So, how is Pagos?

[WhyAmIHere]

I don't see how an afk person could resolve the issue of lower levels, and higher levels giving them a lift, having to walk past dragons while other players teleport straight to the NM.
Or how an afk person affects all the high level players having to fight over a couple of dragon spots.
Or maybe I missing something with your logic?

*sigh* I hate explaining the joke.
So; I'm using a meme to imply that, of all the things wrong with pagos, the main complaint that's gotten any kind of attention was the "people AFK and wait for NMs to spawn." People in JP have a term for 'em. Yoshi was displeased that that method of "participating" in the content so Pagos has all these things put in it to somehow stop people afk'ing to wait for NM's. But it still happens. Instead of doing anything for the dragons, instead of recognizing they purposely designed the map to be as inhibative as possible to traversal with the aetheryte levels for attunement, and instead of addressing the sheer levels of absurd and obtuse RNG for light...
it's the NM train that got any work on since Pagos came out.

[TheGrimace]

That maintenance is for the PS4 versions patch system change.

I've got my fingers crossed that they'll update Eureka along with those PS4 changes. Yeah, I'm probably reaching, but they did say they would continue to adjust Eureka in the coming weeks, and we've only seen two adjustments thus far. Basically, I'm crossing my fingers to hell and back. We still have two weeks until 4.4 so I've got time to dream.

[BillyKaplan]

We still have two weeks until 4.4 so I've got time to dream.

That's actually why I doubt they'll push updates this week. A big patch and its follow-up hot fixes sound like a likelier place to shove these adjustments compared to something that can potentially kill the game for a hefty portion of the playerbase. The last thing they'll need if something goes wrong is more Pagos backlash.
But we'll see.

[Transient_Shadow]

Unless your super invested in either the story or the weapon its not worth it in my opinion. Pagos was incredibly mishandled just because devs had a personal vendetta against the train play style.

[Maleficent]

My own anecdotal experience is a bit more positive. Let me qualify that I'm not disputing anyone's view that it's a living nightmare (and then some) for them; just sharing my own.

I find Eureka relics faster and more entertaining than the past methods of hunting XX mobs, light farming repeat raid / trials, spending millions of gil / beastmen quests for tokens to get items to progress.

Why faster:
I'm done with my first Pagos relic (about 2 weeks-ish in total vs months), taking it slow on the second.

Why more entertaining:

1. It's in its own new instance - a completely unknown land to discover. The hidden areas beneath ledges were sneaky. Learning to have to 'walk' past dragons (both on foot or mounted) was a surprise! Blood aggro, sound aggro, true sight aggro, spell-cast aggro - had to learn which each monster was.
   
2. It's dangerous - I cannot waltz through most areas even at max level; exp loss on death (!); That long-lost feeling of vulnerability in a zone.
   
3. It's got it's own unique loot - some ridiculously rare through insane RNG x RNG x RNG, yes; Eureka-specific stats gear! They're rare and won't be outdated so quickly. When I see someone with the set (it's a weird looking hat ^ ^) there's that 'wow' factor.
   
4. Working with other players - rezzing a poor soul or helping with the lvl 35 quest (horror of horrors!). LFP the old school-ish way in instance.
   
5. Still more to discover - we've not found the most efficient way to farm light (quote Yoshi-P here ^ ^).

Cons:

1. It's not very time-friendly as it takes quite an investment of time and quite a while to pick up momentum to advance.
2. I can't help my friends or lower level folks to level up without some form of level sync (Yes, I could de-level... but sorry we're not THAT good friends -___-; )

Pyros sounds like there'll be new concepts added! It's great that SE is experimenting. Please continue to give your feedback on both good and bad.

It's pretty cool that I can play a mostly time-friendly theme park MMO that has an old-school grindy sandbox zone.

[Liam_Harper]

Something I've noticed lately is a lot of requests along the lines of making Pagos more like Anemos.

But personally I feel Anemos was rubbish too. Yes, it had some minor good points and Pagos is far worse, but Anemos has a lot of flaws. It's linear and has minimal quests and story line and the gameplay has no variety, is unfriendly towards helping friends, unsuitable for ff14's combat rotations and gets boring rather fast. Once I completed my relic, I never went near Anemos again or wanted to. Not even to cap mendacity. Grinding mobs half-afk for half an hour at Hasmal or 45 minutes at Mono wasn't my idea of exciting.

Anyway, the phenomenon here that I've seen before in gaming is that a company will release a fairly poor piece of content. Players will dislike it. They'll then release a similar but far worse piece of content. Players will compare it to the previous piece of content and try to compromise, asking for the new content to be more like the previous one. After the company putting up a show of preferring the terrible content, they'll finally "listen" and revert it. Players then thank them for listening and happily jump into the second instalment of poor quality content. The company then consistently releases similar content (which is often cheaper to produce than enjoyable content). The players accept it.

I don't buy it. I didn't like Anemos. I really don't like Pagos. The entire system needs to be looked at and never happen again. It's not fun, nor worth paying a subscription to play.

Just my personal opinion.

[Zsolen]

Something I've noticed lately is a lot of requests along the lines of making Pagos more like Anemos.

But personally I feel Anemos was rubbish too. Yes, it had some minor good points and Pagos is far worse, but Anemos has a lot of flaws. It's linear and has minimal quests and story line and the gameplay has no variety, is unfriendly towards helping friends, unsuitable for ff14's combat rotations and gets boring rather fast. Once I completed my relic, I never went near Anemos again or wanted to. Not even to cap mendacity grinding mobs half-afk for half an hour at Hasmal wasn't my idea of exciting.

Anyway, the phenomenon here that I've seen before in gaming is that a company will release a fairly poor piece of content. Players will dislike it. They'll then release a similar but far worse piece of content. Players will compare it to the previous piece of content and try to compromise, asking for the new content to be more like the previous one. After the company putting up a show of preferring the terrible content, they'll finally "listen" and revert it. Players then thank them for listening and happily jump into the second instalment of poor quality content. The company then consistently releases similar content (which is often cheaper to produce than enjoyable content).

I don't buy it. I didn't like Anemos. I really don't like Pagos. The entire system needs to be looked at and never happen again. It's not fun, nor worth paying a subscription to play.

Pagos was way better than Anemos, and it is still better now There are still plenty of people doing Pagos. It's the train that isn't sustainable, because it does not help with light.

SE isn't going to trash the concept of open instances, and they are going to continue doing different things that you may or may not personally like. Deep dungeons, open instances, and map instances have been introduced previously and altered to fit Stormblood. I don't think they are done making changes to the game. I think they are only getting started.

[drgnmstr44]

SE isn't going to trash the concept of open instances, and they are going to continue doing different things that you may or may not personally like. Deep dungeons, open instances, and map instances have been introduced previously and altered to fit Stormblood. I don't think they are done making changes to the game. I think they are only getting started.

No one is saying abandon the open instance concept or content. They hot fix NM spawn rates and XP got practically trippled to help get players to 35, yet outright refuse to address the now evident issues with light gains. People don't spawn NMs anymore. Hell I've seen 2 louhi spawns in the last two weeks going there. You need things from the NMs but practically none get spawned. everyone is so focused on getting light that NMs don't matter anymore. Light gains are broken and need a fix. When the vast majority of players in the instance are 35 and farming light, fighting each other over places to get light, it's broken. NMs aren't even worth trying to spawn unless you need their items and you might as well forget about the required Ice for step three because no one is spawning that either. They need to own up to it being broken and make some changes. Its obvious that gains are light are completely random, sporadic, and in dire need of a boost.

[Zsolen]

No one is saying abandon the open instance concept or content. They hot fix NM spawn rates and XP got practically trippled to help get players to 35, yet outright refuse to address the now evident issues with light gains. People don't spawn NMs anymore. Hell I've seen 2 louhi spawns in the last two weeks going there. You need things from the NMs but practically none get spawned. everyone is so focused on getting light that NMs don't matter anymore. Light gains are broken and need a fix. When the vast majority of players in the instance are 35 and farming light, fighting each other over places to get light, it's broken. NMs aren't even worth trying to spawn unless you need their items and you might as well forget about the required Ice for step three because no one is spawning that either. They need to own up to it being broken and make some changes. Its obvious that gains are light are completely random, sporadic, and in dire need of a boost.

That's working as intended.

[TheGrimace]

You can make an open content area and have it not suck. Hell, that's what I miss most from 1.0- running around places like Shposhae to find NMs or things on my own. ARR has been missing content like that, so I welcome the idea. Their implementations through Diadem and Eureka suck though. You can say things like, "it's working as intended," but that doesn't mean they had good intentions to start with. Maybe the big issue is they're not properly conveying what their intentions are? Because otherwise, they're just making massively disappointing content on purpose.