My Review of Pagos: An Uninspired Disappointment

[Souljacker]

I tell you what, sometimes its really hard to comb through these threads and look at legitimate feedback without getting bogged down with things like "No more rathalos because I didn't like it" or every single thread getting derailed by one person with a parser vengeance. Look at the subreddit right now. Sure it has its toxic moments but right now people are sharing screenshots and ideas with the new content.

This forum gets really, really toxic and very much a bubble with a lot of the same people always complaining about stuff. I would eventually start dismissing it as noise as well.

That's absolutely no excuse. When you run a professional operation you hire individuals to do just that - comb through the comments to determine which ones are actual feedback and which ones might be just complaints for the sake of complaints. Look at this thread. Have you seen a single person say "I just don't like it" without detailing, sometimes with clear historical references to this game's predecessor, what exactly is not enjoyable about the content?

I've been on the forums a long time and the vast majority of critical posts are well-written, detailed, and thorough, as are the suggestions and requests. If SE considers that toxic, that's on them and their thin skin and they need to grow up a little. Criticism by players should never, ever be ignored. Can all issues be addressed at all times in every way? No, but this doubling down on bad is not the appropriate response no matter how they view the forums.

Reddit forums are heavily moderated in general and not limited to players with active accounts. I wouldn't use reddit as any sort of accurate gauge of the state of the game.

Edit: I did head over there just to check out what they are saying and you are grossly exaggerating the tone of the posts there. The threads about Pagos are just as critical as the ones here (and less restrained, actually), and the 'screenshots' are either people showing off their rejected gear design entries or the usual 'look at this uncommon party makeup we used to kill xyz!'

Reddit isn't some warm and cuddly safe space. It's the same players with the same complaints about the same 'content' (and I use that description VERY loosely here).

[Penthea]

Well I hope we're really missing something. The first few days of Anemos weren't great because the community had not figured out how to spawn most of the fates. So I'm hoping something similar is happening with Pagos - that there is something the players haven't figured out or found yet.

I enjoyed Anemos but I won't deny it was severely lacking in content. The immensely dangerous mobs with a legitimate con to dying were a real game changer and I love this, but we needed more than two activities. You only had the fate train or chain xp grinding, but at least there was some manner of choice in how to spend your time.

Presently in Pagos the fate train is more akin to a fate traffic jam. Fates take an incredibly long time to spawn to the point that you could be killing the relevant mobs for nearly an hour and not have a fate spawn before your instance timer runs out (happened to me last night). So then this just leaves us with the chain-xp grind.

If we're not missing something, and SE intend us to level up mostly with chain xp grind...then I have to wonder did they even test the experience of playing like this. This is what it is like for me:

1: Changing your magicite element in a short space of time has limited charges. This means the most efficient way to get chain xp is to farm the same mobs over and over. This completely discourages exploring. No matter how beautiful a zone is, it gets boring if you're looking at the same spot for ages.

2: Because you're farming the same mobs over and over, there's nothing new to expect. The whole process eventually becomes a dull auto-pilot. There are the mutation and the self buffing mechanics but these seem to be completely random and are exceptionally rare occurrences.

3: Because of the above two reasons the threat of death in an ultra dangerous place becomes meaningless. Unless a fate spawns (which is super rare compared to Anemos) the most efficient way to gain xp is to farm mobs you can reliably kill. The lack of exploration means you don't really venture into dangerous places very much.

4: Because of the above three reasons my boredom causes my brain to begin to shut-down and I feel like going to bed hours before I normally would. I wish I was exaggerating. The mobs don't even drop loot. This is literally the most boring mob farming I have ever done and I have been playing mmorpgs for over a decade. It is so boring I can't even hate it. I just feel so incredibly apathetic about it.

I really really hope we're missing something and that Pagos won't continue to be little other than a chain xp grind map. Because if this is all there is, then it is the absolute opposite to engaging content.

As an aside: myself and fc mates decided to explore the entire map, which I have to say was a super enjoyable adventure. The zone is stunning, some places are ludicrously dangerous, and getting to some areas require you to do a great deal of upward climbing before jumping off of the cliff onto a ledge. It's actually amazing. In terms of zone design, Pagos is leagues ahead of Anemos. It's just such a shame that so far it appears SE greatly throttled the appearance of fates, which encourages players to do the exact opposite of exploration.

[Vaer]

Honestly, I think this is what they intended from the start even with Anemos. If you look at all the adjustments made to Eureka it is all to encourage grinding/chaining mobs and not being afk. They buffed mob/chain exp a bit after Anemos came out when they realized people were just afk training. The challenge log they added is grinding mobs. The new permanent buff that they put into Anemos as a catch up seems to affect mob kill exp. The first new relic step gets finished quicker if you grind mobs vs. waiting for the new slow spawning FATEs.

Perhaps they thought the FATEs were just supposed to be a bonus if you spawned it after chaining mobs for exp. That would partially explain why opening boxes/conversion was so slow at the beginning, they didn't expect people to get so many so quickly and if you chained mobs you would have a lot of Protean, which you don't need to convert.

[KaldeaSahaline]

I want to be entertained. Killing the aforementioned thousands of mindless trash mobs with no mechanics is simply not my idea of entertainment. If I wanted that, I could spam dungeons. At least then I’m interrupted by a boss every 5-10 minutes. Or I could elect to play Black Desert or Blade and Soul—both of which do the Korean grind better.

What would you change then?

I agree entirely, but that's probably no surprise to most people here.

I'm not sure if you ever saw the posts I made about "my iteration" of Eureka, but I'll link them here, not for discussion, but if you're merely interested in seeing some alternatives that I came up with. They're rough around the edges, but I think there's some sound ideas in there. I just think there's more than enough room for content to not be so derivative, so my goal was to accommodate multiple skill levels and play styles.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...Eureka-Concept

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ish-Eureka-was

[Crostar]

I think another one of the glaring faults in Eureka is something many of us can agree on. The quest is just so bland it's almost unenjoyable.

When I first heard that the quest line would focus on finally seeing the isle Val after it disappeared in ARR, I was ecstatic. I was looking forward to a rather good sidequest story. But coming to it, so far, it's just meaningless. Most of it is just us having to walk off into an area with enemies that are sure to curb stomp us so we can get a magicite. And in Pagos, so far, none of them were actually useful. We only get a few tidbits of story here and there but really, it's just not a good quest.

[Ayer2015]

Here I thought video games were supposed to be fun, not a chore.... apparently I was wrong.

[RareItems]

I want to be entertained. Killing the aforementioned thousands of mindless trash mobs with no mechanics is simply not my idea of entertainment. If I wanted that, I could spam dungeons. At least then I’m interrupted by a boss every 5-10 minutes. Or I could elect to play Black Desert or Blade and Soul—both of which do the Korean grind better.

I played BDO and given that game 3 chances. How you can say BDO's grind is better is mindboggling. It takes months just to get 1 level killing the same group of mobs over and over again that cant even kill you. And after you level? Your still behind players who no lifed the game. It's literally a never-ending grindfest that's designed to keep you playing so you can keep buying value packs/artisan memories/pearlshop items. Not to mention hacks/exploits are rampant in that game and the Dev's has done 4 banwaves since Dec 2016. You literally see people speed hacking in the main cities.

Eureka grind is actually better than BDO since you have to group up to do it. The rewards are mostly cosmetic and is only slightly better than the freebie ilvl370 mendacity weapon so your not forced to grind for it. There's is no open world PVP, so there's no competition to get to lvl35 faster. Level 35's actually help spawn Fates to farm Pagos crystals. People raise random dead players on the floor.


I think you should spend some time playing Black Desert Online, get to lvl 62, then try criticizing Eureka again.

[Erudito]

I am in complete agreement.

I have been in Pagos a few times already and I find its design, compared to Anemos, pretentious. Since when are a few pieces of loot and a weapon worth such a soul crushing grind? The developers reclined themselves on the fact that we have a challenge log of the place and made Pagos more of a chore than anything else.

My questions to the development team are:

Who on Earth did you design this for? Playing in Pagos is terrible!
Does a relic and a few pieces of loot warrant such a terribly repetitive and boring experience?
Could nothing have been added so that the solo players could do something while simultaneously making the grind more bearable since, after all, you all went and made it even worse?

[Ayer2015]

I played BDO and given that game 3 chances. How you can say BDO's grind is better is mindboggling.

BDO combat is significantly more entertaining..... its the whole game.

[hynaku]

How it is now only going to do weekly challenge log for it then not touch it till next week. At least Anemos was fun and didn't take no hour to spawn a nm. At this point hope they don't add anymore areas to eureka until they fix this mess. If had to rated it 1 to 5 stars I would give it a -5 star rating.