Giving it a little thought, I have some ideas of how they could hotfix Pagos to make it more bearable. This is assuming that they aren't going to completely rework it (which, they should) but leave most of everything intact.

1. Increase NM Spawn Rate and Improve Chain Mob EXP.

The first one is obvious. Make the actual fun part of Pagos happen more often.
As for improvement on chain mobs I personally would increase EXP gain, make chains not expire unless you leave the immediate area, remove the cap on the chain, and/or make conditions to force mutations.

2. Level Sync

Because I have outleveled all of my other friends, I will never be able to play Pagos with them again for weeks or even months. In Anemos, we could hop on the FATE train regardless of our level. In Pagos, I am stuck with randoms for the rest of my days because I have more days off than all my friends.

3. Remove Death Penalty

This is not fun. This is not exciting. It is tedious and harmful. People are using it to grief. People are losing EXP more than before because Pagos is too damn dangerous to traverse to save someone.
In the same vein, it destroys groups so fast it's not funny. You have a tank that messed up and pulled too many mobs and killed you all? I'm not taking the risk and will leave to find another group. I know this sentiment is shared because I'm never the first to leave. People leaving groups has made leveling AWFUL. I spent 7 hours yesterday bouncing between failed groups and went from halfway through 23 and halfway through 24 (which was because people dropped so much and I also saw a whopping 2 NMs in 7 hours).

4. Add Mounts.

I don't care if mounts is 25+ or even 30+. Make it earlier. A good chunk of my fun in Anemos was taxing around lowbies in my party one at a time to the NM spawn locations so they are safe.

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Are these above changes perfect? No. It's hard to fix the garbage fire that is Eureka. But make it like Anemos again and at least it is passable.

Pagos as it stands a cesspool of irritated people and toxic behavior. There is no more camaraderie or fun shout chat. People are not helping each other enmasse anymore. In fact, Pagos created a huge divide between high and low level players, to the point that I have actually seen insults in shout chat towards lower level players, telling them to "go back to snow queen" and stay out of the northern half of the map. People are left for dead if they unknowingly make the wrong people angry. There is screenshots, videos, everything documenting the nasty attitudes Pagos has brought out. I have never seen the shout chat in FFXIV ever so hateful towards each other and the content (yes. 95% of people I am partying with hate every second of it).

It is insulting to get this as content when it should have been released earlier along with everything else. If they wanted this to take us the whole patch to do, they should have released it with the patch and not staggered content. If Pagos was released back May then maybe people could justify the grind. It's an endless grind for useless weapons and all it really chalks up to is a huge slap in the face of both casuals (because Pagos is not casual content) and collectors.

Moreover, I want a response from the community team to know if they are listening or just ignoring us like always. They can respond within an hour to Rathalos questions, but mysteriously disappear for days on end when people are widely discontent. If SE hears that we hate it and decides to keep it as is, fine. Whatever. They can lose subs, idc. But I want to know that they DO hear it. Right now, all I imagine is the devs patting themselves on the backs oblivious to the fact the community views this worse than Diadem.