So, how is Pagos?

[Alleo]

The story touches upon one of the unsolved mysteries from ARR - what happened to the isle of Val, and the Students of Baldesion? Which for the longest time remained unacknowledged to the point I feel like they might as well have ignored it outright, just said the Ascians Ultima'd it, and be done with it. Especially if what they gated it behind is Eureka. It's a story bit myself and many others are interested in, but now will likely have to pass on, at least until they nerf it to the ground. Let me buy it all with poetics like every relic eventually.

The thing is, I feel like if they hadn't have tied the relic to it, the questline alone had the potential to be some of the most engaging, fascinating experiences in the game, because a big part of what takes Eureka down is the grind. Remove the relic, remove the ridiculous need for a grind, and then whoever wants that story can go at it at their own pace with much less mindless muscle destruction to go through. Thing is, then they have no reason to create such a zone in the first place. It's a lot of circumstances that ruined everything

I am still not through with Anemos but at least the part of the story I saw there was not really that great. Most of the time its just a "go bring me x" and then back to the grind. I agree that it would have been better without the relic, the grind and a great story line about the Isle of Val since its such an old mystery. Then next to that they could have given us more side quests too and maybe some gameplay features where we help building up the camps there and solve the mystery behind it. Honestly I feel like these beautiful zones are wasted on something like the relic and will be forgotten in future expansions thanks to that. Maybe take the relic away or at least give us the zones on the map so that we can visit them without all the danger so that at least the creation of it would not be such a waste.

[BillyKaplan]

Honestly with how detached from the story the weapons and armor are, it would've made as much sense to put that behind the Doman Enclave and put the Gil grinding in Eureka where you fund the expedition and then have to go on a personal quest every other landmark. Story probably would've been better too as I adore the shticks they put in the Enclave.

And now I'm sad we didn't get it. Because I really wouldn't mind grinding for Doma.

[Deceptus]

Read something interesting on another forum today that I think applies here.

A very fundamental rule of game design, is you do not design to defeat the player.

The audience is not your enemy.

That's what Pagos feels like to me. Every aspect of it was designed to frustrate players and pad out the content.

Even if Pyros is a relic under every bed and so awesome that fireworks go off every night, I feel that Pagos will always be there, saying "this far and no farther". This is the danger of chained content, one bad link and its all over, even if the ending is magnificent. SE, your steadfast insistence that we grind in an unforgiving, unfriendly and harsh zone has broken my desire to continue in Eureka.

Very well put

[Theodric]

Stacking RNG on top of RNG is one of the biggest issues.

Light gains aren't consistent. The only consistent source of Light is NM"s...which are spawning less and less often due to the lack of players in the zone. There's some NM's that I haven't even witnessed with my own two eyes. That wasn't the case with Anemos, since people would spawn each and every NM if there were enough people in the zone.

I'm done with my RDM relic. Usually I'd casually work on PLD as well. I just can't bring myself to do that. I planned to do so by farming cold-warped lockboxes since I wanted the emote that drops from them. Again, RNG on top of RNG. You only get those lockboxes from a specific enemy. Even then, they only drop if that enemy mutates...and only one or two people in the group will get a lockbox each time. Some days I've walked away after an hour with ten lockboxes. Other days I've received only two. That isn't fun, especially when you go to open them and receive materia.

[Rufalus]

I think this light RNG is the number one problem and the only one which makes pagos worse than earlier weapon grinds. It's such a slow process even if things are going right, but when you have bad luck it's like you're spending hours and days getting almost nothing. People want consistent guaranteed progress from the hours they spend grinding repetitious things. It can't be both unfun and unrewarding or it will make people quit. I think the type of activity which rewards an appreciable light bonus is also too narrow; has to be certain level enemy and in big chains. Sometimes I just spend hours soloing enemies which can spawn NMs and I feel like I deserve about 5 bars of light for the effort I put in, but what I actually get is several feeble light gains which amount to a tiny, almost zero percent of one bar that I'd have to be focusing my gaze on to see if it actually moved at all. It's not possible to play my own way and make real progress. Ideally you'd want giant nerfs to light and item drop rate (emote, haku eyes, belt, earrings, copycat minion) before Pyros is released, because by then we're just going to be doing Pyros instead and mostly ignoring Pagos so we can reach new level cap...

[Raskbuck]

One of the many problems with Eureka is that, by placing the relic there, it took away from the dungeon queues and affected everyone else. At the very least the old relics encouraged you to do your daily roulettes, which more or less gave the old content a steady flow of people. Now, everyone is bored out of their minds grinding the same monsters over and over again, or waiting for a NM to spawn.

My personal gripe with Eureka is that the combat is not really suited for the long grind. My fingers end up hurting a lot after a couple of hours of pressing the same buttons over and over again, and I have to stop playing for a day or two to recover. I guess this kind of grind would've worked a bit better for me in FFXI, since your APM is usually a lot lower than XIV's.

[Deceptus]

This is the future of Eureka Content.

Trying to spawn NM yourself or in a small group. 150 kills to spawn one NM that you might not be able to kill.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comme...mos_nm_spawns/

[Gun-Cat]

I love how this is intended as casual content as opposed to the Savage content where you have to follow strict schedule. Instead it seems like you have to scramble with each new Eureka release to get everything done as soon as possible because it will be impossible by the next patch (or earlier in case of Pagos). Anemos might have been fun for some but I found the fate train just as mind numbingly boring as grinding mobs for hours on end.

I kinda wanted to get the Pagos gear set and would have even been willing to suffer through Anemos grinding with a friend the weekly stuff... but then I found out how the lockboxes are obtained and dropped that notion again. There isn't a single thing that isn't complete misery in that content and SE should be ashamed for ever implementing it into the game.

[Claviusnex]

The story touches upon one of the unsolved mysteries from ARR - what happened to the isle of Val, and the Students of Baldesion? Which for the longest time remained unacknowledged to the point I feel like they might as well have ignored it outright, just said the Ascians Ultima'd it, and be done with it. Especially if what they gated it behind is Eureka. It's a story bit myself and many others are interested in, but now will likely have to pass on, at least until they nerf it to the ground. Let me buy it all with poetics like every relic eventually.

The thing is, I feel like if they hadn't have tied the relic to it, the questline alone had the potential to be some of the most engaging, fascinating experiences in the game, because a big part of what takes Eureka down is the grind. Remove the relic, remove the ridiculous need for a grind, and then whoever wants that story can go at it at their own pace with much less mindless muscle destruction to go through. Thing is, then they have no reason to create such a zone in the first place. It's a lot of circumstances that ruined everything

Right and the really sad part is SE has even screwed up the story with content of no consequence. For a game that is known for its story telling SE has fallen flat on their face with Eureka.

[Bright-Flower]

Anemos I didn't mind too much, but Pagos I have several issues with.

1. Map design. That canyon in the center is a pain in the butt having to slow walk past dragons and other creatures while trying to get to the NW section. The NW aetheryte should really have been level 25 or 27 or so considering the level range of NMs in that section. The cliffs are annoying, and while walking past sleeping dragons was cute at first it's just annoying and tedius by the end.

2. All this for relics? Anemos at least had upgraded and dyable artifact armor. Pagos exists only for weapons and it feels like a bit...much? When the development time put into Eureka could have been spent on something more than just relics. Just feels like more resources are being put into it than necisary. Or they could have added a new fleshed out main story zone in a patch instead of this.

3. Light grinding. Okay maybe having us hit 20 and killing Pazuzu once or twice was a bit too easy. But filling this light kettle 31 times just feels like overkill to me. The whole reason I liked Anemos in the end was that the grind was front loaded, once you hit level 20 it became much easier to get the upgraded gear for multiple jobs if you wanted to. Now in Pagos, it feels like getting to 35 is just the start and now you have to mindlessly grind dragons to fill your kettle at a decent pace.

I've heard that Pyros might have more armor so that's good. If they address these three points then maybe Pyros will feel more like Anemos and less like Pagos for me which will be good. However, there are a couple issues I have with Eureka in general and not just Pagos. Though these are generally lesser.

1. The story is being stretched thin. There really isn't much story for Eureka. It's being split across three or four zones so that it lasts longer, but the story really doesn't feel deep or complex enough to warrant it. It's just 'go gather magecite, oh and once a zone we'll give you a story cutscene that actually matters.'

2. The magia board thing. It seemed cool at first but it's actually pretty shallow. Rarely is there a reason to not just stack all five of your magecite on one element and spin it to attack, or here and there maybe to defense if you're a healer or tank. It never really affects gameplay, just the damage numbers coming and going. There's rarely any thought put into it.

3. If they're going to have this elemental leveling system independant of normal levels, why not just sync us up to 70 inside and let people get exp for alternate jobs while in there similar to deep dungeons? The ilvl sync is so low that gear is pretty much irrelevant anyway. They could just make it 100% irrelevant and just have elemental level and magia board matter.