I sorta touched on it the other day but I kinda want to have a mini-rant about it I guess: Pagos is possibly the worst content SE has ever released for FFXIV. I tolerated and somewhat enjoyed Anemos given the grind didn't feel quite as awful and the area design had variety.

Leveling up is essentially impossible if you have already done your challenge logs unless you NM farm which in itself is just smacking the same enemy over and over until you die from hypothermia in the middle of the snow.

There's no skill involved, there's no strategy - it's the most braindead content possible because SE want try and mask the fact that the game is in a massive content drought right now. 4.4 will help with Alphascape but after that, there's going to be little until 5.0.

It's just insulting. Pagos would be much more enjoyable as a private Alliance based instance. 24 people, free reign on the entire map with enemies that have sensible amounts of health and NMs you can tackle as a smaller group. No trains, no AFKers - just some fun.

It's also abysmal because if come 5.0 or later you want a 4.x relic for any reason, you're not going to have a good time. At least 2.x/3.x had steps you could do alone for the most part but Eureka will not live on into 5.x. It's a ticking time bomb of grinding and monotony.

At least Eureka had varied locales. Fields, rocky alcoves, a mini-swampy bit, caves, etc. Pagos is 100% snow. I used a tool to look around from above and everything just looks the same. Might as well be a new region of Coerthas.

And Square Enix plan more Eureka zones? No thank you. I think I'd rather just not have a relic at all if the third (and possibly even fourth etc) zones are just more of the same. It's lazy and unimaginative and masking the real issue that we've little to do when everything is 70.

Rant over I guess? Just a shame to see a game that's celebrating its fifth anniversary in what ultimately amounts to Diadem V4.0. SE aren't learning anything and it's only likely to get worse.