The Train is Back!

[dark494]

This was a terrible decision on SE's part. It's nothing but a vicious cycle of pandering to half-baked complaints that creates more problems that leads to more complaints to more pandering. Now we have people trying to hamfist a train into this content, which is creating even more people taking the lazy afk route than before, and naive near-sighted thinking that you're actually making progress towards the relics by forcing a train into this content. NM's give very little light and that hasn't changed. You're going to see very soon a bunch of people use trains to get to whatever high level they stop at and then realize they have no light towards upgrading their relic and go back to quitting & complaining about how bad this or that is about Pagos, and then it's back to "balance changes" to pander to complaints again until this content is as unrecognizable from anemos, but with more gates. On the other end there's gonna be a sudden surge in people getting to 35 through the lazy NM method that it'll become too crowded to even do the light chain parties we were already doing because there's only 2 camp spots available to share and it'll lead to even more difficulties getting light, to more complaints, and more "balance changes" to pander to.

Just stop SE. Pick a philosophy and stick to it. Stop acquiescing to every lowest common denominator.

[MuseTraveller]

Thank god and thank you!
I'll be going in Pagos as soon as I can. At least catching up now won't be impossible.

[Luna-M]

Please be trains so I can do this crap for my relic.

[dark494]

Please be trains so I can do this crap for my relic.

This is exactly the problem. Trains will not get you the relic. NM's will not give you any meaningful amount of light. It will take you literal ages to get a relic off of train NM's only. People need to wake up to this.

[HyoMinPark]

Stop acquiescing

They’re acquiescing because this content was dying before Week 2 even hit. A change like this wouldn’t come about due to complaints by themselves; there’s been plenty of other complaints that have garnered no response or reaction from SE in the past. They must have noticed the sheer amount of players refusing to step into the content, and the number of instances dying/being recycled to reneg this quickly.

While I’m thankful for the return of the train so that I can no longer feel like leveling up in Pagos is a horrid and tedious affair, the content itself is still far from perfect. And I can only hope that SE actually listens to sound requests from the playerbase for Installment #3. If, by then, they still haven’t added more variety (e.g., Daily Quests) or, at the very least, a Party Level Sync function, then it will be clear to me that they don’t really care about the state of the content they release, nor for the feedback or constructive criticism from the playerbase.

[Luna-M]

This is exactly the problem. Trains will not get you the relic. NM's will not give you any meaningful amount of light. It will take you literal ages to get a relic off of train NM's only. People need to wake up to this.

Even if I have to chain for the relic lights, the level experience is the worst part cause there isn't a level sync system in place. If train really is back that would at least help low level people to catch up exp wise.

[BillyKaplan]

This is exactly the problem. Trains will not get you the relic. NM's will not give you any meaningful amount of light. It will take you literal ages to get a relic off of train NM's only. People need to wake up to this.

And if that's the case, people will continue to not run the content until that is nerfed too, either in an emergency hot-fix or later on down the line, depending on how few people continue to run the content.
I, for one, still aren't going to bother. I figure I'm not alone in this. Because let's face it, chaining is still not overly engaging or creative content.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

This was a terrible decision on SE's part. It's nothing but a vicious cycle of pandering to half-baked complaints that creates more problems that leads to more complaints to more pandering. Now we have people trying to hamfist a train into this content, which is creating even more people taking the lazy afk route than before, and naive near-sighted thinking that you're actually making progress towards the relics by forcing a train into this content. NM's give very little light and that hasn't changed. You're going to see very soon a bunch of people use trains to get to whatever high level they stop at and then realize they have no light towards upgrading their relic and go back to quitting & complaining about how bad this or that is about Pagos, and then it's back to "balance changes" to pander to complaints again until this content is as unrecognizable from anemos, but with more gates. On the other end there's gonna be a sudden surge in people getting to 35 through the lazy NM method that it'll become too crowded to even do the light chain parties we were already doing because there's only 2 camp spots available to share and it'll lead to even more difficulties getting light, to more complaints, and more "balance changes" to pander to.

Just stop SE. Pick a philosophy and stick to it. Stop acquiescing to every lowest common denominator.

If the content cannot handle 100+ level 35 players chaining mobs, then it's terribly designed content in need of a balance change. This philosophy you speak of shouldn't be dependent on enough people staying low level they won't all congregate together. The whole they're acquiescing is due to Pagos dying two weeks after release. Do you honestly think these changes occur this rapidly if Pagos were successful content the majority of players enjoy? It's intended to be for casual players looking to fill their time yet demands a longer grind than clearing Savage; all for gear rendered irrelevant outside glamor in less than a month. Simply put, the philosophy SE attempted to impose failed spectacularly, and now they're trying to salvage it so it doesn't end up like Diadem.

This is exactly the problem. Trains will not get you the relic. NM's will not give you any meaningful amount of light. It will take you literal ages to get a relic off of train NM's only. People need to wake up to this.

But it will get you to level 35, which is one of the biggest hurdles. If chaining mobs does prove the only way and people aren't interested, well, the community has once again spoken: they don't like the content. Going by your logic, SE should stubbornly tell players to just accept how it is. They did that, it resulted in Diadem, the first instance so unpopular they outright mentioned closing it and moving the rewards elsewhere. Digging in their heels when the majority of players hate your content is among the dumbest things you can do.

[ElazulHP]

XP buff is significant. Got just under 500k from Holy Cow. Spent about a little more than an hour inside just now and got over 2 million XP between chaining Anubys and NM's popping up.

[dark494]

They’re acquiescing because this content was dying before Week 2 even hit.

The whole they're acquiescing is due to Pagos dying two weeks after release.

I don't know where you guys get off saying this content was dead or dying because it couldn't be further from the truth. We have had several thousands of players in several discord servers coordinating efforts in multitudes of ways, we've tracked hundreds of different, unique, instances being utilized and recycled and even figured out how they're handling it. Instances are always full, dozens of PF's up regularly recruiting people, it's never dead, not even close. We have more data to back that up than baseless assumptions that "Oh, SE must have made these changes because this content must have been dying." This is meaningless coming from people who had no interest in even participating nor putting in any effort in this content. And I wouldn't expect those kinds of people to understand why those of us that did put in that effort and liked how rewarding it was are extremely slighted and put-off by this rehash of lazy train mentality from anemos all over again.

And for what it's worth, early reports are showing that the "train" is making NM's take longer to spawn than usual. Much longer.