Throw us a bone (Pagos and the Rising)

I've just read through Yoshi's interview with gamescom and something really stood out regarding Pagos spawns.

"Yoshida: The most efficient way of increasing EL still hasn't been found. This time, the trick is to make efficient use of mutations and adaptations while chaining, but maybe it was a bit too hard to figure out".

I'm one of the ones that no-lifed to 35 in about 4 days when Pagos went live and was part of a few groups working on trying to figure out spawn conditions. Thinking about S-Ranks, there was a vague riddle from the hunter than helped the community figure out spawn conditions, right? You had something to go off. You could try one thing and if it didn't work, try another.

Pagos is a massive, massive time commitment. For Cassie, we spent hours and hours trying to figure out why it was spawning sometimes and not others. I still think that no one really knows, still. Eventually, the time spent and zero spawns happening beat us down and we gave up. Which is fine right? We failed. Others might not. But, I'm not trying it again.

For the Rising - People are being expected to check in every 10 hours because to do this event the NPC is "random".

I am all for letting the community figure it out, and not hand holding anyone through content. However.

There is nothing fun about thinking an event is broken for the first 12 hours it's live, because, in 5 years there has never been a randomly spawning NPC for the Rising before. There is nothing fun about waiting 10 hours for a random event spawn.

There is nothing fun about spending hours and hours of time in Pagos trying to figure out conditions, no hints, no clues, and having literally nothing to tell us if we're wrong or right. That quote from Yoshida suggests that we still, after all these weeks, have not figured Pagos out.

Maybe with this content that requires a time commitment... just throw us a bone here. Have an NPC like the GATE NPCs, "the next Rising instance will be open at x time". The Rising is meant to be fun, casual, a nostalgic look back at where we've come from. Not a time grind.

Have a S-Rank like hunter riddle we can work off in Eureka. Or something just to make it a little less unforgiving.

I'm tired waiting for this Rising event to spawn and I'm more than a little annoyed. Interested to hear peoples thoughts.

Just to make it clear: I believe that there is content that should be 100% left up to the community, like raids, instances in general.. I wouldn't want the devs to feel like they need to drop any hints for anything else. But the Rising event? Why? Why did it have to be so hard?

When the community thinks your feature is a bug, it's probably not a good feature.

I remember when SE had to tell people how absolute virtue worked after 2 years of no one figuring it out and the only kill prior was because of an exploit.

Bottom line, don't make content that's impossible to figure out. i.e has no method of verifying the results of testing your hypothesis.

In the case of eureka: it's impossible to determine whether or not any individual method towards spawning an NM or forcing a mutation was due to your efforts or was just a coincidence if the chance for success is anything less than 100%. Furthermore, people aren't going to waste time finding the most efficient method, if it means increasing the overall time spent towards completing the goal in the first place, especially if the task at hand is extremely tedious and mundane.

Im pretty sure there is some form of light bonus going on in pagos, have happened upon some usual moments where its almost non stop light from kills or higher levels of light like gentle and such. So yeah definitely feels like bonus light aspect.

The Rising event was really annoying to wait for the Rising Recruiter.
I remember Yoshida's GDC 2014 presentation and that 'What we have learned' slide.

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https://youtu.be/YRZ_4H0OK60?t=51m13s

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The first thing that comes to my mind about this patch cycle is me asking "B-b-but Yoshida-sama, I thought fun comes first, right?"
Then he would point at me and say "Eryna, if it isn't fun, you're doing it wrong."

*sigh* After 4 years I think I need to take a break from FFXIV. :(

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Originally Posted by Eryna

The Rising event was really annoying to wait for the Rising Recruiter.
I remember Yoshida's GDC 2014 presentation and that 'What we have learned' slide.


The first thing that comes to my mind about this patch cycle is me asking "B-b-but Yoshida-sama, I thought fun comes first, right?"
Then he would point at me and say "Eryna, if it isn't fun, you're doing it wrong."

*sigh* After 4 years I think I need to take a break from FFXIV. :(

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He also mentioned in the slide to not have the mindset that any piece of content can be fixed with a future update and look where we are now. I'm waiting to see if the gear is any good in 4.4 glamour wise because that is the only thing keeping me glued to this game atm. I'd much rather buy 3 coffee's from starbucks at this point than spend a month doing content begrudgingly.

What is this random spawn for rising event you are all talking and about?

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Originally Posted by Miles_Maelstrom

What is this random spawn for rising event you are all talking and about?

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So, you've seen the Rising event has started right? You can do the introduction quest, you get your minion and music. There is another quest, that appears randomly once a day for a few hours that is the Calamity retold instance, you get to run around Uldah streets fighting monsters with other players, just like they did in the original calamity in 1.0.

Basically, that NPC to do the instance quest is a random spawn. If you're not online the time it spawns for the day, sucks to be you.

https://i.imgur.com/a9YBTlM.jpg

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Originally Posted by Hanayumi

Im pretty sure there is some form of light bonus going on in pagos, have happened upon some usual moments where its almost non stop light from kills or higher levels of light like gentle and such. So yeah definitely feels like bonus light aspect.

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I've even heard of people getting bright, brilliant, newborn star light ratings from pagos. I've never even had gentle, only feeble every time. I think light grind was intended to be much faster but it's too hard to understand when/how to attain best results.

I don't see why we don't all just form large groups [3+ parties] and drag anubis together and just AoE. Each party just needs one person to hit each mob really to get credit for people who never hit the mob.

More people killing anubis = more mutation = more guaranteed light.

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Originally Posted by Zyneste

I don't see why we don't all just form large groups [3+ parties] and drag anubis together and just AoE. Each party just needs one person to hit each mob really to get credit for people who never hit the mob.

More people killing anubis = more mutation = more guaranteed light.

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Light works like exp, people outside your party hitting your party's mobs means less for you, that's why people get hostile if you touch the mobs they are chaining.

I hit 35 in 8 days, got the mount and relic and hated every minute. For me, it was the worst content I ever experienced in my 20+ yrs of mmo gaming. I went back in 1x at 35 and attempted to start the relic for my healer. After getting her first upgrade, I decided never to go in Pagos again. Light gain at 35 is way too slow with no options to expand such as increased light gain for logs at 35, etc.

Tried Pagos, hated it. Did The Rising, found the random nature of the quest to get the tokens for the event items to be really stupid, and counter to the time schedules of the likely majority of players on any server. There's literally nothing encouraging me to play the game until the next main patch, and if these two most recent additions to the game are the shape of things to come, there's a good chance I won't want to play even then.

I know there are a lot of people who miss the old days of waiting around for content, and doing shout chat to find groups, etc, but that's just not the world we're in anymore. I feel like Square has forgotten this when designing content.

Sadly, Content is being beaten to quickly for SE to keep up with it so inturn they are making content last longer. But don't realize the a large amount of there player base may have only 1-5 jobs capped and that takes most of there time. They would like to have Relic on there 1-5 jobs But sadly SE is worried about the players with all jobs at cap running out of things to do.

My FC of 77 People is about to die. With 5 active members left. The leader Quit 50 days ago. The person that got leader ship hasn't been on in 33 days... There is no one who is left that wants to keep it going...

Part of that is a balmung issue.

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Originally Posted by Tigerlilley

So, you've seen the Rising event has started right? You can do the introduction quest, you get your minion and music. There is another quest, that appears randomly once a day for a few hours that is the Calamity retold instance, you get to run around Uldah streets fighting monsters with other players, just like they did in the original calamity in 1.0.

Basically, that NPC to do the instance quest is a random spawn. If you're not online the time it spawns for the day, sucks to be you.

https://i.imgur.com/a9YBTlM.jpg

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Thanks friend. I apparently just lucked out. When I went to do the event, he was spawned and was still there when I left. I was thinking I was missing something else, good to know I didn't miss anything.

I want relics to go back to the way they were in ARR and HW, specifically with the importance of dungeon instances. They forced relic seekers to do a variety of content, which in turn helped out new players and anyone seeking roulette parties. Now there is less need to run duty roulettes. I hate light, but the idea behind Singing Shards and items purchased through tomestones and similar rewards helped to move the game along.

With Eureka, it's its own content entirely, and thus far it's content very few people legitimately enjoy. One step forward, ten steps back. SE needs to continue adding content that puts players of a wide assortment of levels together for the good of the game, and the relic quests were a good method of upkeep.

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Originally Posted by TheGrimace

I want relics to go back to the way they were in ARR and HW, specifically with the importance of dungeon instances. They forced relic seekers to do a variety of content, which in turn helped out new players and anyone seeking roulette parties. Now there is less need to run duty roulettes. I hate light, but the idea behind Singing Shards and items purchased through tomestones and similar rewards helped to move the game along.

With Eureka, it's its own content entirely, and thus far it's content very few people legitimately enjoy. One step forward, ten steps back. SE needs to continue adding content that puts players of a wide assortment of levels together for the good of the game, and the relic quests were a good method of upkeep.

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I done all the relics and personally I'm happy Eureka is here and all the effort the dev team put into developing special instances and so on just for relic. Last thing I wanted was a rehash of the same old tune we've been doing for relic prior to Eureka. Relative to Pagos I think it still needs a hot fix to adjust the light requirements because I think they're too high. 31 frosted crystals is too steep given how slowly we gather light at the moment.

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Originally Posted by Tigerlilley

I'm tired waiting for this Rising event to spawn and I'm more than a little annoyed. Interested to hear peoples thoughts.

Just to make it clear: I believe that there is content that should be 100% left up to the community, like raids, instances in general.. I wouldn't want the devs to feel like they need to drop any hints for anything else. But the Rising event? Why? Why did it have to be so hard?

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My thoughts are, it really feels like SE is exploring new inventive ways to use lock out mechanics to extend contents life till the next patch if you ask me. Maybe another method of using the "help the new players" line they like to throw around.

Problem: We only make two new dungeons a patch! People will grind them for a week for max gear and they will complain about lack of content! The dungeons will be ghost towns! Think of the new players!
Answer: Weekly totem cap.

Problem: We don't have time to add more then one raid every patch or two! People will blow through them fast to get fully geared and all the extras in no time! The raids will be abandoned! We must do something! Think of the new players!
Answer: Weekly loot limit.

Problem: Aenemos was over too fast! People were done in a week! Think of the new players that couldn't level in time!
Answer: Turn Pagos into this super high level mathematical algebraicly calculused infused trigonomarrific equation that would confuse even Stephen Hawking on figuring out the fastest most direct path for getting what you need.

Problem: Each new events all the players log in when its up! In 15-20 minutes they're all done! In a week no one is left to help the new players with the things and the FATES and the stuff!
Answer: YOLO! Lets make everyone keep logging in to check and run around looking for a random quest NPC spawn somewhere in the world.

I could go on with beast tribe quest lock outs, treasure map gathering lock outs, script quest weekly lock out, wondrous tales lock out. Here a lock out there a lock out everywhere a lock out. SE loves their lock outs and this feels like the next generation of lock outs, lock outs evolved.

While I agree that there your weekly limits are accurate, I honestly don't think the random NPC is like that. I think it's a server load throttle. Obviously, I have zero expertise or proof of this other than their instance queues in Stormblood broke on launch and a little bit throughout the expansion also. If it is a server load restriction, they really, really needed to post a NPC with a schedule instead of pretending it's some new fun thing.

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Originally Posted by Tigerlilley

While I agree that there your weekly limits are accurate, I honestly don't think the random NPC is like that. I think it's a server load throttle. Obviously, I have zero expertise or proof of this other than their instance queues in Stormblood broke on launch and a little bit throughout the expansion also. If it is a server load restriction, they really, really needed to post a NPC with a schedule instead of pretending it's some new fun thing.

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I do agree completely. If it was a server load thing the best thing to do was have it as a set time for the event to happen, all other times its closed. It's just that the current way makes it feel like its a new form of lock out. Just because you can't plan around it, you can't just log in and have it done when the servers go live. It keeps you and anyone who has yet to do it logging in and searching. That's why to me it feels like its a form of a way to extend the events life till the end.

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

I done all the relics and personally I'm happy Eureka is here and all the effort the dev team put into developing special instances and so on just for relic. Last thing I wanted was a rehash of the same old tune we've been doing for relic prior to Eureka. Relative to Pagos I think it still needs a hot fix to adjust the light requirements because I think they're too high. 31 frosted crystals is too steep given how slowly we gather light at the moment.

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Given the track record of previous relics, it was a bit optimistic to assume that stage two of the Eureka weapons would be as easy as stage one was. The previous relics typically had a bump up in grindiness at each stage - sometimes a substantial bump.

I expected that, at a minimum, Pagos would require killing the zone boss three times rather than just once to get all the items needed for the upgrade. It doesn't surprise me in the least that the actual grind is even worse than that expectation.

I swear I remember reading something in an interview...something about Diadem and the "rules" that applied to it...and how it wasn't a good idea to let players just figure out everything in their own without a set of objectives because they'd all go off and do their own thing rather than have a structured attempt at whatever the game wanted them to do.

I mean, I'm all for figuring out things...but usually there are clues left to help guide us :)

I agree with the OP and the sad thing is, at least with the rising they can just do secret changes (increasing the timer) and just go like "well you just did not figure it out, duh" while we will never know that this was changed..since they never told us the rules anyway..(isnt it sad that I would even see them do that?)

I also dont understand why not give us some riddles or anything to understand the spawning..if people have not found out the right way after such a long time then maybe your right way is just bad and need more hints..

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Originally Posted by Tigerlilley

Just to make it clear: I believe that there is content that should be 100% left up to the community, like raids, instances in general.. I wouldn't want the devs to feel like they need to drop any hints for anything else.

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But the Devs in SE in general take this to the extreme and basically scapegoat themselves when they add things like these. Granted, in some content it's an interesting play that has some people praise it; but otherwise is: "SE, do you even?!"

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Originally Posted by alimdia

Light works like exp, people outside your party hitting your party's mobs means less for you, that's why people get hostile if you touch the mobs they are chaining.

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They expect people to work together to figure out Pagos, but put systems in Pagos where you're penalized for working together.

https://i.imgur.com/WsXIWLD.gif

I haven't even tried the rising event. I was doing pagos when it started trying to get to 35 thinking it would get better. It really doesn't. I'm stuck at the second step because now people won't even try spawning NM's. it's all about light. there are zero hints. no one really likes it. they had to make changes to it because it was broken and not working. I still believe it's broken and not working properly. reports of light are all over the place but everyone seems convinced sleeping dragons/anubys chain grinding is the way to go. If there's some trick, even a riddle won't help. They say the trick is to use mutations and adaptations, but that only seems to help with XP gains.

On the Rising, when it started everyone was angry the one quest chain was it. you couldn't get the tokens. we all thought it was broken. then pop, it's there. They really aren't doing anything to help with the longevity of the game. I'd rather stab my eyes out than do this. It's not friendly to the player base either. I really think they need to find somewhere between the extremes.

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Originally Posted by Fawkes

They expect people to work together to figure out Pagos, but put systems in Pagos where you're penalized for working together.

https://i.imgur.com/WsXIWLD.gif

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Also if you try to play the "intended" way chaining to 35 you get penalized for playing with friends that have a different elemental level.

The whole chaining thing has been terrible since Anemos and instead of adding some way to sync elemental level they doubled down on the grind.

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

I've even heard of people getting bright, brilliant, newborn star light ratings from pagos. I've never even had gentle, only feeble every time. I think light grind was intended to be much faster but it's too hard to understand when/how to attain best results.

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Yeah! Killing mutated monsters above my level only gives feeble light gain.

The best I can figure is that you have to kill specific mutated/adapted monsters in specific weather while wearing Eurekan gear or something.

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Originally Posted by Berteaux_Braumegain

The best I can figure is that you have to kill specific mutated/adapted monsters in specific weather while wearing Eurekan gear or something.

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Well, hidden stats on gear were pretty common in FFXI, maybe Eurekan gear has hidden light bonuses on it.

Also make sure you face east.

We spent literal days in there trying to figure things out. After that week what I learnt for sure is:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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Originally Posted by Fawkes

Well, hidden stats on gear were pretty common in FFXI, maybe Eurekan gear has hidden light bonuses on it.

Also make sure you face east.

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and wear green

It's a bit sad that we're all losing time because they don't want to give us some tips. The content is being hated unstead.

Wanted to start a topic about this myself. Good looking out, TC.

So yeah... Dear Developers;

For The Rising: If you would have us wait around for hours, not knowing when the NPC will appear and even make us wonder if the NPC and the event is bugged WITHOUT a prior warning or indicator that the instance only appears every x amount of hours, please let us know somehow in-game. I got lucky and got in without a few minutes of completing starting event, but my sister took 3-4 hours of waiting to get into the instance. So please, give us fair warning when something takes an exuberant amount of time to trigger.

For Pagos: The fact that we had to have several hot-fixes for this content already screams foul play. Now I hear that we have yet to "figure out" what the most proficient way of playing Pagos is. So, dear developers, where are our clues? Our hints? Pagos is huge, has several systems running throughout it (bunnies, NMs, lights, Mutations, Adaptations) that are complicated, RNG bases and coincidental. We could go about it a hundred different ways but any attempt at figuring out anything secondary because it takes much more time that we are willing to give it to just "figure things out". The hint could even be the most cryptic thing you can think of but its presence would give us something to start with and, considering how many people play Pagos whether they like it or not, we could have figured something out by now.

Just... why? I can almost understand wanting us to figure out Pagos ourselves but the systems are so counter intuitive and unfriendly that almost nobody (at least now) is will to give it the time (its a LOT of time) to figure it out. And with The Rising, it baffles me how they could put in an Instance that takes hours to reappear without some sort of prior notification for it. I mean, if we were warned then we could have played any of the many other pieces of content of the game instead of waiting around wondering if it was bugged.