As someone who has been in numerous Pagos instances every day since it's release and having experienced 80-90 minute gaps between NM spawns in nearly all of them...
...yes, they are.
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Garlaige Citadel.
The RMT used to MPK you with Serket if you exp'ed there. Players often mpked by accident the camp at the zone if they had to flee the lower camp. It was a multilevel map with undead that would blood aggro, and you had to drop down often. FFXI wasn't all relaxing either; just trying to navigate to any camps in yuhtunga except the zone ones was a hassle, because the jungle was maze like and the maps didnt show connections.
FFXI was pretty stressful too, just saying.
Good few day. Levelled to 24 from 23 yeasterday. Hit 24 and logged for the night. Started today and hit 26 before logging. However, 27 requires over a million xp so might take me a while to get that one. As for nms I done 4 over 6 hours. 2 ash dragons. The worm and snow queen (this was the last one I done before logging tonight and got me to 26) compared to anemos that's pretty rare. Louhi spawned once afaik that entire time
This hotfix was a pretty weak response to all the complaints. Sorry Yoshi, it's going to take more than reducing the HP on the bunny fate to get me to go back in there.
This content is just gross. It feels like pure padding to stall for time until the next big patch.
I've done multiple 2.0 relics while current and same with 3.0 ones. I'm no stranger to grinds, but Pagos just isn't fun...it's frustrating. They literally cut the map in half between high and low level players. There is no way to get around the map easily as SE decided to put the first teleport shard at 20, 2nd at 21, 3rd at 30, and 4th at 32, mounts at 35. You can't even get a Pagos Fairy for the buff most of the time because they spawn in high level areas. There's no way to really play with friends if you're at different elemental levels. The bunny thing is ridiculous cause it sends you to high level areas if you do get a group to kill the fates.
You have to do the same movements nonstop...I raid and even prog isn't nearly as punishing on my hands compared to Pagos. The white background also makes my eyes and head hurt after awhile (even with blue light reduction enabled on my pc).
Also people are getting kinda toxic. There are groups who will kick a person who has to afk for a min or dc's. I've seen people also lol'ing in shout at players asking for rez's. I've been sniped at in party chat because I took a min to relay quest info to someone in shout and wasn't dpsing. Then I saw someone being told not to run down the hill to rez someone until the chain was complete. NMs, if they pop, are almost pulled right away, so good luck if you're trying to run across the map. It's not the ffxiv community I've known for the last 5 years.
Not saying that this is everyone...twelve knows I've had my levels saved by some amazing players who went out of their way me and I've done the same. I just don't like where this is going.
This content isn't pulling the community together as much as even Anemos did in it's own way. There's is just such a focus on the grinding down of mobs for exp that people are turning into rotation machines. No more banter or time to talk to your party since you might drop the chain. I don't even want to get into the kettle of light stuff...
I'm pretty sure that big, tall white mountain thing we see in the middle of the Pagos map isn't actually ice, but salt cause SE likes to troll us.
There were only a handful of places to camp - either upstairs on bats\beetles in the two safe spots (Entrance and locked door) that were very far from any of the undead, or on the beetles downstairs again which were not near any undead and were certainly not near Serket. I don't know where you were xping but in the 13ish years I played that game I can count on no hands the number of times I died to either Serket while leveling or blood aggro from the wights while leveling. If you were camping near either of those places you weren't doing it right. If you were 'dropping down often' you were there for another purpose and not to level. Maybe you are remembering getting genkai items there? I recall bomb coal being in there.
As far as getting lost in the jungles - you were on a chocobo. So how stressful could it have been? No one leveled there until 20+ so by then you should have had your license. If you had the airship pass before your license you were also doing it wrong.
Maps in game didn't show connections, but like with many other things the players learned and filled in the gaps. I still have maps on my walls of how to get through places like that. So yes, it could be frustrating. Did you die and lose all your progress as a result of being a little turned around at the big downed tree versus the tunnel on the lower floor?
No. That's the difference between XI and this new garbage. This new garbage is punishing with no remorse about it. XI was just an interesting place that the devs wanted you to explore and yes, maybe get lost in.
And this is why no one bothers talking to people on the forum... you have nothing to say and aim to push others out of speaking their minds. Yes, the former relics were freebies (to an extent), if you chose not to focus on them. SE is heading in the correct direction. Relics are not meant to be easily obtainable items.Anemos was also way too easy.
Where exactly are you getting the information that relics are not meant to be easily obtainable items? And what exactly has been 'hard' about any of them thus far?
Pagos sucks because it sucks. I am not even getting started on the relic - the content itself isn't content at all and NONE of the relics have been hard, but at least the earlier ones just had you repeating decent content ad naseum. I'll take that over this any day.
I played a bunch in anemos because believe it or not, the train brought back that feeling of hanging around with players in a party that I had in XI. Except instead of 5 others, it was half the instance. The shout chat was glorious. It wasn't the GREATEST content ever created but damn, I enjoyed it once it really started to roll.
This iteration goes out of its way to not even be remotely enjoyable. I don't care if they reduce drop rates to 1 thing per every 20 things as long as the content is reasonably fun to play.
You want a relic that took forever and was serious work? Get a time machine and go build an Apoc.
At least Dynamis was fun.
I'm level 29 and its been a week and I haven't done my challenge logs yet this week. I have a full time job before anyone asks. Content is fine and all I've been doing is grouping/chaining with friends and talking in discord about dumb things in my free time. Its been fun for me so far. Kinda glad the train is dead, got tired of afking.