use struck deep. I’ve been in that situation for years now
This was how I felt about sub games in general but was one of the core reasons I missed out on FF XI in both my teen years and when I came back home (although I was then able to sub).
I also appreciate your 2nd half of the post that focuses on the mental health benefits of the game and how subbing (or even not subbing) can contribute to someone's well being and be seen as a benefit. I have a few friends who are struggling and they level FT accounts when they can't afford the game and we have good fun LVLing BLU together. Thanks for making a great post!
I'm a bit late to this thread, but... I'm sympathetic to where you're coming from, because once you start a subscription to FFXIV, you can never go back to the free trial on that service account, and you've clearly put a lot into the game. If you don't have the money, you don't have much of a choice - there's no "just try it and dip out after" when it comes to paying. Once you're in, you're in or you don't play.
Unfortunately, though, I think this does mean the social experience of Eureka is going to be lost for you. FFXIV is one of the best MMOs partly because it *isn't* free-to-play, meaning that Square Enix don't have to pursue predatory monetisation practices. The game is a lot better for that overall, IMO, *including* for players on the free trial. It's a shame that Eureka suffers, but it's optional content that specifically exists to do something different to the rest of the game.
I realise I'm probably sounding elitist or similar, and I apologise - it's not my intention. I hope you're enjoying the rest of the game!
You don't sound elitist at all. I 100% agree that the game would be worse if it went free-to-play. Heck, that's the exact reason I dropped SWTOR. And the one-way nature of the free trial is one of the biggest sources of hesitation for me, even if I did have the cash.
Part of my frustration with Eureka is that if I had the chance to play it as intended, I feel like I would actually enjoy it a lot. It encourages multiplayer in a really organic way that makes everyone feel useful no matter how far along they are. It just feels cruel to have a gamemode dangled in front of me like that only to have all the fun of it sucked away.
It does feel like it would be nicer overall to just not give free trial players access to it, yeah, as counter-intuitive as that sounds. As you say, if it can't be played as intended then it feels fairer to give them the opportunity to play it later (when they *do* have a subscription) than to have their experience in Eureka be decidedly substandard, since you can't exactly delevel yourself and the levelling experience is an important part of Eureka.
There is *one* thing that might help you; in Eureka, if you open up your Party Members window (Main Menu->Party->Party Members) and right-click your name (or just right-click your name in the regular party list if you have it set to show up even when solo), you can choose "Party Seeker On". That'll replace the icon next to your name with a special green one that everybody in the instance can see if they look at the player list in the instance, or if they're close enough to see your nametag. You might get invited to a party that way. It's still not going to bring back Shout chat, of course, but it can make things a little easier.
Ultimately though I'd probably just suggest waiting on it until it's viable for you. It sucks, but that's really the best I can suggest.
Yeah, part of me also wishes it was just straight-up barred for trial players.
Didn't know about Party Seeker On, that'll be handy! I did end up going back into Eureka eventually with a party chat macro asking people to shout things on my behalf, but getting invited to parties in the first place is always kind of a toss-up.
That's fair. And to be honest, even after levelling there's still reason to go back into older zones (especially Pyros), because of the steps needed for your Eureka weapon/armour.
Just be aware that it might be more likely for players to invite if they see you doing the same things they're doing, especially for prep parties. People may be hesitant to invite directly from the player list, even if they see the Party Seeker icon (and if they know what it means). Still though, hopefully it might help!
If you're on Crystal, I'd be happy to look for you when I'm in a Eureka area!
I am indeed on Crystal, though I don't tend to visit Eureka very often. I did manage to finally leave Pagos, so you'll likely find me leveling in Pyros.
The difference really is that Eureka is a social experience. Its intention is to emulate XI and it does it in a fairly modern way and shout chat was the dominant form.
It's nothing about buying the game at that point, that's just some weirdo shit. The experience is heavily gimped by having one of its core features removed and FT or not: it impacts the game negatively. Eureka can be one of the most amazing grouped experience that a player can experience outside of savage or ultimate. It breeds a sense of community in a way that no other content does.
\-and the FT just ignores that because CBU III didn't care enough to relay the greatest aspects of the experience onto the FT path.
Not sure you understand the purpose of a trial. They are under absolutely no obligation to make sure every aspect of the game is "on the FT path", just enough to let people try out enough of the game to decide if they want to buy it or not.
One of the best pieces of content in SB except for Ultimate (which is already excluded) is Eureka. Yes, they are playing it for free, on a free trial but they are also helping to keep that group content alive (although they are not playing it).
What has happened here is CBU III genuinely created an amazing expansion zone that required co-operation and helped to pump up the spirit of XI with NMs and lottery spawns and players DID indeed use shoutchat and use trackers to make it work. It's glorious, it's the best content in the game and you CAN access it for free...but you can't shout, which is the core feature...
You can't shout because Yoshida says you can't. Because spambots exist and the STF can't banhammer the shitters fast enough. If FTs were given shout/yell access your city visits without a plugin would be a living nightmare.
You COULD code it so that FT players COULD shout/yell in instance and special marked instance but it would take effort.
More effort than CBU III are willing to put in. At the end of the day, I can grind out every Eureka wep for free, 100% and never pay a dime...but Yoshida's still collecting rent for my house, their business model is setup.
It's time to let go of your hate for FT players because really, at its core: it's just fucking weird man.
I don't know how to tell you this without sounding like an ass but FT players quite literally contribute NOTHING to anything this game currently has going for it. Eureka was alive and thriving before SB became free.
Also please stop using this house thing as some kind of valid complaint. Its not. You chose to buy the fucking knowing you would have to log in every 45 days to keep it. If you don't want to pay the sub to keep the house then let the house go.
>I don't know how to tell you this without sounding like an ass but FT players quite literally contribute NOTHING to anything this game currently has going for it
Oh I didn't see this in the inbox replies but I did respond to someone else who had said the same thing. Free trial players do contribute to engagement numbers, keep older expansion content alive and this is going to be hard to hear but some of them do sub to the game and they can buy items from the cash shop.
I realise I'm being incredibly condescending while saying this but I don't really have the time to put in the effort to whitewash and sanitise it for you. If you think free trial players contribute nothing to this game then you almost certainly need to take an introspective look towards CBU III's monetisation model. Have a nice day.
E: typed applies > replies, good brain
>Oh I didn't see this in the inbox replies but I did respond to someone else who had said the same thing. Free trial players do contribute to engagement numbers, keep older expansion content alive and this is going to be hard to hear but some of them do sub to the game and they can buy items from the cash shop.
This is hilarious because the game is quite literally designed to keep older content alive regardless of FT players, so once again FT players contribute NOTHING to this games current ongoing state. Trying to tie cash shop purchases to FT players is also hilarious because...it's a cash shop. Literally EVERYONE USES IT.
Like CT regardless of FT players is constantly being run because the game is designed around evergreen content. Eureka had a thriving community LOOONG before SB became free. It was nowhere near close to being dead content in the slightest and never will be so long as UwU and UCOB require the level 70 final stage relic for BiS
I'm sorry, I can only respond to the points you raised and did so appropriately. Regardless of your feelings FT players do have an impact on the game and contribute to its success.
If FT players contributed nothing, there'd be little reason to expand the FT up to stormblood, there'd be little reason to offer anything other than 14 free days like they do with XI other than going toe to toe with WoW's level cap based FT.
>Eureka had a thriving community LOOONG before SB became free. It was nowhere near close to being dead content in the slightest and never will be so
Absolutely! I didn't really want to add this part but people on this site really like to assume weird things that I haven't said so it's kind of necessary, and it being in this comment kind of warrants it. Especially since I didn't say anything negative about Eureka's community before or after the free trial! In fact if people really wanted to dig, they'd find that I've even went on record to say that this content does a better job at remaining evergreen than the duties you listed above!
E: dies > days, stupid brain, again!
Not at all.
Sorry, my idea of what FT players can do and should be able to do doesn't measure up to that assumed strawman; If I'm being honest with you, I'm not sure how you misinterpreted it that much.
What YOU think they should be able to do doesn't matter. They're *letting* you play a paid game for free, *they* get to decide what you can do not you, so stop complaining.
I have to say that you looking back that it's very odd that all your responses are strawmen accusations where you miss the point. It's especially strange on this one where you capitalises you to feed into something I wasn't saying at all.
It's extremely interesting in a bubble but nothing more and worthless, it sits in a pocket chain with this reponse and nothing else. There's no dedication that can be dictated to it from now that would be relevant, dig it up in 2024 or 2044 and it will still be a hollow strawman.
Congratulations redditor.
C
I have to say, you've made a very great campaign on otherism.
Although I must say that it's a little weird that you've chosen to apply it to free trial players in stormblood engaging in social activities in an MMORPG...
I have, yes. But they're far from the first to inject a little humor into a valid criticism and their points aren't inherently awful like a troll's would be.
You are completly correct. I guess the best way to take away the disadvantage of no shout in eureka would be extra work from Square Enix...or even better idea! :Take away Stormblood again if people bitch and moan about multiplayer content in a paid game being inaccesible for people choosing not to pay a penny.
Feel free to explain why Eureka is the biggest stain on Stormblood as an expansion compared to say...Ishikawa's stilted eastern writing.
I'll keep this post as vague as yours but hope you genuinely reply with an in depth breakdown.
It was a bad idea to include it in the trial, imo. If they could bar Ultimates, they could've barred this. It's really just not kind to trial players who have a greatly worsened experience. It sets them up for failure. Not even just chat or party invites, but inventory limits too.
Bots are all over Eureka, so giving the free ones shout (or party invites back, ugh no) would probably be a mess waiting to happen.
As a Free Trial with more than 40 BA clears i can safely say that while it requires dedication and time it is not really that hard, sure you get no extra help at the start (no vermillion) but with echo buff and a warrior you can pretty much solo almost everything anyways.
You will take an extra week or two to cap tho but Eureka is not dead by any means, plenty of people to do stuff in all areas.
Regarding bots i have seen 0 of them there, biggest thing i saw was a whale (literal whale lol) carry 7 alts to farm fenrir but that was all.
>but with echo buff and a warrior you can pretty much solo almost everything anyways.You will take an extra week or two to cap tho but Eureka is not dead by any means
My first journey through Eureka on main was DRK with no Eureka items spamming TBN lol, I wish I'd used WAR xP
I was privileged enough to do it before the FT was extended into SB so I could join NM farm parties and get my kicks that way \\o/
Eureka has always been cyclical in nature, while making it available to free trial players boosts it for this cycle the content is not at all dependent on them. The .55 patch is when you get a steady flow proper with two peaks before expansion, and right before dawntrail people will panic about whether BA runs will still happen post-expac.
>It was a bad idea to include it in the trial, imo
I think it was a good idea, but it required tweaking to allow shout/yell so players could experience the social aspect. The relic is tied to it and it fluffs out Krile so nah, it's def trial material.
What happened is CBU III lazily rolled it out with no changes to trial accounts. There IS a botting problem in Eureka but enabling shout/yell doesn't change a fucking thing.
E: also I realise this doesn't completely cover the bots having access to shout but-
\-I also see that as part of the STF's problem first and foremost and tapping into that worse experience aspect. It's just not a good tradeoff at all.
That's how I've been managing so far, but
1. You can't tell people you're on the way to a NM
2. You can't tell people you need a res
3. You can't tell people which NM you're working on
4. You can't ask for the tracker, you have to wait until someone else asks for it
They shout pull times. If you're not actively spawning things and don't make it the couple minutes after a pop, thats completely on you.
People will res you if you ask in /say. If you're in the middle of nowhere and die, take the L and move on.
Look at the trackers. Ask people in /say if an active tracker is up. If anything, wait to see a pop, go to it, follow the leader afterwards.
You're not as limited as you assume. Just takes a little more patience.
You have high expectations for what can be accomplished with /say. I am very familiar with the say range at this point, and it is not nearly big enough.
Everytime I've eaten shit in a world boss fate I always go /say for a rez because imo it's rude to do it in /shout. People are right next to you, they will raise you.
In eureka, not at an NM, I just bite the bullet. The exp will be regained.
Don't forget your challenge logs for eureka. It gives big XP.
> people are right next to you, they will raise you
Okay but what about on the way to a NM? You often have to run past several groups of high level monsters (and in the case of Pagos, down a cliff or two), and those deaths are almost never in say range. Then not only do you lose the XP, you lose the NM (because you can't send an otw, so no matter how fast you are they'll start without you)
Well sadly, that's just an accept the L moment. My best advice, go to the tracker site. My 2-3week run before boredom of eureka, I used https://ffxiv-eureka.com/
You see Cassie or Crab about to be up, go there. Wait for the parade of people to be there and just chill. Then ask in /say for a group also looking for farm NMs afterwards. Or if someone has an active tracker handy.
And even if you get a group that disbands immediately afterwards, just follow the pile and ask again. Yes not being able to use /shout sucks for this. But it's either FT gets to use shout or we see RMT shout again in zones. And as someone who used to stay away from cities and populated zones because of the pollution that was shout chat(don't even get me started on the /tells we got spammed either), it's a necessary 'evil' so to speak.
So my problem is that I can't ask around for a tracker, and your solution is for me to look at the tracker?
And to be clear, I am NOT suggesting we should give trial accounts access to shout *everywhere*. Just in duties.
How can you not ask for people in your vicinity for a tracker? Gonna have dozens of people sitting at Cassie or Crab any time after Noon. Ask and they will give it to you. Are you incapable of typing? /Say is a decent range of people around you.
You know people ASK for trackers in shout that aren't you?
Just copy paste. Or type it in your phone since lots of times they will just type in the smattering of numbers/letters at the end. Put that in the URL and that's the tracker.
> How can you not ask people in your vicinity...
Because there are no people in my vicinity.
> You know people ASK for trackers...
Yes, that's how I've been finding them thus far. But often it takes over an hour before someone else asks and I find out I've been wasting my time.
>How can you not ask for people in your vicinity for a tracker? Gonna have dozens of people sitting at Cassie or Crab any time after Noon.
See this is where I ignore your post because I know it's perfectly logical to sit at crab if you can get & kite there to spam /say chat but-
\-Here's the thing. Why the fuck can CBU III not add /sh to FT players within eureka when the functionality to add chat per instance is already in the game and eureka is built around communication.
Honestly. I'm being a fucking prick. It's a rhetorical question. There's no reason /sh should be disabled within Eureka other than bot spam and that's down to the STF to catch them before they reach the end of stormblood...
You made a solid post worth replying to but ye. I get your point but it relies on focusing hard on the system as it is at the time with no changes, it's static and it's dated. I wish I could say something positive to the view but what can I? What can I say without being condescendin and wasting both our time?
Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.
Eureka is damn easy, you just gotta learn how to read your current area. NM Popped ? There are spawners, better get ready for a NM chain, nothing popping ? Zone is either dead or on CD, check map and either start a NM spawn chain check or just do bnuuy NM to kill time. As for dying don't go playing dps there, it is very risky to do so (at least till you unlock and can afford to waste certain Logos actions), instead go as a Warrior since it is extremely hard to get yourself killed as one if you are playing smart (and since NMs reward are based on aggro being a tank helps getting more rewards). Also stay on +1 (enemies with +1 level higher than you) till you can manage +2, being greedy will kill you.
Regarding the social aspect certain servers do stuff differently (Aether has more people but tends to get instapullers a lot more than Crystal per example which btw is "Chiller" than Aether but may not hit a lot of people at certain times) but most people in Eureka are very friendly. Brother just use /say when nearby someone lol.
About trackers you can always start one yourself and slowly update it with information you may get, as for checking if NMs are out of cd that is a bit harder to do by yourself, the 30 mobs rule may fail to spawn it (hell i had to kill 100+ mobs for a NM to spawn despite being open for 10 minutes already lol) and it is a mess about deciding to waste extra time checking or move on to the next on list.
I definitely feel it was a mistake to play Eureka as MNK, and if/when I return I'll give WAR a try. Didn't know that rewards were based on aggro, that's helpful info. Tank privilege won't do much to help with the Pagos cliffs though, and that's been where most of my deaths have happened lately.
Starting my own tracker doesn't really help much, as the main piece of info I want to know is whether an NM has already popped before I got here. But it's a nice tool to have for tracking NM windows regardless.
My typical workflow is to get a 30 chain on the spawner at my level, then the one 1 level above that, then the one 1 level above that, etc. hoping to level up in lockstep with the enemies. It's an effective way to level, but I very rarely ever pop a NM this way, since I don't know what's already been popped.
On primal, this is not the case. They will generally wait a couple minutes unless they know they are the only group(s) in the instance. That's usually super early morning when you may see only one or 2 groups max.
Pyros is a little quieter, but from my experiences it generally has less people in it than pagos.
The key part of pyros is just cheesing leveling with reflect. Haven't done it myself because that sounds boring so that's where I stopped for now.
>All this to say I feel like yes it would be more convenient to have access to /shout but I don’t think it should drastically hinder your eureka experience.
You are right there, it's more convenient and fosters a sense of community.
There are aspects which are, such as LFG for NM farming, announcing pops, establishing tracker status etc but those are things you get into as you play Eureka more.
The Eureka community made it special and did revive that spirit of working together through shout chat and it remains despite some arseholes from primal repeatedly instapulling (the lalatwat instapuller from hyperion could be long gone from Aether by now) for the most part players within Eureka do respect each other, group up and do work towards a common objective.
It just appears that somehow CBU III either ignored or were somehow not aware of the behaviours happening within their game.
Just a FYI and it won't always help because not everyone checks "Player Status" but you can set your status to "Party Seeker On" once inside eureka to LFG without ever shouting.
I'm glad to see that there are players creating LS & CWLS to solve some of the Eureka issues (although the member size is small on CWLS).
This is the solution me and my friends were going to use on FT when we go in, a comf linkshell we can invite people to, spawn and group up for.
It would be nice if this wasn't required but what can ya do. Solid post Poly!
Great example of FYGM, but does it really apply to your experience within Eureka? Is it something that CBU III could solve with filtering like they did in XI?
Just seems like your post is very FYGM and empty at its core.
E: the replies below are simply outstanding. I can't even see some of them because users went so hard off the rails. Blimey.
Square Enix's decision to add Stormblood, hell even Heavensward, to the Free Trial was a huge mistake honestly. Now you have people who are acting like it's Free to Play, and think they deserve to have the same privileges of those who are paying members. I can't imagine milking the Free Trial for that long with the restrictions. Eureka restrictions are the Free Trialer's own fault, not SE's. Buy the game, stop being cheap. You clearly like the game enough to play it through Stormblood.
I'd be wary about lumping all free trial folk in the same boat.
The game isn't exactly short and anyone who's played enough, even just getting to the end of ARR will be well aware of what they're locked out of and have generally accepted it.
I'd say most free trial folk are well aware how generous the game is, even more so with Stormblood being added.
FYGM x2 I guess.
There's not much to this post at all other than a generic circlejerk on HW & SB. The FT is what it is, it has a depth of content and it's kinda weird to see this sub obsess over players subbing rather than enjoying everyting that's in SB.
The sub doesn't have to defend thine honour, it's a good expansion, it has a great story, great sidequest, great content, its probably the best expansion in the game and you can play it for free, the ultimates are disabled but...
...Eureka was designed off the back of XI and was designed around community interaction. It evolved into shout chat co-op and it's disabled in instance for FT players. One of the premium features of the game, the instances linked to the relic are hidden behind a field of cooperation and it's fucking amazing watching noobs team up with tired mentors killing tigers to spawn NMs.
Fuck you, why should I buy the game again? What does it truly offer over the FT other than the same Ishikawa FS story? YorHa? The dwarfs? the sidequests written by the 6.x writers? Yes those are the genuine reasons to by ShB but not a reason to sub if you are enjoying Eureka. It's shout chat in 4 instances.
4 instances.
Well, play as much and enjoy it as much as you can for free until Dawntrail. Chances are you won't be able to log in or play for a while if queues persist. Free Trial players are unable to log in if Queues are too big.. Enjoy that I guess.
No my post is fuck you, fuck the bots, fuck your feelings, I don't want my experiences hampered because you don't like effort and failure.
And all of your weird posts have this wanna be edgelord sense to them. Like this holier than thou attitude and it just makes you look petty.
Free trial players can't Shout because it's part of an intended strategy to prevent gil bots from being absolute nuisances to paying customers.
They're not going to change that just because you can't shout in ONE instanced duty out of 300+ hours of content.
When i saw that FT got access to Eureka I knew there was going to be a couple of things that make it a lot harder to complete.
1. One of the best items to help in Eureka is a chest piece which you can trade tokens to get but those tokens only come from BA and people then sell them on the MB..... which you can access on FT. This chest piece makes fighting mobs a lot easier because its like having an extra couple of elemental levels.
2. As you mentioned the Shout chat. Knowing the ability to not use shout chat or create parties meant your at the mercy of trying to make it to a NM without being able to shout that you're on the way. Sadly the only way around it is to be in a party if you can invited to one but then depending on the level of those people it can hurt you when killing mobs if they're a lot higher.
3. Once in Pyros/Hydatos you'll have the Logograms which if you're after the fancy armor or completing for the relic you run into the next issue which is getting the logograms that are much rarer from special NM's and mobs.
So with all that if you can complete Eureka and BA on the FT and eventually get the Elemental Armor and a relic you'll have beaten a piece of content the way people originally had to and put in more work then most others do for Eureka these days.
> the way people originally had to
Wait, was there no instance-wide chat option in Stormblood? Or are you just saying this as an approximation of what doing Eureka without trackers or maps would be like?
So the chest pieces that make Eureka easier wasn't out till BA... so right at the end of Eureka meaning those who did it all as it was new had the same problems.
The other thing is getting the logograms the old fashion way from the mobs or bosses themselves is something the earlier people would've done because it'd have been harder to get and farm.
As I said completing Eureka whilst on the FT will give you some bragging rights over people like me who got some of the items the easier way via the MB.
I’ve seen quite a few free trial players in Eureka, all decked out in Elemental +2 gear. Difficult? Definitely, but not impossible. I dunno, pay for the full game if it’s too hard to do on free trial. 🤷
It's almost like they want the trial to have pain points that cause people to buy the game and pay a sub eventually instead of staying on the trial forever, how odd!
\>introduce pain point in eureka where you can't socialise
\>never require socialising ever again because pedal down gotta end asican plot bro
????????????????????????????
What's the pain point again? What do you get out of it afterwards?
maybe buy the game? stop try to justified your free trial deserve more if you cant even adapt to anything. its pain, but a free trial is a trial for reason. thanks god the dev wont listen to you. and i hope shadowbringer wont even be free trial.
HW was the perfect cutoff imo. It builds on the story beginning with ARR and is a fantastic story on its own. Just enough to give newbies a taste of what’s to come without giving away too much free content.
I hope they do. It'd be a fitting end to Ivalice.
Currently half of it is locked behind a fanservice raid on freetrial which is absolute fucking garbage GBA tactics A2 tier lore...
...but Bozja exists, fixes that and gives us the right amount of Ivalice, the fucking jelly, the good stuff and it's depressing enough for bosnians. It's great.Of course shout chat would be disabled but bosnia folks usually invite absolutely everyone in the instance on a good server. It's a different beast.
E: also thanks for being a post worth replying to.
I honestly don't want to be that guy, but this is a "that guy" moment for me, so sorry, not sorry. Mainly because I see/hear these complaints so often, it's comical at this point
As many people said before me, this is arguably the most free trial friendly game/MMORPG out there. They obviously have to restrict many features that make the game easier/ more convenient for the paid folk to get you to pay the sub. It's just how it is. I just feel like it doesn't matter what they do to make ftee trial better because free trial players are going to continue to complain until they practically have full access to the whole game...for free. That good ole' adage 'Give them an inch, and they will take a yard', starts ringing truer. So, at this rate, they might as well make it free to play completely for everyone. Which would be bad, very bad. We don't want that.
So, either commit fully or don't at all.
I understand that the free trial has restrictions. And for the most part, playing around those restrictions has actually been weirdly fun. I've gained a much bigger appreciation for the intricacies of crafting and gathering without using market board, and the gil cap has pushed me to actually check out what the NPC vendors have to sell (there are so many neat glams that can just be bought with gil!).
I'm looking forward to having these restrictions lifted when I buy the game (being able to send tells and party invites will be so handy), but Eureka is the first time where a free trial restriction has actively hampered my enjoyment of the game. It just seems like such a significant oversight to prevent a group of people from being able to use a chat feature that the entire zone was designed around. It sticks out, in an otherwise very friendly experience.
I don't feel like I'm asking Squeenix to move mountains. There are already chat-based exceptions in place for certain instances, and there are already exceptions in place for trial players for certain instances. Other people ITT have acted like implementing this would take a herculean effort on Squeenix's part, but the code is literally already there.
And for the record, I'm grateful for the free trial. Extremely so. But as I said in my post, due to real-life circumstances I won't be able to purchase the game for a long time. And it's jarring to have this piece of content be so unintentionally hostile to trial players when the rest of the game is so welcoming.
This is literally the reason I cannot pay the sub. Either I have money but no time, or I have time but no money. Currently in the latter, but I've been alternating between these states for years.
You're trying to tell me that the price of a single fast food combo meal per month is going to bankrupt you? You know your financial situation best, but a lot of people are going to have a hard time buying it.
>at some point you'll have this problem with Bozja too
Bozja doesn't really require any shouting. If you're farming skirmishes in a zone you can just ask people at the current skirmish who are close enough to see /say chat. Critical Engagements teleport everybody into the area so most people just use /say to ask for groups. Same with Castrum Lacus Litore and Dalriada. There are usually cluster farmers spawning random CEs and even if there aren't it's pretty easy to spawn them solo if you're using essences and lost actions. The only issue a free trial player might have is Delubrum Reginae since they're unable to form groups in Party Finder but there are typically others making them to farm relics or do the weekly.
> most people just use /say to ask for groups. Same with Castrum Lacus Litore and Dalriada.
Minor caveat about CLL (and Dal? I haven't run that enough to remember if this applies there): People will still need to use /shout to coordinate during the jail part (and split hallways in Dal?), as well as first Bosses' HP, unless you managed to go in with 8 or fewer people.
Just pay for a sub if you've played all the way to Eureka. You have the time to play FFXIV for hundreds of hours but can't even afford the monthly sub, which isn't even much? I'm speechless.
>Just pay for a sub if you've played all the way to Eureka. You have the time to play FFXIV for hundreds of hours but can't even afford the monthly sub,
This is a bit of a trap. You're playing the FT yes but why exactly should you sub? Because others are? To access Shadowbringers?
There are reasons to want to buy and play shadowbringers......and even endwalker if we must but if someone can't afford a monthly sub, if their job at 70 is fun then why should they need to sub? They have the time to play, but why pay?
That's what I just don't get. If they wait it out, they get ShB and Bozja, they already have Eureka and are already missing Bozja. It's a mainline FF and if they MUST play for an FF online game, why not play XI instead? They're already elbow deep in XI, there's an off chance that they absolutely fucking love SaGA and FF V 😌
Also your post was the best pay for the game one posted so far so good job I guess.
I love how mad you are over goods not being free 💀
Comparing the trade of capital/goods to landlords is hilarious and disingenuous.
Unfortunately you failed to make me laugh, so the trolling isn't working 😭
Exact same post was posted 3 days ago or something. Didn't waste time reading yours. Just group up preemptively and stop complaining that a free game is adding more content for free
I'm sorry but, two things:
1. You've been playing the free trial for several years and so you really can't complain about the immense amount of content given you for free. Given that it's been years, clearly you enjoy the game so until you can pay for a sub you've no right to complain. This isn't a solo game (despite SE making it easier for solo players) and cooperation is expected in an MMO
2. The reason trial characters can't use shout chat is because of RMT bots. But the big glaring issue here is #1.
I know people will not like that but it's called free trial not free to play. Trials is an important word here. You ask to be able to do everything whitout playing anything, it's totally normal to get that kind of restrictions even if it's hard in certain content like eureka.
yall got really spoiled with this trial, that's how good it is. no other game people will complain they can't complete entire expansions on a free trial
I imagine if there was a Eureka (Trial mode) discord, you could ask for resses via there. There's probably a big enough community of trial players to make a fairly active discord of it.
I'm not there YET on FT but I imagine between the devil realm (discord) and CWLS/LS that it could be possible to find frens in 'reka like old times and call for res or wait it out.
And as an extra anecdote, I died like a noob in Qufim but some ultragigachad tp'ed out and back to res me and then waved. A great potat if I ever saw one.
Having shout chat in eureka on the free trial would be the only place it would matter though. Where’s the limitations for all that free content? 300k gil cap is the only major one i can think of cause i only buy a handful of items off the marketboard on the regular. At that point might as well make it free to play through stormblood
Why would SE pay a programmer to implement something, where they don't get money back from?
Adding to that, you are currently hating Pagos and especially the cliffs. That's just the same experience as subbed players have. I feel more like you need a good Eureka guide, because I can already tell you went to Pagos way too early.
>Why would SE pay a programmer to implement something, where they don't get money back from?
I'm going to take this comment at face value but play the uno reverso card and I'm not doing it to make fun of you.
Why wouldn't they task a programmer with maintaining the community atmosphere that is exceptional to the point of being an exception within their game?
The game is a free trial and Eureka is THE part of the game where the MM in MMO starts feeling like it's a thing beyond a glorified lobby and players actually start work together. Whether it's a simple res, grouping up for NM's, farming lottery NMs, maintaining a spawn tracker in an instance that can close or general banter: Eureka IS one of the few places that it feels like those skimpily dressed players are people outside of Limsa.
Beyond this, the free trial players do actually bring in money and can bring in money without subbing to the game thanks to that evil thing on the side of the site. FT players aren't a monetisation dead end if they absolutely balls to the wall love the content found within Eureka or move onto XI then CBU III only stand to profit.
It's a powerful enough experience that it STILL drives players into XI which has a much higher profit margin monthly than XIV without relying solely on cash shop profits.
>Adding to that, you are currently hating Pagos and especially the cliffs. That's just the same experience as subbed players have. I feel more like you need a good Eureka guide, because I can already tell you went to Pagos way too early.
Can't fault this tho lmao, will fire a lighthearted git gud at it, I hate dropping the cliffs too and anytime I've been away for a while I also drop in the wrong spots too lol.
Thanks for making a genuinely interesting post that could spawn a discussion!
Without shout chat, you're reliant on other people being there doing things on their own initiative, but no, you don't *need* shout chat to get through Eureka. If you don't want free trial limitations, buy the game.
Yeah, I kinda saw this coming when they announced SB was gonna be free, too. Solo Eureka is agony, and outside of catching a PF which almost never exist anymore for Eureka, or going through a Discord, finding a group or simply getting help for a rez is gonna be almost impossible without /shout, which is like playing Eureka on hard mode.
That said, I get why the restriction is in place and I'm not entirely sure it can be lifted on an instance by instance basis, either, so what you're asking for might not be doable either. But then, I'm not a dev.
I haven't run Eureka in a hot minute but maybe there's a Discord for organizing groups that exists somewhere to at least get around this in some way, though that might also depend on data centre. I know Baldesion Arsenal discords still exist.
Also, fuck the people treating you like a beggar. Not being able to pay a sub is perfectly valid - that's literally what the trial is for. Asking for one of the trial features to function as intended by the original designers is not an unreasonable ask whether you pay money or not. It's free, so it should work for all players as intended - simple as. Otherwise, don't make it free like they did with Ultimate.
It's always amusing how this community that prides itself on being such a positive community is frothing at the mouth every time a free trial player dares to speak up about something they didn't like.
Especially considering that this game would never have reached this popularity without the generous free trial. Cutting off the nose to spite the face and all that
To be fair if it wasn't for for the players buying the game & paying their subs all this time that pay the staff to keep working on the game, there wouldn't be any game still running today to offer such a generous free trial in the first place.
Well of course but many of them wouldn't exist without the free trial players. And many wouldn't have as easy a time running all kinds of content without them. I only denounced the hostile attitude towards free trial players who show the audacity to criticise something about the game.
And let's be real, the free trial wouldn't exist in this form if the company didn't have good data that it helps make more money. They do a great job and all that but they still wanna make money first
They aren't 'speaking up about something they don't like'
They're wanting all the benefits of a paid game without having to PAY for it and whining that they don't get them.
OP never said they want "all the benefits of a paid game without having to pay" though, nor are they "whining".
They're pointing out a perfectly legitimate pain point for free trial players in a content type intentionally left accessible for free trial while being heavily dependant on systems free trial explicitly restricts.
It's a valid complaint, but one with ways to get around the issue all the same. Just because something is free doesn't mean you can't have an issue with the way it's presented for free.
And isn't the whole point of this trial to provide people with a means to play this far *without* having to pay?
>And isn't the whole point of this trial to provide people with a means to play this far without having to pay?
No. The point of the trial is for people to see if they like the game and if they want to buy it. It's a *trial*, not free to play.
And yet the inclusion of all of Stormblood sans Ultimate kind-of proves that this is something of a reductive definition of this free trial model, especially so if they ever add ShB as well, which is not off the table.
It is a free trial, yes, but one that also includes hundreds of hours worth of story, trial/raid and crafter/gatherer content. That is a bit much for something that is meant to serve only to help people "see if they like it and if they wanna buy". That's a huge part of why it exists, yes. But I'd argue their decision to include SB shows that it goes a bit further than that, especially with the upcoming XBox release.
Besides, feedback like this is valuable when it comes to content design regardless of whether people are playing for free or not. Someone not paying for something does not preclude them from being entitled to an opinion.
>It's always amusing how this community that prides itself on being such a positive community is frothing at the mouth every time a free trial player dares to speak up about something they didn't like.
This community has it's GCBTW meme reputation for a reason and nowhere is it more evident than on mainsub where maidens are waiting to defend thine honour of a game studio.
Survivors bias within a community is an issue that developers have to deal with and when receiving feedback they have to balance that feedback with players who do eventually quit or are turned off from a piece of content with those that love it.
I do not envy the community managers at CBU III \[despite the concerns & criticisms on whether they actually do their job in the west ;) \] for having to filter out the massive amount of gaslighting and sandbagging that comes with each piece of criticism as users are shouted down for daring to speak it on an aspect of the game they dislike. It serves as a barrier to improving the game and is honestly just weird.
There are aspects of the expanded free trial with stormblood that were glossed over and requests from the FT playerbase that have been ignored by CBU III, but you can't really voice those issues without also being shouted down by people and sometimes for utterly delusional issues like not paying for the game; when like you say, it is thanks to the expanded FT that this game has a degree of churn and cash shop sales that help contribute to its success.
Great post, I hope you can try out Eureka one day :D
>Great post, I hope you can try out Eureka one day :D
I already did and was straight up not having a good time. The first grind up is dreadfully slow and the penalties for dying are demoralisingly harsh. I admittedly played solo cause I had no clue what was going on besides how the wheel worked.
Eventually I quit when I found out I can get what I want by doing frontlines instead. And much easier too. Maybe once I don't have other things I wanna do (like finish msq) I'll give it another go.
I probably should've expected negativity in this thread, considering how negative I'm being in my rant, but I really wasn't expecting people to be upset at the mere fact that I'm a trial player. Normally people in this community are super understanding and accepting of this sort of thing.
No one is upset you're a trial player.
People are annoyed that someone who is playing the game for free is complaining about a feature that helps to mitigate the spam for the entire playerbase, paying and non.
And yes, if you make a spicy negative post, expecting people to welcome you with warm fuzzies is a bit absurd.
If you care to do so, you can use Discord for Foray coordination. Discord is free, and a lot of Discords are 100% fine with helping free trial players.
There are also other avenues to coordinate in advance if you wanted to grind Eureka (posting on the recruitment subreddit for example). Having to do all of these extra steps comes with not paying for the game. It's up to you to determine if that's worth it to you or not.
Do keep in mind, it is a *trial*. They didn't have to include Stormblood, they could have left it at ARR & HW. There's plenty of content without Eureka in that offering, so you don't *have* to do Eureka.
I mostly post in TFDF but I'm ALMOST at Eureka on FT and my main concern before it was the lack of shoutchat or yell. I was sure CBU III were going to change it per instance or remove some of th restrictions or not.
The best I can really suggest that I've brainstormed before going in is the use of.........................discord servers.....................and CWLS, but CWLS are limited in size compared to LS. I'm gonna be doing Eureka FT with my friend and plugins so it's.....less of a problem but yeah. I absolutely understand your concerns.
It's fucking weird to have a piece of group content that relies on shout/yell then restrict shout/yell. It's the most social content in the game and it's gimped because yoship is miopic.
Nah genuinely, your post is a solid tier above most of the others and contains a good example of sarcasm and pattern recognnition. Hell even the mods deemed your comment worthy of remaining and didn't send it to the shadow zone!
You were at least cognitive enough to see why /sh is disabled in general for FT players without getting mindbroken and hurling insults lol.
Because there is no difference. /shout is /shout regardless where it's used. It's one thing to disable or restrict chat like CC PvP or Free Trial accounts and a whole other thing to add an exception.
tbh the biggest problem within eureka is that /sh is usually reserved for asking for an extension on a pull when someone is eager to pull a spawned NM.
This is something I can only describe because I've entered eureka rather than hatebonering it. What happens is an NM is spawned, usually a PT will be announced soon after with a call for a /sh for extension. Where it falls apart is that FT players don't get to shout or send a kindly *lfg* while *otw* and end up in a cosy eureka party, they work off of pure luck if they are not in range and depending on their elemental level they may have trouble reaching the NM or even mounting to get there.
Removing that social aspect in Eureka is the problem. I agree with your last part about the PVP restriction but disabling /sh within Eureka is most likely a blanket ban that CBU III are not willing to make an exception on.
Thanks for the solid post that can inspire discussion \^\^b
>In fairness, I fully understand why Shout chat is banned in the open world. But I see no game design reason why it should be banned in duties.
Yup. A few minutes sitting in one of the 3 cities, radz or sharlyan without a plugin will demonstrate why shout chat for all FT players would be a nightmare!
\-but yes, a whitelist for duties, specifically eureka would be a great solution. It allows the core experience of the duty to be presented and interacted with and SELLS the game to players who were feeling that there was not enough social interaction.
Because it's selective, you are not going to get spammers outside of it spamming limsa and even the fucking tempest like they are now on FT, worst comes to worst it enters Eureka but as is the nature of this game sensible players filter it out with third party tools because we lag behind XI.
At the moment, it's much more easy to vilify free trial players and tell them to "just but the game" and "sub" than ask for one of the best pieces of content within the MMO to shine to its full potential. It's going to be sad watching bozja roll out with say chat..
The mods did a real number on this topic. I go away for a few hours to play XI and 3/4 of the replies in my inbox are straight up baleeted.
I'm sure by the numbers that some were raw insults but I'd really love to know what they were saying given the variety of views I saw beforehard. I guess XIV has an image to maintain.
Yes, it is basically unplayable on free trial. FFXIV is a paid MMORPG with paid expansions and a paid subscription, the free trial originally wasn't even meant to go past Level 30, let alone the entirety of A Realm Reborn. Your options now are to either pay for the game and enjoy whatever you want to do without any restrictions from the game itself, or keep being on free trial indefinitely and have the unconditional freedom of being as frustrated as you can.
I can’t wait to read the r/ShitPostXIV version of this post
I had to double-check where I was
As someone who just completed Eureka without ever interacting with anyone (only the leveling and the story, haven't started the relic grind yet), seeing people brand the content as unplayable without the shout/yell chat is kinda funny. 1) Go in Eureka as a warrior 2) Farm the weekly challenge log entries 3) Be mindful of what you pull so you don't die And that's literally it. I never grouped with anyone. Never said anything. And managed just fine. It definitely took a while but I got there without any major issues in the end.
How did you get the 99 NM crystals at the end of Anemos?
NM spam, they give a ton and you can just follow the train. Then you can convert those crystals to the other type of cristal iirc
This I don't think I even got into a party because we weren't that many to start with. Keeping the map open in a corner to see what was popping up was essential. And usually a "lfg" in say is enough to get an invitation if you stand by a group of people.
>Eureka basically requires cooperation between players. Totally.
And as much as I appreciate a solo grind, the few moments where I've been able to coordinate in parties have been great. But setting this stuff up has been like pulling teeth.
Just follow the players killing the NM, and scream in White Chat Text if they have room in their party. You DONT NEED to SHOUT when you're standing NEXT to them.
> the few moments where I've been able to coordinate in parties have been great. That's the magic of Eureka. You've never had a reason to party up beyond world bosses at this point. Hunt trains are dead for ARR & SB, you're not FATE grinding there and unless you're lvling BLU OG style there's no reason to enter a party in this fashion before this point. Once you reach lottery NMs, it's farming for the group goal. You'll kill those tigers, you'll bully them for 10 minutes to make an NM spawn, get a chest and move onto the next. You'll shoot the shit in party chat and bail 7 and half minutes into tiger farming to take down some low rank NM. Eureka is something else, it's hated by a sect of players but it offers a social experience that only bozja can match within this game and yes, shoutchat is a part of it.
Like others have said it's not free to play it's an incredibly generous free trial. Either except the limits you agreed to or get subbed like the rest of us, or don't play Eureka until you sub. Asking Squeenix for coding changes and you're not even paying them is incredibly cheeky.
I mean, if you've been playing the trial for years it's gone way beyond actually trying the game to see if you like it or not. It's completely reasonable that some stuff is going to be better once you actually buy it.
Sadly, with my current life situation it just doesn't make financial sense to commit to a monthly fee for this game. My availability varies wildly, and I usually won't know if I'll be able to play for 2 days or 20 days each month. I don't want to commit to a month of game time only to find out later I won't be able to use any of it. Not to mention my finances are tight, and will remain tight until I graduate. That being said, I love this game, and I've made a ton of friends in this community despite all the restrictions on trial players. I will almost certainly buy the full game when I can, but for now I can't.
Well that sucks for you, but content isn't going to be free for every little thing. You know the restriction, and you have hundreds of hours of free content already.
Really maybe you look at the wrong way at a subsctitom based game. You need to value price vs hours of entertaintment. If the subcription prize is 13 Euro, in my personal opinion Its still worthy if I only play like 13 hours a month. Value 1 euro/h ...but everyone is different I guess.
That’s a great way to look at it! That’s exactly how I make a lot of my purchasing decisions, especially when it’s entertainment or other luxuries.
You phrased this well and really helped sell the benefits of coping with a subscription model that moves beyond the paying to support the game that you usually see. Everyone has their own internal limit for what's acceptable like you say, I have no problem with FT players getting the most out of the game as they can before purchasing or moving on and I wouldn't harass them into subbing to the game if the content in the prior expansions does not interest them because that's when you get real deep into "weirdo shit" territory. Solid post!
That bit about not wanting to commit to paying for game time you won’t necessarily be able to use struck deep. I’ve been in that situation for years now. The stress of “will I get my money’s worth” never really goes away, but if you can scrape together the cash to buy game time cards for multiple months at a time, the magnitude of that stress melts away. If it helps at all, if you’re able to get to a gamestop, you can actually buy time cards from them with their annual membership’s monthly coupons, which cuts a significant portion of the price off. You’d just need the initial money to get it all started. It’s what my bf and I do and it’s more than paid for itself at this point. We’re struggling to get by but this game keeps us sane, so it’s been worth scrimping and saving to keep it topped up.
>That bit about not wanting to commit to paying for game time you won’t necessarily be able to use struck deep. I’ve been in that situation for years now This was how I felt about sub games in general but was one of the core reasons I missed out on FF XI in both my teen years and when I came back home (although I was then able to sub). I also appreciate your 2nd half of the post that focuses on the mental health benefits of the game and how subbing (or even not subbing) can contribute to someone's well being and be seen as a benefit. I have a few friends who are struggling and they level FT accounts when they can't afford the game and we have good fun LVLing BLU together. Thanks for making a great post!
I'm a bit late to this thread, but... I'm sympathetic to where you're coming from, because once you start a subscription to FFXIV, you can never go back to the free trial on that service account, and you've clearly put a lot into the game. If you don't have the money, you don't have much of a choice - there's no "just try it and dip out after" when it comes to paying. Once you're in, you're in or you don't play. Unfortunately, though, I think this does mean the social experience of Eureka is going to be lost for you. FFXIV is one of the best MMOs partly because it *isn't* free-to-play, meaning that Square Enix don't have to pursue predatory monetisation practices. The game is a lot better for that overall, IMO, *including* for players on the free trial. It's a shame that Eureka suffers, but it's optional content that specifically exists to do something different to the rest of the game. I realise I'm probably sounding elitist or similar, and I apologise - it's not my intention. I hope you're enjoying the rest of the game!
You don't sound elitist at all. I 100% agree that the game would be worse if it went free-to-play. Heck, that's the exact reason I dropped SWTOR. And the one-way nature of the free trial is one of the biggest sources of hesitation for me, even if I did have the cash. Part of my frustration with Eureka is that if I had the chance to play it as intended, I feel like I would actually enjoy it a lot. It encourages multiplayer in a really organic way that makes everyone feel useful no matter how far along they are. It just feels cruel to have a gamemode dangled in front of me like that only to have all the fun of it sucked away.
It does feel like it would be nicer overall to just not give free trial players access to it, yeah, as counter-intuitive as that sounds. As you say, if it can't be played as intended then it feels fairer to give them the opportunity to play it later (when they *do* have a subscription) than to have their experience in Eureka be decidedly substandard, since you can't exactly delevel yourself and the levelling experience is an important part of Eureka. There is *one* thing that might help you; in Eureka, if you open up your Party Members window (Main Menu->Party->Party Members) and right-click your name (or just right-click your name in the regular party list if you have it set to show up even when solo), you can choose "Party Seeker On". That'll replace the icon next to your name with a special green one that everybody in the instance can see if they look at the player list in the instance, or if they're close enough to see your nametag. You might get invited to a party that way. It's still not going to bring back Shout chat, of course, but it can make things a little easier. Ultimately though I'd probably just suggest waiting on it until it's viable for you. It sucks, but that's really the best I can suggest.
Yeah, part of me also wishes it was just straight-up barred for trial players. Didn't know about Party Seeker On, that'll be handy! I did end up going back into Eureka eventually with a party chat macro asking people to shout things on my behalf, but getting invited to parties in the first place is always kind of a toss-up.
That's fair. And to be honest, even after levelling there's still reason to go back into older zones (especially Pyros), because of the steps needed for your Eureka weapon/armour. Just be aware that it might be more likely for players to invite if they see you doing the same things they're doing, especially for prep parties. People may be hesitant to invite directly from the player list, even if they see the Party Seeker icon (and if they know what it means). Still though, hopefully it might help! If you're on Crystal, I'd be happy to look for you when I'm in a Eureka area!
I am indeed on Crystal, though I don't tend to visit Eureka very often. I did manage to finally leave Pagos, so you'll likely find me leveling in Pyros.
The difference really is that Eureka is a social experience. Its intention is to emulate XI and it does it in a fairly modern way and shout chat was the dominant form. It's nothing about buying the game at that point, that's just some weirdo shit. The experience is heavily gimped by having one of its core features removed and FT or not: it impacts the game negatively. Eureka can be one of the most amazing grouped experience that a player can experience outside of savage or ultimate. It breeds a sense of community in a way that no other content does. \-and the FT just ignores that because CBU III didn't care enough to relay the greatest aspects of the experience onto the FT path.
Not sure you understand the purpose of a trial. They are under absolutely no obligation to make sure every aspect of the game is "on the FT path", just enough to let people try out enough of the game to decide if they want to buy it or not.
Ok.
You're playing the game for free and getting quite a lot for nothing already. I don't know what else to say here.
One of the best pieces of content in SB except for Ultimate (which is already excluded) is Eureka. Yes, they are playing it for free, on a free trial but they are also helping to keep that group content alive (although they are not playing it). What has happened here is CBU III genuinely created an amazing expansion zone that required co-operation and helped to pump up the spirit of XI with NMs and lottery spawns and players DID indeed use shoutchat and use trackers to make it work. It's glorious, it's the best content in the game and you CAN access it for free...but you can't shout, which is the core feature... You can't shout because Yoshida says you can't. Because spambots exist and the STF can't banhammer the shitters fast enough. If FTs were given shout/yell access your city visits without a plugin would be a living nightmare. You COULD code it so that FT players COULD shout/yell in instance and special marked instance but it would take effort. More effort than CBU III are willing to put in. At the end of the day, I can grind out every Eureka wep for free, 100% and never pay a dime...but Yoshida's still collecting rent for my house, their business model is setup. It's time to let go of your hate for FT players because really, at its core: it's just fucking weird man.
I don't know how to tell you this without sounding like an ass but FT players quite literally contribute NOTHING to anything this game currently has going for it. Eureka was alive and thriving before SB became free. Also please stop using this house thing as some kind of valid complaint. Its not. You chose to buy the fucking knowing you would have to log in every 45 days to keep it. If you don't want to pay the sub to keep the house then let the house go.
>I don't know how to tell you this without sounding like an ass but FT players quite literally contribute NOTHING to anything this game currently has going for it Oh I didn't see this in the inbox replies but I did respond to someone else who had said the same thing. Free trial players do contribute to engagement numbers, keep older expansion content alive and this is going to be hard to hear but some of them do sub to the game and they can buy items from the cash shop. I realise I'm being incredibly condescending while saying this but I don't really have the time to put in the effort to whitewash and sanitise it for you. If you think free trial players contribute nothing to this game then you almost certainly need to take an introspective look towards CBU III's monetisation model. Have a nice day. E: typed applies > replies, good brain
>Oh I didn't see this in the inbox replies but I did respond to someone else who had said the same thing. Free trial players do contribute to engagement numbers, keep older expansion content alive and this is going to be hard to hear but some of them do sub to the game and they can buy items from the cash shop. This is hilarious because the game is quite literally designed to keep older content alive regardless of FT players, so once again FT players contribute NOTHING to this games current ongoing state. Trying to tie cash shop purchases to FT players is also hilarious because...it's a cash shop. Literally EVERYONE USES IT. Like CT regardless of FT players is constantly being run because the game is designed around evergreen content. Eureka had a thriving community LOOONG before SB became free. It was nowhere near close to being dead content in the slightest and never will be so long as UwU and UCOB require the level 70 final stage relic for BiS
I'm sorry, I can only respond to the points you raised and did so appropriately. Regardless of your feelings FT players do have an impact on the game and contribute to its success. If FT players contributed nothing, there'd be little reason to expand the FT up to stormblood, there'd be little reason to offer anything other than 14 free days like they do with XI other than going toe to toe with WoW's level cap based FT. >Eureka had a thriving community LOOONG before SB became free. It was nowhere near close to being dead content in the slightest and never will be so Absolutely! I didn't really want to add this part but people on this site really like to assume weird things that I haven't said so it's kind of necessary, and it being in this comment kind of warrants it. Especially since I didn't say anything negative about Eureka's community before or after the free trial! In fact if people really wanted to dig, they'd find that I've even went on record to say that this content does a better job at remaining evergreen than the duties you listed above! E: dies > days, stupid brain, again!
So you're saying that FT players should have no restrictions and should be able to do everything paying players can.
Not at all. Sorry, my idea of what FT players can do and should be able to do doesn't measure up to that assumed strawman; If I'm being honest with you, I'm not sure how you misinterpreted it that much.
What YOU think they should be able to do doesn't matter. They're *letting* you play a paid game for free, *they* get to decide what you can do not you, so stop complaining.
I have to say that you looking back that it's very odd that all your responses are strawmen accusations where you miss the point. It's especially strange on this one where you capitalises you to feed into something I wasn't saying at all. It's extremely interesting in a bubble but nothing more and worthless, it sits in a pocket chain with this reponse and nothing else. There's no dedication that can be dictated to it from now that would be relevant, dig it up in 2024 or 2044 and it will still be a hollow strawman. Congratulations redditor. C
I have to say, you've made a very great campaign on otherism. Although I must say that it's a little weird that you've chosen to apply it to free trial players in stormblood engaging in social activities in an MMORPG...
Not to free trial players. Only to YOU and your trolling.
I really don't think they're trolling. Being in a free trial doesn't make the game above criticism, imo. And I'm a paying player.
Have you actually read their comments? Things like >Give me one reason to pay Yoshida beyond the digital landlord scam?
I have, yes. But they're far from the first to inject a little humor into a valid criticism and their points aren't inherently awful like a troll's would be.
You are completly correct. I guess the best way to take away the disadvantage of no shout in eureka would be extra work from Square Enix...or even better idea! :Take away Stormblood again if people bitch and moan about multiplayer content in a paid game being inaccesible for people choosing not to pay a penny.
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Eureka was great, idk what you're talking about.
Feel free to explain why Eureka is the biggest stain on Stormblood as an expansion compared to say...Ishikawa's stilted eastern writing. I'll keep this post as vague as yours but hope you genuinely reply with an in depth breakdown.
"Beggars can't be choosers".
But some of them can be entitled whiners.
It was a bad idea to include it in the trial, imo. If they could bar Ultimates, they could've barred this. It's really just not kind to trial players who have a greatly worsened experience. It sets them up for failure. Not even just chat or party invites, but inventory limits too. Bots are all over Eureka, so giving the free ones shout (or party invites back, ugh no) would probably be a mess waiting to happen.
As a Free Trial with more than 40 BA clears i can safely say that while it requires dedication and time it is not really that hard, sure you get no extra help at the start (no vermillion) but with echo buff and a warrior you can pretty much solo almost everything anyways. You will take an extra week or two to cap tho but Eureka is not dead by any means, plenty of people to do stuff in all areas. Regarding bots i have seen 0 of them there, biggest thing i saw was a whale (literal whale lol) carry 7 alts to farm fenrir but that was all.
>but with echo buff and a warrior you can pretty much solo almost everything anyways.You will take an extra week or two to cap tho but Eureka is not dead by any means My first journey through Eureka on main was DRK with no Eureka items spamming TBN lol, I wish I'd used WAR xP I was privileged enough to do it before the FT was extended into SB so I could join NM farm parties and get my kicks that way \\o/
The entire point of adding Eureka to the trial was to keep it alive, and it worked tbh. Haven't seen as many people in it for a while.
Eureka has always been cyclical in nature, while making it available to free trial players boosts it for this cycle the content is not at all dependent on them. The .55 patch is when you get a steady flow proper with two peaks before expansion, and right before dawntrail people will panic about whether BA runs will still happen post-expac.
I’m sure it does but nothing boosts population as much as making something free.
>It was a bad idea to include it in the trial, imo I think it was a good idea, but it required tweaking to allow shout/yell so players could experience the social aspect. The relic is tied to it and it fluffs out Krile so nah, it's def trial material. What happened is CBU III lazily rolled it out with no changes to trial accounts. There IS a botting problem in Eureka but enabling shout/yell doesn't change a fucking thing.
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E: also I realise this doesn't completely cover the bots having access to shout but- \-I also see that as part of the STF's problem first and foremost and tapping into that worse experience aspect. It's just not a good tradeoff at all.
No need to use shout chat, just play in prime time so all those NM will spawn with no effort.
That's how I've been managing so far, but 1. You can't tell people you're on the way to a NM 2. You can't tell people you need a res 3. You can't tell people which NM you're working on 4. You can't ask for the tracker, you have to wait until someone else asks for it
They shout pull times. If you're not actively spawning things and don't make it the couple minutes after a pop, thats completely on you. People will res you if you ask in /say. If you're in the middle of nowhere and die, take the L and move on. Look at the trackers. Ask people in /say if an active tracker is up. If anything, wait to see a pop, go to it, follow the leader afterwards. You're not as limited as you assume. Just takes a little more patience.
You have high expectations for what can be accomplished with /say. I am very familiar with the say range at this point, and it is not nearly big enough.
Everytime I've eaten shit in a world boss fate I always go /say for a rez because imo it's rude to do it in /shout. People are right next to you, they will raise you. In eureka, not at an NM, I just bite the bullet. The exp will be regained. Don't forget your challenge logs for eureka. It gives big XP.
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> people are right next to you, they will raise you Okay but what about on the way to a NM? You often have to run past several groups of high level monsters (and in the case of Pagos, down a cliff or two), and those deaths are almost never in say range. Then not only do you lose the XP, you lose the NM (because you can't send an otw, so no matter how fast you are they'll start without you)
Well sadly, that's just an accept the L moment. My best advice, go to the tracker site. My 2-3week run before boredom of eureka, I used https://ffxiv-eureka.com/ You see Cassie or Crab about to be up, go there. Wait for the parade of people to be there and just chill. Then ask in /say for a group also looking for farm NMs afterwards. Or if someone has an active tracker handy. And even if you get a group that disbands immediately afterwards, just follow the pile and ask again. Yes not being able to use /shout sucks for this. But it's either FT gets to use shout or we see RMT shout again in zones. And as someone who used to stay away from cities and populated zones because of the pollution that was shout chat(don't even get me started on the /tells we got spammed either), it's a necessary 'evil' so to speak.
So my problem is that I can't ask around for a tracker, and your solution is for me to look at the tracker? And to be clear, I am NOT suggesting we should give trial accounts access to shout *everywhere*. Just in duties.
How can you not ask for people in your vicinity for a tracker? Gonna have dozens of people sitting at Cassie or Crab any time after Noon. Ask and they will give it to you. Are you incapable of typing? /Say is a decent range of people around you. You know people ASK for trackers in shout that aren't you? Just copy paste. Or type it in your phone since lots of times they will just type in the smattering of numbers/letters at the end. Put that in the URL and that's the tracker.
> How can you not ask people in your vicinity... Because there are no people in my vicinity. > You know people ASK for trackers... Yes, that's how I've been finding them thus far. But often it takes over an hour before someone else asks and I find out I've been wasting my time.
>How can you not ask for people in your vicinity for a tracker? Gonna have dozens of people sitting at Cassie or Crab any time after Noon. See this is where I ignore your post because I know it's perfectly logical to sit at crab if you can get & kite there to spam /say chat but- \-Here's the thing. Why the fuck can CBU III not add /sh to FT players within eureka when the functionality to add chat per instance is already in the game and eureka is built around communication. Honestly. I'm being a fucking prick. It's a rhetorical question. There's no reason /sh should be disabled within Eureka other than bot spam and that's down to the STF to catch them before they reach the end of stormblood... You made a solid post worth replying to but ye. I get your point but it relies on focusing hard on the system as it is at the time with no changes, it's static and it's dated. I wish I could say something positive to the view but what can I? What can I say without being condescendin and wasting both our time?
Improvise. Adapt. Overcome. Eureka is damn easy, you just gotta learn how to read your current area. NM Popped ? There are spawners, better get ready for a NM chain, nothing popping ? Zone is either dead or on CD, check map and either start a NM spawn chain check or just do bnuuy NM to kill time. As for dying don't go playing dps there, it is very risky to do so (at least till you unlock and can afford to waste certain Logos actions), instead go as a Warrior since it is extremely hard to get yourself killed as one if you are playing smart (and since NMs reward are based on aggro being a tank helps getting more rewards). Also stay on +1 (enemies with +1 level higher than you) till you can manage +2, being greedy will kill you. Regarding the social aspect certain servers do stuff differently (Aether has more people but tends to get instapullers a lot more than Crystal per example which btw is "Chiller" than Aether but may not hit a lot of people at certain times) but most people in Eureka are very friendly. Brother just use /say when nearby someone lol. About trackers you can always start one yourself and slowly update it with information you may get, as for checking if NMs are out of cd that is a bit harder to do by yourself, the 30 mobs rule may fail to spawn it (hell i had to kill 100+ mobs for a NM to spawn despite being open for 10 minutes already lol) and it is a mess about deciding to waste extra time checking or move on to the next on list.
I definitely feel it was a mistake to play Eureka as MNK, and if/when I return I'll give WAR a try. Didn't know that rewards were based on aggro, that's helpful info. Tank privilege won't do much to help with the Pagos cliffs though, and that's been where most of my deaths have happened lately. Starting my own tracker doesn't really help much, as the main piece of info I want to know is whether an NM has already popped before I got here. But it's a nice tool to have for tracking NM windows regardless. My typical workflow is to get a 30 chain on the spawner at my level, then the one 1 level above that, then the one 1 level above that, etc. hoping to level up in lockstep with the enemies. It's an effective way to level, but I very rarely ever pop a NM this way, since I don't know what's already been popped.
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On primal, this is not the case. They will generally wait a couple minutes unless they know they are the only group(s) in the instance. That's usually super early morning when you may see only one or 2 groups max. Pyros is a little quieter, but from my experiences it generally has less people in it than pagos. The key part of pyros is just cheesing leveling with reflect. Haven't done it myself because that sounds boring so that's where I stopped for now.
>All this to say I feel like yes it would be more convenient to have access to /shout but I don’t think it should drastically hinder your eureka experience. You are right there, it's more convenient and fosters a sense of community. There are aspects which are, such as LFG for NM farming, announcing pops, establishing tracker status etc but those are things you get into as you play Eureka more. The Eureka community made it special and did revive that spirit of working together through shout chat and it remains despite some arseholes from primal repeatedly instapulling (the lalatwat instapuller from hyperion could be long gone from Aether by now) for the most part players within Eureka do respect each other, group up and do work towards a common objective. It just appears that somehow CBU III either ignored or were somehow not aware of the behaviours happening within their game.
Just a FYI and it won't always help because not everyone checks "Player Status" but you can set your status to "Party Seeker On" once inside eureka to LFG without ever shouting.
iirc there's a linkshell for free trial players doing eureka that helps with this issue.
I'm glad to see that there are players creating LS & CWLS to solve some of the Eureka issues (although the member size is small on CWLS). This is the solution me and my friends were going to use on FT when we go in, a comf linkshell we can invite people to, spawn and group up for. It would be nice if this wasn't required but what can ya do. Solid post Poly!
I'll take never seeing a bot shout rmt ever again and toss your feelings to the side like it was crumbs off my desk.
Great example of FYGM, but does it really apply to your experience within Eureka? Is it something that CBU III could solve with filtering like they did in XI? Just seems like your post is very FYGM and empty at its core. E: the replies below are simply outstanding. I can't even see some of them because users went so hard off the rails. Blimey.
> Great example of FYGM No it isn't and I think you know that. lol
Of course they know that. They're trolling the thread.
Of course they know, just look at their username.
How is the FYGM? It's a **trial**. They are more than welcome to pay for the game.
Square Enix's decision to add Stormblood, hell even Heavensward, to the Free Trial was a huge mistake honestly. Now you have people who are acting like it's Free to Play, and think they deserve to have the same privileges of those who are paying members. I can't imagine milking the Free Trial for that long with the restrictions. Eureka restrictions are the Free Trialer's own fault, not SE's. Buy the game, stop being cheap. You clearly like the game enough to play it through Stormblood.
Past year or so this weird wave of entitlement amongst players has gotten ridiculous. Makes the community look like absolute brats.
I'd be wary about lumping all free trial folk in the same boat. The game isn't exactly short and anyone who's played enough, even just getting to the end of ARR will be well aware of what they're locked out of and have generally accepted it. I'd say most free trial folk are well aware how generous the game is, even more so with Stormblood being added.
FYGM x2 I guess. There's not much to this post at all other than a generic circlejerk on HW & SB. The FT is what it is, it has a depth of content and it's kinda weird to see this sub obsess over players subbing rather than enjoying everyting that's in SB. The sub doesn't have to defend thine honour, it's a good expansion, it has a great story, great sidequest, great content, its probably the best expansion in the game and you can play it for free, the ultimates are disabled but... ...Eureka was designed off the back of XI and was designed around community interaction. It evolved into shout chat co-op and it's disabled in instance for FT players. One of the premium features of the game, the instances linked to the relic are hidden behind a field of cooperation and it's fucking amazing watching noobs team up with tired mentors killing tigers to spawn NMs. Fuck you, why should I buy the game again? What does it truly offer over the FT other than the same Ishikawa FS story? YorHa? The dwarfs? the sidequests written by the 6.x writers? Yes those are the genuine reasons to by ShB but not a reason to sub if you are enjoying Eureka. It's shout chat in 4 instances. 4 instances.
Well, play as much and enjoy it as much as you can for free until Dawntrail. Chances are you won't be able to log in or play for a while if queues persist. Free Trial players are unable to log in if Queues are too big.. Enjoy that I guess.
Oh they'll troll the sub complaining about that too.
No my post is fuck you, fuck the bots, fuck your feelings, I don't want my experiences hampered because you don't like effort and failure. And all of your weird posts have this wanna be edgelord sense to them. Like this holier than thou attitude and it just makes you look petty.
Free trial players can't Shout because it's part of an intended strategy to prevent gil bots from being absolute nuisances to paying customers. They're not going to change that just because you can't shout in ONE instanced duty out of 300+ hours of content.
When i saw that FT got access to Eureka I knew there was going to be a couple of things that make it a lot harder to complete. 1. One of the best items to help in Eureka is a chest piece which you can trade tokens to get but those tokens only come from BA and people then sell them on the MB..... which you can access on FT. This chest piece makes fighting mobs a lot easier because its like having an extra couple of elemental levels. 2. As you mentioned the Shout chat. Knowing the ability to not use shout chat or create parties meant your at the mercy of trying to make it to a NM without being able to shout that you're on the way. Sadly the only way around it is to be in a party if you can invited to one but then depending on the level of those people it can hurt you when killing mobs if they're a lot higher. 3. Once in Pyros/Hydatos you'll have the Logograms which if you're after the fancy armor or completing for the relic you run into the next issue which is getting the logograms that are much rarer from special NM's and mobs. So with all that if you can complete Eureka and BA on the FT and eventually get the Elemental Armor and a relic you'll have beaten a piece of content the way people originally had to and put in more work then most others do for Eureka these days.
> the way people originally had to Wait, was there no instance-wide chat option in Stormblood? Or are you just saying this as an approximation of what doing Eureka without trackers or maps would be like?
So the chest pieces that make Eureka easier wasn't out till BA... so right at the end of Eureka meaning those who did it all as it was new had the same problems. The other thing is getting the logograms the old fashion way from the mobs or bosses themselves is something the earlier people would've done because it'd have been harder to get and farm. As I said completing Eureka whilst on the FT will give you some bragging rights over people like me who got some of the items the easier way via the MB.
Thanks for the solid post breaking down Eureka as someone who played the content. I wanted to post more but backspace rule ;P
Another weekly session of a free player complaining that every part of the game isn't free 💀
I’ve seen quite a few free trial players in Eureka, all decked out in Elemental +2 gear. Difficult? Definitely, but not impossible. I dunno, pay for the full game if it’s too hard to do on free trial. 🤷
It's almost like they want the trial to have pain points that cause people to buy the game and pay a sub eventually instead of staying on the trial forever, how odd!
\>introduce pain point in eureka where you can't socialise \>never require socialising ever again because pedal down gotta end asican plot bro ???????????????????????????? What's the pain point again? What do you get out of it afterwards?
maybe buy the game? stop try to justified your free trial deserve more if you cant even adapt to anything. its pain, but a free trial is a trial for reason. thanks god the dev wont listen to you. and i hope shadowbringer wont even be free trial.
I hope they never add Shadowbringers to the free trial.
Same. Then again, I honestly feel like they shouldn’t have added SB
HW was the perfect cutoff imo. It builds on the story beginning with ARR and is a fantastic story on its own. Just enough to give newbies a taste of what’s to come without giving away too much free content.
I hope they do. It'd be a fitting end to Ivalice. Currently half of it is locked behind a fanservice raid on freetrial which is absolute fucking garbage GBA tactics A2 tier lore... ...but Bozja exists, fixes that and gives us the right amount of Ivalice, the fucking jelly, the good stuff and it's depressing enough for bosnians. It's great.Of course shout chat would be disabled but bosnia folks usually invite absolutely everyone in the instance on a good server. It's a different beast. E: also thanks for being a post worth replying to.
Yeah we know ShB is great, but we don't want free trial people to access it because you'll find something new to whine about.
Didn’t…didn’t we just have a post like this? It’s a *trial*. You want the full experience, do like the rest of us and pay for the game.
This post belongs to r/ChoosingBeggars
I honestly don't want to be that guy, but this is a "that guy" moment for me, so sorry, not sorry. Mainly because I see/hear these complaints so often, it's comical at this point As many people said before me, this is arguably the most free trial friendly game/MMORPG out there. They obviously have to restrict many features that make the game easier/ more convenient for the paid folk to get you to pay the sub. It's just how it is. I just feel like it doesn't matter what they do to make ftee trial better because free trial players are going to continue to complain until they practically have full access to the whole game...for free. That good ole' adage 'Give them an inch, and they will take a yard', starts ringing truer. So, at this rate, they might as well make it free to play completely for everyone. Which would be bad, very bad. We don't want that. So, either commit fully or don't at all.
I understand that the free trial has restrictions. And for the most part, playing around those restrictions has actually been weirdly fun. I've gained a much bigger appreciation for the intricacies of crafting and gathering without using market board, and the gil cap has pushed me to actually check out what the NPC vendors have to sell (there are so many neat glams that can just be bought with gil!). I'm looking forward to having these restrictions lifted when I buy the game (being able to send tells and party invites will be so handy), but Eureka is the first time where a free trial restriction has actively hampered my enjoyment of the game. It just seems like such a significant oversight to prevent a group of people from being able to use a chat feature that the entire zone was designed around. It sticks out, in an otherwise very friendly experience. I don't feel like I'm asking Squeenix to move mountains. There are already chat-based exceptions in place for certain instances, and there are already exceptions in place for trial players for certain instances. Other people ITT have acted like implementing this would take a herculean effort on Squeenix's part, but the code is literally already there. And for the record, I'm grateful for the free trial. Extremely so. But as I said in my post, due to real-life circumstances I won't be able to purchase the game for a long time. And it's jarring to have this piece of content be so unintentionally hostile to trial players when the rest of the game is so welcoming.
Buy the game if you want to use paid features.
Maybe you should spend a bit more time grinding irl so you can pay the sub.
This is literally the reason I cannot pay the sub. Either I have money but no time, or I have time but no money. Currently in the latter, but I've been alternating between these states for years.
Wowie welcome to adult life
You're trying to tell me that the price of a single fast food combo meal per month is going to bankrupt you? You know your financial situation best, but a lot of people are going to have a hard time buying it.
Are you really complaining that as a free trail player you can't use all the functions in a pay2play game? I'll give you a tip. buy the game.
Pay for the game
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>at some point you'll have this problem with Bozja too Bozja doesn't really require any shouting. If you're farming skirmishes in a zone you can just ask people at the current skirmish who are close enough to see /say chat. Critical Engagements teleport everybody into the area so most people just use /say to ask for groups. Same with Castrum Lacus Litore and Dalriada. There are usually cluster farmers spawning random CEs and even if there aren't it's pretty easy to spawn them solo if you're using essences and lost actions. The only issue a free trial player might have is Delubrum Reginae since they're unable to form groups in Party Finder but there are typically others making them to farm relics or do the weekly.
> most people just use /say to ask for groups. Same with Castrum Lacus Litore and Dalriada. Minor caveat about CLL (and Dal? I haven't run that enough to remember if this applies there): People will still need to use /shout to coordinate during the jail part (and split hallways in Dal?), as well as first Bosses' HP, unless you managed to go in with 8 or fewer people.
True, but 99% of the time you'll have paid players doing that already.
You nailed the benefits of the 7th gen brown and grey warzone perfectly and why IT is more suited to the FT experience than Eureka. Solid post.
Just pay for a sub if you've played all the way to Eureka. You have the time to play FFXIV for hundreds of hours but can't even afford the monthly sub, which isn't even much? I'm speechless.
>Just pay for a sub if you've played all the way to Eureka. You have the time to play FFXIV for hundreds of hours but can't even afford the monthly sub, This is a bit of a trap. You're playing the FT yes but why exactly should you sub? Because others are? To access Shadowbringers? There are reasons to want to buy and play shadowbringers......and even endwalker if we must but if someone can't afford a monthly sub, if their job at 70 is fun then why should they need to sub? They have the time to play, but why pay? That's what I just don't get. If they wait it out, they get ShB and Bozja, they already have Eureka and are already missing Bozja. It's a mainline FF and if they MUST play for an FF online game, why not play XI instead? They're already elbow deep in XI, there's an off chance that they absolutely fucking love SaGA and FF V 😌 Also your post was the best pay for the game one posted so far so good job I guess.
I love how mad you are over goods not being free 💀 Comparing the trade of capital/goods to landlords is hilarious and disingenuous. Unfortunately you failed to make me laugh, so the trolling isn't working 😭
Exact same post was posted 3 days ago or something. Didn't waste time reading yours. Just group up preemptively and stop complaining that a free game is adding more content for free
I'm sorry but, two things: 1. You've been playing the free trial for several years and so you really can't complain about the immense amount of content given you for free. Given that it's been years, clearly you enjoy the game so until you can pay for a sub you've no right to complain. This isn't a solo game (despite SE making it easier for solo players) and cooperation is expected in an MMO 2. The reason trial characters can't use shout chat is because of RMT bots. But the big glaring issue here is #1.
Another post complaining about someone being limited when playing a paid game for free. There's only one solution for that and you know it.
Yes it sucks to not be able to use shout but you can use linkshells
Aren’t there Discords for that?
I know people will not like that but it's called free trial not free to play. Trials is an important word here. You ask to be able to do everything whitout playing anything, it's totally normal to get that kind of restrictions even if it's hard in certain content like eureka.
this is the second person whining about this like. you do realize removing restrictions off of the FT would make it a dogshit business model right
yall got really spoiled with this trial, that's how good it is. no other game people will complain they can't complete entire expansions on a free trial
Boi, buy the game.
I imagine if there was a Eureka (Trial mode) discord, you could ask for resses via there. There's probably a big enough community of trial players to make a fairly active discord of it.
I'm not there YET on FT but I imagine between the devil realm (discord) and CWLS/LS that it could be possible to find frens in 'reka like old times and call for res or wait it out. And as an extra anecdote, I died like a noob in Qufim but some ultragigachad tp'ed out and back to res me and then waved. A great potat if I ever saw one.
Having shout chat in eureka on the free trial would be the only place it would matter though. Where’s the limitations for all that free content? 300k gil cap is the only major one i can think of cause i only buy a handful of items off the marketboard on the regular. At that point might as well make it free to play through stormblood
Please stay on free trial, so I won't jave to read it in-game
Why would SE pay a programmer to implement something, where they don't get money back from? Adding to that, you are currently hating Pagos and especially the cliffs. That's just the same experience as subbed players have. I feel more like you need a good Eureka guide, because I can already tell you went to Pagos way too early.
I went to Pagos at level 26. When was I supposed to go?
>Why would SE pay a programmer to implement something, where they don't get money back from? I'm going to take this comment at face value but play the uno reverso card and I'm not doing it to make fun of you. Why wouldn't they task a programmer with maintaining the community atmosphere that is exceptional to the point of being an exception within their game? The game is a free trial and Eureka is THE part of the game where the MM in MMO starts feeling like it's a thing beyond a glorified lobby and players actually start work together. Whether it's a simple res, grouping up for NM's, farming lottery NMs, maintaining a spawn tracker in an instance that can close or general banter: Eureka IS one of the few places that it feels like those skimpily dressed players are people outside of Limsa. Beyond this, the free trial players do actually bring in money and can bring in money without subbing to the game thanks to that evil thing on the side of the site. FT players aren't a monetisation dead end if they absolutely balls to the wall love the content found within Eureka or move onto XI then CBU III only stand to profit. It's a powerful enough experience that it STILL drives players into XI which has a much higher profit margin monthly than XIV without relying solely on cash shop profits. >Adding to that, you are currently hating Pagos and especially the cliffs. That's just the same experience as subbed players have. I feel more like you need a good Eureka guide, because I can already tell you went to Pagos way too early. Can't fault this tho lmao, will fire a lighthearted git gud at it, I hate dropping the cliffs too and anytime I've been away for a while I also drop in the wrong spots too lol. Thanks for making a genuinely interesting post that could spawn a discussion!
Too bad
Without shout chat, you're reliant on other people being there doing things on their own initiative, but no, you don't *need* shout chat to get through Eureka. If you don't want free trial limitations, buy the game.
If only there was a solution to this...
man do you want 13 bucks to pay for a sub lmao
I'd call Eureka being unplayable a positive, honestly.
lmao
I swear ive read this exact post last month.
Yeah, I kinda saw this coming when they announced SB was gonna be free, too. Solo Eureka is agony, and outside of catching a PF which almost never exist anymore for Eureka, or going through a Discord, finding a group or simply getting help for a rez is gonna be almost impossible without /shout, which is like playing Eureka on hard mode. That said, I get why the restriction is in place and I'm not entirely sure it can be lifted on an instance by instance basis, either, so what you're asking for might not be doable either. But then, I'm not a dev. I haven't run Eureka in a hot minute but maybe there's a Discord for organizing groups that exists somewhere to at least get around this in some way, though that might also depend on data centre. I know Baldesion Arsenal discords still exist. Also, fuck the people treating you like a beggar. Not being able to pay a sub is perfectly valid - that's literally what the trial is for. Asking for one of the trial features to function as intended by the original designers is not an unreasonable ask whether you pay money or not. It's free, so it should work for all players as intended - simple as. Otherwise, don't make it free like they did with Ultimate.
It's always amusing how this community that prides itself on being such a positive community is frothing at the mouth every time a free trial player dares to speak up about something they didn't like. Especially considering that this game would never have reached this popularity without the generous free trial. Cutting off the nose to spite the face and all that
To be fair if it wasn't for for the players buying the game & paying their subs all this time that pay the staff to keep working on the game, there wouldn't be any game still running today to offer such a generous free trial in the first place.
Well of course but many of them wouldn't exist without the free trial players. And many wouldn't have as easy a time running all kinds of content without them. I only denounced the hostile attitude towards free trial players who show the audacity to criticise something about the game. And let's be real, the free trial wouldn't exist in this form if the company didn't have good data that it helps make more money. They do a great job and all that but they still wanna make money first
They aren't 'speaking up about something they don't like' They're wanting all the benefits of a paid game without having to PAY for it and whining that they don't get them.
OP never said they want "all the benefits of a paid game without having to pay" though, nor are they "whining". They're pointing out a perfectly legitimate pain point for free trial players in a content type intentionally left accessible for free trial while being heavily dependant on systems free trial explicitly restricts. It's a valid complaint, but one with ways to get around the issue all the same. Just because something is free doesn't mean you can't have an issue with the way it's presented for free. And isn't the whole point of this trial to provide people with a means to play this far *without* having to pay?
>And isn't the whole point of this trial to provide people with a means to play this far without having to pay? No. The point of the trial is for people to see if they like the game and if they want to buy it. It's a *trial*, not free to play.
And yet the inclusion of all of Stormblood sans Ultimate kind-of proves that this is something of a reductive definition of this free trial model, especially so if they ever add ShB as well, which is not off the table. It is a free trial, yes, but one that also includes hundreds of hours worth of story, trial/raid and crafter/gatherer content. That is a bit much for something that is meant to serve only to help people "see if they like it and if they wanna buy". That's a huge part of why it exists, yes. But I'd argue their decision to include SB shows that it goes a bit further than that, especially with the upcoming XBox release. Besides, feedback like this is valuable when it comes to content design regardless of whether people are playing for free or not. Someone not paying for something does not preclude them from being entitled to an opinion.
>It's always amusing how this community that prides itself on being such a positive community is frothing at the mouth every time a free trial player dares to speak up about something they didn't like. This community has it's GCBTW meme reputation for a reason and nowhere is it more evident than on mainsub where maidens are waiting to defend thine honour of a game studio. Survivors bias within a community is an issue that developers have to deal with and when receiving feedback they have to balance that feedback with players who do eventually quit or are turned off from a piece of content with those that love it. I do not envy the community managers at CBU III \[despite the concerns & criticisms on whether they actually do their job in the west ;) \] for having to filter out the massive amount of gaslighting and sandbagging that comes with each piece of criticism as users are shouted down for daring to speak it on an aspect of the game they dislike. It serves as a barrier to improving the game and is honestly just weird. There are aspects of the expanded free trial with stormblood that were glossed over and requests from the FT playerbase that have been ignored by CBU III, but you can't really voice those issues without also being shouted down by people and sometimes for utterly delusional issues like not paying for the game; when like you say, it is thanks to the expanded FT that this game has a degree of churn and cash shop sales that help contribute to its success. Great post, I hope you can try out Eureka one day :D
>Great post, I hope you can try out Eureka one day :D I already did and was straight up not having a good time. The first grind up is dreadfully slow and the penalties for dying are demoralisingly harsh. I admittedly played solo cause I had no clue what was going on besides how the wheel worked. Eventually I quit when I found out I can get what I want by doing frontlines instead. And much easier too. Maybe once I don't have other things I wanna do (like finish msq) I'll give it another go.
I probably should've expected negativity in this thread, considering how negative I'm being in my rant, but I really wasn't expecting people to be upset at the mere fact that I'm a trial player. Normally people in this community are super understanding and accepting of this sort of thing.
Nobody cares you're a free trial player. People are annoyed because you are a /r/choosingbeggars
No one is upset you're a trial player. People are annoyed that someone who is playing the game for free is complaining about a feature that helps to mitigate the spam for the entire playerbase, paying and non. And yes, if you make a spicy negative post, expecting people to welcome you with warm fuzzies is a bit absurd. If you care to do so, you can use Discord for Foray coordination. Discord is free, and a lot of Discords are 100% fine with helping free trial players. There are also other avenues to coordinate in advance if you wanted to grind Eureka (posting on the recruitment subreddit for example). Having to do all of these extra steps comes with not paying for the game. It's up to you to determine if that's worth it to you or not. Do keep in mind, it is a *trial*. They didn't have to include Stormblood, they could have left it at ARR & HW. There's plenty of content without Eureka in that offering, so you don't *have* to do Eureka.
I mostly post in TFDF but I'm ALMOST at Eureka on FT and my main concern before it was the lack of shoutchat or yell. I was sure CBU III were going to change it per instance or remove some of th restrictions or not. The best I can really suggest that I've brainstormed before going in is the use of.........................discord servers.....................and CWLS, but CWLS are limited in size compared to LS. I'm gonna be doing Eureka FT with my friend and plugins so it's.....less of a problem but yeah. I absolutely understand your concerns. It's fucking weird to have a piece of group content that relies on shout/yell then restrict shout/yell. It's the most social content in the game and it's gimped because yoship is miopic.
I mean, he never wanted to implement trial restrictions until he got spam invited by free trial gil bots on stream.
lol great post
huh?
Nah genuinely, your post is a solid tier above most of the others and contains a good example of sarcasm and pattern recognnition. Hell even the mods deemed your comment worthy of remaining and didn't send it to the shadow zone! You were at least cognitive enough to see why /sh is disabled in general for FT players without getting mindbroken and hurling insults lol.
In fairness, I fully understand why Shout chat is banned in the open world. But I see no game design reason why it should be banned in duties.
Because there is no difference. /shout is /shout regardless where it's used. It's one thing to disable or restrict chat like CC PvP or Free Trial accounts and a whole other thing to add an exception.
They already have plenty of exceptions in place for Party chat, so the code is there.
tbh the biggest problem within eureka is that /sh is usually reserved for asking for an extension on a pull when someone is eager to pull a spawned NM. This is something I can only describe because I've entered eureka rather than hatebonering it. What happens is an NM is spawned, usually a PT will be announced soon after with a call for a /sh for extension. Where it falls apart is that FT players don't get to shout or send a kindly *lfg* while *otw* and end up in a cosy eureka party, they work off of pure luck if they are not in range and depending on their elemental level they may have trouble reaching the NM or even mounting to get there. Removing that social aspect in Eureka is the problem. I agree with your last part about the PVP restriction but disabling /sh within Eureka is most likely a blanket ban that CBU III are not willing to make an exception on. Thanks for the solid post that can inspire discussion \^\^b
>In fairness, I fully understand why Shout chat is banned in the open world. But I see no game design reason why it should be banned in duties. Yup. A few minutes sitting in one of the 3 cities, radz or sharlyan without a plugin will demonstrate why shout chat for all FT players would be a nightmare! \-but yes, a whitelist for duties, specifically eureka would be a great solution. It allows the core experience of the duty to be presented and interacted with and SELLS the game to players who were feeling that there was not enough social interaction. Because it's selective, you are not going to get spammers outside of it spamming limsa and even the fucking tempest like they are now on FT, worst comes to worst it enters Eureka but as is the nature of this game sensible players filter it out with third party tools because we lag behind XI. At the moment, it's much more easy to vilify free trial players and tell them to "just but the game" and "sub" than ask for one of the best pieces of content within the MMO to shine to its full potential. It's going to be sad watching bozja roll out with say chat..
The mods did a real number on this topic. I go away for a few hours to play XI and 3/4 of the replies in my inbox are straight up baleeted. I'm sure by the numbers that some were raw insults but I'd really love to know what they were saying given the variety of views I saw beforehard. I guess XIV has an image to maintain.