Eureka is still ruined because of Pagos

[Reynhart]

Fun fact, if every people complaining how they can't level in Pagos simply entered Anemos to do their challenge log each week since it was released, you'd all be level 35 by now, without even setting foot in Pagos.

[Edax]

Fun fact, if every people complaining how they can't level in Pagos simply entered Anemos to do their challenge log each week since it was released, you'd all be level 35 by now, without even setting foot in Pagos.

And what's the big motivator for reaching level 35? Eureka #3 is still a big question mark as to whether all that time spent in Anemos would have been worth it. There's no obvious reward for leveling up at the moment.

[Reynhart]

And what's the big motivator for reaching level 35?

Making steps towards what will be the best weapon at the end of this expansion. And if one doesn't care about that, then it doesn't matter how easy or hard it is to progress in Eureka.

[Vahlnir]

Making steps towards what will be the best weapon at the end of this expansion. And if one doesn't care about that, then it doesn't matter how easy or hard it is to progress in Eureka.

True, but one could also argue that it's not worth the effort. Pagos is certainly not casual friendly, and that is what the relic always has been. Sure it required a bit of a grind, but it was always able to be done casually. The Anemos grind was casual...perhaps too casual. But they could have expanded on that instead of saying "welp, guess we need to make everyone's life hell in Pagos!" and decided to put RNG everywhere and make it tough to navigate. The teleport crystals I understand. It's incentive to level up to provide an ease of access to certain areas. But removing our ability to mount and such (after earning it in the same content several levels prior) is ridiculous. And they definitely upped the mob density and how much they move around.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Making steps towards what will be the best weapon at the end of this expansion. And if one doesn't care about that, then it doesn't matter how easy or hard it is to progress in Eureka.

Which will have all of two months relevancy before the next expansion renders it pretty glamour. And from what we know thus far, it's a RNG grind to determine secondary stats, meaning will won't actually superior Omega weapons without a good portion of luck. Getting to level 35 means very little if I still don't have a weapon, which requires light farming—not a friendly solo experience. Even putting all that aside, it doesn't remedy the fact Pagos is boring. I couldn't care less how powerful the weapon becomes. If the content isn't engaging, I'm less inclined to partake in it. There is no avoiding Pagos outright, and it's a boring, unimaginative chore.

[Lastelli]

Making steps towards what will be the best weapon at the end of this expansion. And if one doesn't care about that, then it doesn't matter how easy or hard it is to progress in Eureka.

Do we know for certain that the final step will give us a ilvl 405 weapon?

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I do believe it was a mistake to put the relic behind content that you cant do solo. Its already hard to complete it now but what will happen with the zones after the launch of the new expansion? I have an ingame friend that recently finished an old relic and after I told her what she needs for the SB one she said that she will probably just never do that and just do the old ones because she wants the weapons as glamour. It really got me thinking on how it will be even possible to do the SB ones after most have gone to the next new thing?

Unless we can unsync Eureka or they nerf it severely when 5.0 comes around, the Stormblood relics will be forever locked. People aren't going to even look at Eureka again; many have already abandoned it to begin with.

Do we know for certain that the final step will give us a ilvl 405 weapon?

More than likely, yes. Both the ARR and HW relics were eventually max ilvl for their respective expansions.

[Reynhart]

True, but one could also argue that it's not worth the effort. Pagos is certainly not casual friendly, and that is what the relic always has been.

Problem is, Eureka was never stated to be "casual friendly" and we knew the SB relic would be tied to it. Besides, what's the point of making the relic casual friendly since everyone can buy the Tome weapon by simply doing roulettes ? This is the "casual weapon".

I wouldn't call Anemos casual, especially if you think Pagos isn't. Doing the train is basically the same, except that you had a great way to grind solo with the challenge log.

As for navigation, for me, it's what makes Eureka interesting, and you just need to learn how mobs work. Seeing people still running around Dragons makes me think the problem might not be with the content...

Which will have all of two months relevancy before the next expansion renders it pretty glamour.

Like all previous relics, and frankly the grind wasn't less tedious. The anima part where you ha to gather 80 mysterious objects and 16 specialist crafted items was much more time consuming than Eureka.

And from what we know thus far, it's a RNG grind to determine secondary stats, meaning will won't actually superior Omega weapons without a good portion of luck.

From what I've heard, the value will be RNG, not the stats themselves. So,if the Omega weapon has a really useless stat fo you, chances are that even a low value can be better.

Getting to level 35 means very little if I still don't have a weapon, which requires light farming—not a friendly solo experience.

As solo friendly as gathering thousands of Tomestone. You just join a random party.

Even putting all that aside, it doesn't remedy the fact Pagos is boring. I couldn't care less how powerful the weapon becomes. If the content isn't engaging, I'm less inclined to partake in it. There is no avoiding Pagos outright, and it's a boring, unimaginative chore.

It's been a long time since I haven't feel engaged by doing the same dungeon or trial over and over to gather lights and tomestones, there's really no difference, except that at least, I'm not doing the same thing for the relic that I need to do for every other piece of gear.

And, do you still feel engaged to do the same raid each week for the same reward ? Or the same trial up to 99 times to gain one mount ? All of this without any real interaction with others unless you do it with friends.

[Cidel]

Incoming rant (there is a tldr); after finishing my 2nd (and currently last) Stormblood relic so far in this place, these are my thoughts:

I'm not entirely sure what exactly Pagos (and Eureka, in the grand scheme of things) is designed to be. Some claim its XIV's "little slice of XI," which is a gross oversimplification because it almost literally has none of the appealing aspects that any reasonable fan of XI would ask for and decided to incorporate some of the most annoying ones. Others say it's Diadem 3.0, which isn't quite wrong, but seems like a downgrade of both Diadems in certain areas. I personally think EurekaPagos is a unholy conglomeration of not only a lot of the dev's uninspired "go-to's" but suffers from several of the flaws of the game's battle system actively working against it.

First, it's clearly designed as a giant timesink to buy them time keep players busy. It released with a painful exp grind, with "nerfed" NMs being less effective, added a layer of RNG to an already monotonous grind to obtaining relic(s), and added another layer of RNG to obtaining pretty much anything else from the zone. As already brought up (constantly), none of these timesinks are even engaging beyond giving yourself carpal tunnel and falling asleep from doing the same thing, same battle rotation for hours in one spot; and the messed-up thing is that's the gist of most of your options to do in Pagos. This over-reliance of RNG to extend their content's life and the... "straightforward" nature of the battle system (when players aren't playing Team Memory Jump-rope while managing a rotation) actively work against each other because you're waiting for the game to decide to let you progress while pressing a few buttons and not having to do much else because most regular monsters are HP sponges with auto-attacks that are probably more dangerous than their "abilities."

Secondly, yeah, I think Pagos was created as a knee-jerk reaction when the players didn't play the way the devs likely envisioned (do we ever?) and optimized Anemos to the "NM train" (because really, what else was there besides in Anemos?) So because that, NM experience and spawn rates(maybe?) released in Pagos being noticeably less viable (don't ignore our trash mobs we randomly littered all over the map that makes absolutely no sense as an ecosystem!), and bottle-neck/choke-points with aggressive monsters to all levels (nuh-uh-uh, you must be this-- Elemental Level to make it to this NM on time). But here's a new Eureka-only exp-boosting potion to make grinding trash mobs less unbearable!

Third, its still a map full of FATEs, and not much else. I get it, they love their FATE system. But it sadly feels like their answer to everything that's not on the Duty List. For them to try to take emphasis away from FATE NMs, they didn't give much else to fill the void (weekly challenge log and treasure-map bunnies... yay?) And while I'm talking about the map, sometimes I wonder why the "hidden" quest items don't have a marker on them and just resort to "ask your fellow adventurers!" like, is it supposed to be a big secret when the locations will be discovered and posted all over within hours? Seems like a way to just not have to bother and just say: "go look it up on reddit//shout for the coordinates, quest markers cost money." Anyway, that's relatively minor.

Lastly, what are we doing all of this for again? Oh yeah, a glamour weapon (which arguably most don't even find this step of these relic weapons all that appealing, which is kiiiind of important when you're releasing a new primal/tomestone weapons with a higher ilevel a few weeks later- extreme vertical progression go!), a small handful of nostalgic XI equipment (one of which isn't even visible on your character) that most probably won't bother with/obtain because RNG-blocked! And some fluff like an emote/minions/cards locked behind RNG because we need as many reasons as possible to lure players to slog through this content.

tldr: Pagos (and for now, Eureka as a whole) feels like an uninspired time-sink using as little creative resources as possible (outside of the new map) to just keep players busy long enough before more trials can be whipped-up with the gigantic carrot of continuing Stormblood's relic thrown in (and as seen, many aren't biting) and testing the playerbase with how much mindless grinding and RNG can be piled onto something (other than Lost canals/Aquapolis) before people finally speak up.

[duskfall]

wait, so there are no nm trains in pagos at all? yikes.