Bringing the train back to Pagos?

I've been grinding Pagos pretty hard and the mindless chains to get light has worn on me and the thought of how long I'd be doing the same thing to get more relics is mind-boggling. To make it worse, I can't even take time to type and joke without losing the chain, or the tank, of I'm healing a lvl40 spot. With that going through my head I thought to myself that there has to be a faster way to do this. With the help of a friend brainstorming the Void Dragon camp(s) I might have come up with it. The Pagos Light Train!

Keep in mind that this does not help you if you're new to the area and just want to make it to 35 easily, this is for light NOT exp. This train will only work 'easily' if everyone is high enough level to not randomly get attacked by monsters around the 5 dragons spawns that have likely killed most of you several times. I have not extensively tested this yet because people get upset when you hit their monsters, but that's just because they're misunderstanding how I believe light works, which is not how exp seems to work.

There are already dragon killing groups, but they just generally run between 2 dragons in the hopes of keeping a chain going. What I did test is that just by hitting their dragon, I still got light. So the idea came to mind, since dragons drop light so often, this could be done with more than just one group with everyone reaping the rewards. All 5 of these dragons are around the King Igloo spawn and re-spawn quickly so a train might work with just those 5.

I don't know how to address the AFK'er problem outside of just booting them from your group, which I always highly suggest. The point is to go through those dragons as fast as possible to get these weapons done.

Discuss!

That would be deffinetely fast. But we need to see if the light we get is the same as if a lot of players hit the same target.

The only issue is that even if there's a convenient way to grind light, you're still gated by NMs for the 500 Pagos crystals if you're trying to get multiple weapons.

If light farming would be easier in general ppl would triggers nms more than beating mutated monsters and that way more nms would spawn. Right now pagos crystals are not problem at all. You are stucked on your light farm even after you reach max level.

Yup, the entire thought behind this was to make light farming no longer the major issue. There may still be better ways we haven't thought of, but this might accomplish it for everyone. What I've seen to far is that the best light camps don't spawn NMs. So instead of Eureka where everything was about just killing NMs, the biggest grind in Pagos really has nothing to do with that and that's a problem considering how much more rare they are. Just like Sunako said, maybe this solution might free people up to actually do more work on NMs. I've been in there since it was released and I've heard about one haste item dropping...so yeah, consider that on top of light grind farming too.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KageTokage

The only issue is that even if there's a convenient way to grind light, you're still gated by NMs for the 500 Pagos crystals if you're trying to get multiple weapons.

---

The 500 Pagos crystals definitely seems like the steepest requirement. Louhi ice and light are, by comparison, quite plentiful. However, whereas I'd need only three Louhi kills to get all my ice, I'd need 25 Louhi kills for the Pagos crystals and that is the absolute best case scenario, since everything else gives less. Snow Queen basically isn't even worth thinking about, unless maybe I'm just AFKing at Icepoint.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sunako

If light farming would be easier in general ppl would triggers nms more than beating mutated monsters and that way more nms would spawn. Right now pagos crystals are not problem at all. You are stucked on your light farm even after you reach max level.

---

I donno, I just got into level 34 and I only have 384 pagos crystals. My friends had 500 by the time they were 30-32. It really comes down to luck with NM popping. I've been in several instances for 2+ hours and only seen 1-2 NMs pop. Snow Queen doesn't count as it's a whopping 1 crystal.

There really doesn't seem to be a way to reliably spawn NMs.

If I had to guess, they work like S ranks now in that from the moment an instance opens, they're on cooldown for a randomized period of time and incapable of spawning until that amount of time passes, because I've seen several times where people practically spent the entire lockout trying to spawn a particular NM with no luck, but other times they've spawned almost immediately. It does seem possible to pre-kill for them, as I've seen some like Taxim and Anapos spawn outside of the time/weather their spawn triggers are limited to.

Pagos is a perfect example of content the development team wanted to do for themselves, rather than the interests of the player base.
Devs you can do that when you start paying people's subscriptions.
Until then you need to re-align your thinking back to pleasing customers.

This dictatorial approach, "you'll play how we tell you to" is a historical recipe for disaster.

I won't touch Pagos until they nerf it/allow trains again.

I'm level 34 and have 600 Pagos crystals. What find hardest to get that still need 6 of is frosted crystals. They need to get rid of light collecting to get them and make them like how Anemos was. Don't know why they didn't like train when helped out everyone there.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by hynaku

I'm level 34 and have 600 Pagos crystals. What find hardest to get that still need 6 of is frosted crystals. They need to get rid of light collecting to get them and make them like how Anemos was. Don't know why they didn't like train when helped out everyone there.

---

It literally force chain killing mobs so you can not just afk until NM spawn. Or you can, but then you have multiple times more pagos crystal than you need compared frosted ones. It is pretty clear SE wanted reduce leeching in eureka, but I think current light farming could be easier than it is right now.

NM Train is the best option if they cant make it to where everyone can play together.

The NM Train helped players of all levels. Where chaining you have to have several restrictions. If you are level 27 and someone is lvl 23 trying to join your party. NOPE cant happen. But with the train everyone is polite and working towards a common goal.

As much as I would love to see the train come back, I have little hope that it will. They will keep adjusting the current mode to try and get people to chain mobs. Unless they nerf mobs so heavily that we can aoe packs of them, I won’t bother doing chains.

The train made eureka fun, it’s loss has been greatly felt.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Derio

NM Train is the best option if they cant make it to where everyone can play together.

The NM Train helped players of all levels. Where chaining you have to have several restrictions. If you are level 27 and someone is lvl 23 trying to join your party. NOPE cant happen. But with the train everyone is polite and working towards a common goal.

---

The NM Train was an unintended side-effect of how they made NM's spawn, it was borderline cheating, since it allowed players to burn through the content at a rate that allowed them to complete in a day what should have been a months worth of (grind) content, and without levelsync allowed players to be powerleveled with no effort.

This is what happens when people complain and ruin thing for others lol. While NM Fate trains where a way to speed to content they also ruined it by people standing then and not contributing. SE should have made some kind of counter on mobs that everyone must kill in order to participate to make it count or determine XP multiplier on Fate that would really encourage people to help out.

NM train made sense for Anemos because Anemos was stage 1 of the SB relic. Just like ARR and HW relics, the requirements and subsequent grinds get steeper as the ilvl increases, thus there's no way Pagos was going to be as smooth as Anemos for getting the i370 relic. This is because if it WAS as easy, and all future Eurekas were as easy with trains, then people would be finishing 3-4 relics fairly easily. Then, what's the point of doing augmented tomestone weapons (which are usually a thing to hold you over till you finish a relic) or even final boss raid weapons?

They had to make the grind longer. Relics are always a grind. How many Garuda (HM) and A1S did you need to do for light grinding for ARR/HW? Luminous Crystal Fates? Crystal Sands and Unidentified Items? Those were all boring and repetitive EXISTING content.

I'm not sure what connent is for causal players anymore, Going into pago and Demanding chain 30 up keep for 3 hours isn't my idea of causal.
Raiding isn't Causal.
I thought Relics where for causals to do at there own pace. With the Train, It was fun, I could party With FC member with LS, With friends cross servers, regardless of level.
No I'm basicly stuck with my level group.
The amount of time I have to play means I may get 1 relic done vs the 4 I started in the 1st zone.
I can't pop on for 1 hour and feel like I got stuff done, because it can take 10-20 mins to build find a party with a spot for my wife and I in the same group at our level...

There has to be a better balance act between Chain farming and fate farming.

The best part of the train is the community.
Yes some where Semi AFK.
But Like myself and my wife, We always helped kill mobs as something to do while we waited.
We always popped on a double mounts to give people rides that where to low.
We the community didn't mind coming together as a hole to help everyone even low level people get ahead.
This is the biggest shame in Pagos the community built up with the train idea has been totally broken down.

Light and Louhi Ice are the easiest requirement. But as more lvl 35s arrive to the end, the more common you'll see NMs being 'popped' highest 5 NMs can give about have the pagos crystals goal if spawn conditions are consistent.

It feels painful right now because the leveling curve was much steeper now than in Anemos, but it in no ways is any different, outside of them making "NMs harder to spawn".

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by CrystalRainbow

I'm not sure what connent is for causal players anymore, Going into pago and Demanding chain 30 up keep for 3 hours isn't my idea of causal.

---

One big mistake commonly made by players is assuming that the relic weapon is meant for casual players. It isn't. It has NEVER been meant for casual players, not in ARR, not in HW, and not now. While the difficulty is low, you're swapping out high difficulty for rather intense levels of grinding. Levels a casual player would never put up with.

Eureka was not meant for casual play. Thanks to the NM train, it BECAME casual friendly, but the NM train was, in all likelihood, an unintended consequence of the way Anemos was designed. Pagos is much more in line with the levels of monotonous, repetitive activity I've come to expect from a Relic weapon.

If not the train, then leves or quests like beast tribe. Something needs to be done about the horrible content. Anyone below 32 can’t really benifit from NMs and that stinks.

nm train is useless imo. I'm on EL34. need 6m exp to max lvl,but nm only provide 100k-200k exp/run(louhi lv 35 =200k exp) while exp chain provide 200k-500k exp/30 chain.

if there is nm train in pagos you still need ~30x kill louhi to max lvl

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KuuroYuuki

nm train is useless imo. I'm on EL34. need 6m exp to max lvl,but nm only provide 100k-200k exp/run(louhi lv 35 =200k exp) while exp chain provide 200k-500k exp/30 chain.

if there is nm train in pagos you still need ~30x kill louhi to max lvl

---

Louhi is 290k XP.

I don't really think people asking for the NM train care that much about peak efficiency though. They just hate grinding and want to be able to come and go more freely and actually feel like they have a moment to spare without screwing over their party by letting the chain drop while still making reasonable progress.

What I am reading in this thread... Bring back trains so I can Netflix and let someone else spawn the NMs. Yeah I hope they keep it just as it is until they nerf it in January or December. Also the relic is not the casual weapon really just based on the time required. Your charity nub casual weapon is your upgraded tomestone weapon.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by hynaku

I'm level 34 and have 600 Pagos crystals. What find hardest to get that still need 6 of is frosted crystals. They need to get rid of light collecting to get them and make them like how Anemos was. Don't know why they didn't like train when helped out everyone there.

---

I think probably the Japanese system of being at the start point doing nothing until the NM spawned was more important for the developers' decision. The train does not seem such a bad thing, people socialised and helped each other. Doing nothing at the base did not, I suppose. NA and EU might well not be the central decision target population.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

The NM Train was an unintended side-effect of how they made NM's spawn, it was borderline cheating, since it allowed players to burn through the content at a rate that allowed them to complete in a day what should have been a months worth of (grind) content, and without levelsync allowed players to be powerleveled with no effort.

---

Maybe it is this. Other relics took one or two months for each relic step and one class. In Anemos we could have all the relics in two months. BUT (big but) these last relic steps arrive late compared to other weapons. In a couple of weeks we have a new patch with a new weapon one step over the present ones that likely will take 7 tokens of the new 4th normal raid plus 1000 new tomestones.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by drgonzo

What I am reading in this thread... Bring back trains so I can Netflix and let someone else spawn the NMs. Yeah I hope they keep it just as it is until they nerf it in January or December. Also the relic is not the casual weapon really just based on the time required. Your charity nub casual weapon is your upgraded tomestone weapon.

---

With the notorious monsters spawn, the high level people did all and all the rest were carried. Even level 19 do very low damage when you try to spawn Pazuzu and the level 20s are the ones doing the work. The same for killing him. It feels nice to help lower level people when you have been helped before. Also when you raise people, and when you help them to cross difficult places. The feeling of being in a hostile place with monsters that can one shoot you is horrible (exciting if all ends well you could say), but the fact that there are people that help you and raise you is very good.

I really feel that Pagos could use some Daily quests or something that give out crystals or exp to kind of help it along a little. The weekly log is nice but I have a feeling that completing every challenge in the log will stop giving you levels around 30 or so.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by drgonzo

What I am reading in this thread... Bring back trains so I can Netflix and let someone else spawn the NMs. Yeah I hope they keep it just as it is until they nerf it in January or December. Also the relic is not the casual weapon really just based on the time required. Your charity nub casual weapon is your upgraded tomestone weapon.

---

Ironically most NMs are not spawned by big groups of players but mostly 1 or 2 partys chaining the required mobs which technically makes everyone else a "Netflix watcher" that did not contribute in spawning that particular NM yet still flocking there like sheep once they see it on the map.

Bonus points for chaining mobs that do not spawn NMs while literally running over to every available Fate thinking that other people are a bunch of lazy folks for joining the fate despite not contributing to spawning it while claiming moral highground for beeing smart to combine chaining exp/light efficient mobs with doing occasional Fates spawned by other people.

Ultimately yes there were people afking the whole time in Anemos only to reap the rewards at the end but in Pagos it is kinda the same only coated in a different paint. Now you have people grinding mobs that will never spawn a NM because its either more efficient exp or light wise, basically only farming for themselfs while still reaping the rewards others achieved by killing the sufficient amount of the needed mobs to spawn a specific NM.

Objectivly speaking I dare to say that almost all people that are lvl 35 (me included) "leeched" at some point the rewards of the hard work of other people that spawned a Fate be it intentional or not.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Deus-ExMachina

Objectivly speaking I dare to say that almost all people that are lvl 35 (me included) "leeched" at some point the rewards of the hard work of other people that spawned a Fate be it intentional or not.

---

Yeah, there were several levels where I wanted to finish the level, but didn't have it in me to join a group to chain some dumb thing or another for an hour or two after having already spent 10 hours or so that day doing exactly that, so I just half-afked in the base and teleported to whatever NMs spawned.

This thread didn't make it a whole page before it got derailed lol. Please remember that I was hoping to bring up discussion on how to create a light train, not the old NM train. The old NM train is just not even possible in Pagos is unless you're free to travel around the map (32+). So please, let's not keep going down that rabbit hole.

Also, everything that people hated about the old train, leeching/afk is much less possible with my idea. I was against people doing zero work and reaping all the rewards, sadly that's just what a lot of people ended up doing and I understand why steps were put in place to stop it. The light farm is now the roadblock, and I'm hoping to make that part of Pagos easier for the people that have already worked to get to, or near, max level already. No level 20 is going to be doing this light train.

So, let's try to keep on subject. Thank you!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KisaiTenshi

The NM Train was an unintended side-effect of how they made NM's spawn, it was borderline cheating, since it allowed players to burn through the content at a rate that allowed them to complete in a day what should have been a months worth of (grind) content, and without levelsync allowed players to be powerleveled with no effort.

---

Finding a better alternative than the devs intended isn't remotely close to cheating. How you keep attempting to correlate cheating with everything that isn't strictly as the devs want boggles the mind.

The train is horrible for the most part. 90% of the people in it don't even help pop fates. They just stand around and use cheer emotes.

There should be a middle ground though. Pagos fate spawn rate is pathetic. I was in a few for almost the full 3 hours and only saw 2 fates spawn. I'm just a little into lvl 34 and I only have 390 crystals. I know people that had the 500 at level 30.

Fix the NM fate spawnning first.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Grover42

This thread didn't make it a whole page before it got derailed lol. Please remember that I was hoping to bring up discussion on how to create a light train, not the old NM train. The old NM train is just not even possible in Pagos is unless you're free to travel around the map (32+). So please, let's not keep going down that rabbit hole.

Also, everything that people hated about the old train, leeching/afk is much less possible with my idea. I was against people doing zero work and reaping all the rewards, sadly that's just what a lot of people ended up doing and I understand why steps were put in place to stop it. The light farm is now the roadblock, and I'm hoping to make that part of Pagos easier for the people that have already worked to get to, or near, max level already. No level 20 is going to be doing this light train.

So, let's try to keep on subject. Thank you!

---

I mean killing an occational NM is kinda the fastest way to gain reliable light if it spawns while you grind light on efficient mobs. I also tried to participate in helping other groups chain the dragons which just resulted in them getting super mad claiming their light values get halved when I attack their mob (I have no confirmation on this one because generally light does not behave like exp in that regard but who knows).

So the hostility between different groups farming the same mobs just carries over from exp to light grinding at the moment which is not pleasant at all because most people are obsessed with their own progress and everyone else is a potential hinderance.

Can we get Ozzy Osbourne to advertise this game now that the "crazy train is back" like he did with WoW? lol

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LineageRazor

One big mistake commonly made by players is assuming that the relic weapon is meant for casual players. It isn't. It has NEVER been meant for casual players, not in ARR, not in HW, and not now. While the difficulty is low, you're swapping out high difficulty for rather intense levels of grinding. Levels a casual player would never put up with.

Eureka was not meant for casual play. Thanks to the NM train, it BECAME casual friendly, but the NM train was, in all likelihood, an unintended consequence of the way Anemos was designed. Pagos is much more in line with the levels of monotonous, repetitive activity I've come to expect from a Relic weapon.

---

Excuse me what? The entire point of the Relic was an alternative for casual players to achieve over time as they do not have the time commitment to get the relevant Raid gear for each consequential patch. While a hardcore player can indeed acquire the Relic faster than a casual player and possibly more efficiently the entire concept of the Relic and its steps were for people to be able to log in spend around 30mins to an hour and make some kind of actual visual progress towards your weapon. 1.0/2.0's Relic and 3.0's Relic all had systems in place for players to either farm like no tomorrow and get it first before anyone else (ie ARF for Anima) or for people who can only do some casual content per day or week and still have some kind of meaningful progression towards it.

If we're going to assume that Relics are for the hardcore player or even the midcore player then its laughable given the content revolving around its progression has generally been mindnumbing and brainless in terms of actually doing it. Zodiac and Anima gave you a plethora of options but lets not kid ourselves that any of it required anything a casual player doesnt already do outside of extended time; the reason Pagos is doing so bad is because it goes against the design philosphy of the Relic itself on top of being some of the most disconnected piece of content released by the devs to date. It offers nothing in terms of progression for casual players and for those willing to suffer it all it brings is carpal tunnel and monotonous grind that you would be better off spending in a dungeon given the complexity of the chained mobs and NM is equal to that of dungeon trash and one of its 3 bosses.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Noodle_Trinidad

Excuse me what? The entire point of the Relic was an alternative for casual players to achieve over time as they do not have the time commitment to get the relevant Raid gear for each consequential patch.

---

Sorry, but no. Time commitment is exactly the thing the relic is for.
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/276368
Alternatively:

Quote:

---

I would like to add two points to this, the first one is about the relic quest, the anima weapon quest which is time consuming. You might say it’s going to be time consuming and it’s not really challenging but the reason we have this content in game is to support those who are not good at playing the game, say to beat the raid contents to get the higher items with higher item level, so if this relic quest was too difficult for them then it’s going to discourage them to try it, that’s why this is our intention to make it less challenging for the anima weapon quest.

---

https://www.ffxiv-eorzea.com/non-cla...gamescom-2016/

It's meant as an alternative for people who either cannot or do not want to do the raids, but want to put in extra time. In another interview I currently cannot find off the bat, he even said it's meant to cater to people "who like the traditional MMO grind". That's the direction they took with it after the initial step was too much of a roadblock and it's been holding pretty true so far, what with how Eureka turned out.
EDIT: The cadence at which that time is to be spent unfortunately is not specified.

For casual players with little time, the tome weapon is what's intended. As such, you'd generally assume Raiders get their weapons first, then the active relic grinders get theirs, then the tome weapon gets its upgrade released. That's not quite how it works this time around, though, unfortunately.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Deus-ExMachina

I mean killing an occational NM is kinda the fastest way to gain reliable light if it spawns while you grind light on efficient mobs. I also tried to participate in helping other groups chain the dragons which just resulted in them getting super mad claiming their light values get halved when I attack their mob (I have no confirmation on this one because generally light does not behave like exp in that regard but who knows).

So the hostility between different groups farming the same mobs just carries over from exp to light grinding at the moment which is not pleasant at all because most people are obsessed with their own progress and everyone else is a potential hinderance.

---

I agree, but that's just because we haven't found a better way to farm light and why I brought up the subject. I saw the same reaction with people getting very upset with people hitting their group's monster, which is what stopped me from doing further tests with a larger alternate group (so far). As far it halving the light, the one time I got a light gain from hitting another group's monster, the same amount was given as if I was in that group. Granted, light gains have different levels even within feeble, so I doubt they really knew if you were taking half their light and likely think it works like exp does. Even if that were the case, killing NM monsters as a large group (old NM train) would net almost no light and through personal experience that just doesn't seem to be the case. I make decent light spawning Louhi with several groups there. One actual light train would be all it needs to test the theory.