Now that we know SE is listening, here's how to "fix" Pagos.

[Conroy]

Let's get something straight right off the bat; Eureka in general isn't fun for the majority of players. You can go to pretty much any FF14 community forum (here, Reddit, etc.) or even go in game and talk to people and the answer to the question "Do you like Eureka?" will be met with a resounding "No." 80% of the time. I'm not going to pile on the devs for making Eureka because I genuinely don't believe that they intentionally made something that they knew wasn't going to be well recieved. This is just a misstep, albeit a pretty big one, and it should flag them that maybe they are out of touch with what the players are expecting from this game nowadays. But that's a whole other thread. For now, because I understand that completely rewriting Pagos is unrealistic, let's focus on how to improve Pagos using the current design.

1) NM Spawns rates need an increase.

Let's get this out of the way right up front. The only reason Anemos really worked as content is because people found enjoyment in running around as a giant group of players killing monsters and spawning bosses to kill. Regardless of whether or not that was the "correct" way to do it, that's what the players came up with to make the content fun and engaging for them, and basically removing that style of play from Pagos is the primary reason why the majority of players are not happy. Anemos should have taught SE that running around and spawning giant bosses that have actual interesting mechanics to kill should be the primary feature of the content, so the number one fix for Pagos should be to increase the NM spawn rates back to Anemos levels, or even higher. Chain groups can still do their mob grinding and it'll probably be faster, but this gives the majority of players who hate that style of gameplay but still want their shiny purple weapon an avenue in which to advance in Pagos toward that goal. Will there be players who AFK with the "train"? Yes. But there's already players doing that by standing at the spawn point waiting for NMs to pop. There's not going to be a way to combat that beyond removing NM spawns altogether and that's a terrible idea.

2) The Elemental Conflict FATEs need to give Exp.

The major reason that no one wants to do the bunny FATEs is because even if all 144 players in a Pagos instance got together and destroyed it, only a few players would actually reap any rewards from it. That's just not good design. No one wants do something if they feel like their time is going to be wasted and they don't want to rely on what is effective a dice roll to figure out if they got something for their time. Players need to be incentivized to come together and do these fates by giving them all some kind of reward for participating in it. I'm not saying you need to drop bunnies on all of them but giving even a small amount of Exp will rally a larger portion of the players into doing it whenever it's up because it, at the very least, will advance their progression with the bunny being an extra reward.

3) Monster HP and Damage needs to be nerfed, OR chain bonus timers need to be increased.

Players have pretty much figured out that the "efficient" way to level in Pagos is to sit in a group of 8 and pull mobs 5-6 levels higher than you for chain bonuses. I don't neccessarily have an issue with that if that's what players want to do, and if SE wants to make that the fastest way to level, that's fine. I won't do it, but I understand there are players who enjoy that kind of gameplay and if they want to make that viable, so be it. But the problem with this is that because mobs at those levels are so tanky and the chain bonus timer is so quick at higher chains, players are literally being forced to constantly press buttons for hours at a time lest they want to lose their chain bonus. This worked in FF11 (which is what Eureka is paying homage to) because combat was slower and there was time in between pulls for players to take breaks. But FF14's combat is much too fast for this to be viable and people are quite literally hurting themselves playing this way because of the design. So I am suggesting that either the chain bonus timer be extended to allow players to take short breaks in between mobs to avoid wrist fatigue or the mob HP/damage scaling be reduced to alleviate the need to constantly be pressing buttons. This might seem kind of a silly reason for it, but spend 3 straight hours typing up a paper for school or a report for work and let me know how your wrists and hands feel after that. It's no joke, and playing a video game shouldn't be causing people physical pain.

4) Experience gains across the board should be increased.

For those unaware, the amount of experience you need to go from 33 to 34 is roughly 4 million experience, and from 34 to 35 it's roughly 6 million experience. To give you a sample of NM experience at those levels, Louhi, the big boss NM of Pagos, gives roughly 250k experience at 34 (according to my insane friend who facegrinded through Pagos this week). To go from 33 to 35 just killing Louhi when it spawns requires 40 gold kills. Even chain grinding at those levels feels bad because you barely notice your experience bar moving, and it makes you feel like your wasting your time. That's not particularily great, so I think a bump in overall Exp gains need to happen as well.

Those are my suggestions on how to "fix" Pagos without redesigning the whole thing. The reward structure and requirements are, in my opinion, perfectly fine and the above fixes would do a lot to increase the acquisition rate of those requirements. I know people are complaining that the relic will be obsolete in a few weeks but honestly even raid weapons are obsolete once you get them as they have no real purpose other than to look cool. They don't give you access to a new raid tier or anything better once you have them, you just get to kill the current raid faster and that's it, so I don't really get the "obsolete" complaint. Once again, I don't think the devs intentionally made "bad" content. I think they thought players would like this. But unfortunately, that also shows they are a bit out of touch with what we expect. We don't expect to be handed rewards for free. We DO expect the path to those reward to be fun to do, and I think I speak for the majority of people who were looking forward to Pagos when I say this isn't fun.

Feel free to leave suggestions here. Hopefully the devs will see them.

EDIT: Please try to keep your comments and suggestions respectful. There's no need to insult other players or the developers. We're trying to make the content better, not alienate people or vent frustrations. People aren't "wrong" for feeling let down or frustrated by Pagos/Anemos/Eureka in general, and the developers don't deserve to be insulted for making this just because of that frustration. They both want to and enjoy making things people will like to play. This just isn't that.

I'm all for this but can we also get daily hunt log in here? Just EXP, something is better then nothing.


Then put leves in here as well... since leves are kinda useless as well in current content other then leveling crafting. Just give us something to do with a "meaning" like leves give gil rewards and exp thats all I'd like with additional 1-2 lockboxes per leve completed. If doing this it would create Leve groups and would be more fun to party up and chat about what leves to do. currently I see no reason to really group up unless you're killing 5+ above your current level of mobs. Because thats all pagos is a empty void where you grind mindlessly. I'm sure everyone would use their leves now if this was a thing. Also how come the old relics use leves and this hasn't yet?

[Nezerius]

So you want to bring back the same reason people complained in Anemos? We should first come to terms that the relic hasn't always been for everyone and not everyone has been on top of it 100%. Its grindy content that always had people not doing it. atma farms, light, unidentified mats, crystal sands. There's always been a grindy step and this one seems to be it. People still didn't do anemos with the train. People still don't do anemos with train and 2x exp buff.

No, he wants to bring back the one thing that made the grind bearable, that a (seemingly vocal) minority complained about. I prefer the grinds that you mentioned, over the current Pagos mob grind.

Besides, what's the point of making a grindy step and adding it just over a month away from a major patch that increases the iLvl on combat gear? If you grind enough, you might get 3 weeks of 'enjoyment' out of it (even though there's other options), before you can just grab a better weapon off the new primal (or another crafter, if there's new crafted weapons). If they wanted Pagos to be the grindy step of the relic, it should've been part of the initial 4.3 patch release.

[Vasala]

Here is my list of changes I would like to see:

Allow the party to sync to the level of the party leader or the lowest level person. Having the option like that gives you the option of going to the lowest or one of the other level marks in the group to farm the level of mobs people want to farm. Aka trying to spawn a specific NM so syncing to the correct level for its mobs by putting the right level person as party lead.

Increase the spawn rate of Notorious monsters especially the ones with specific weather or night mob requirements. On the Louhi kills I have been on it has taken between 2 and 4 night cycles of people farming Val Corpses to get him to spawn. Part of one night cycle should be all that is required just like all the night NMs in Anemos. Same for things like Anapos who needs fog only sprites to spawn. I have been involved killing his sprites for more than one fog cycle and still have yet to ever see him pop. No NM should take most of a 3 hour window of grinding to show up. They all need the number of kills to trigger to be greatly reduced. NMs give a nice break from the grind. This content has been causing me a lot of pain in my fingers and wrists and I can't believe that SE wants to physically hurt its players like this.

For the mutating and adapting monsters please make all of them mutate and adapt at any time / weather and at a good rate similar to the Pagos Anubys. I would also suggest allowing all monsters to mutate or adapt since it at least spices things up. Due to these type of mobs it would be nice if our max number of magia rotations would increase as we level in Pagos since we did not get any new magicite. This request is due to the fact that mutating monsters switch element type. That or have their element not change so we don't get locked out of swapping while farming.

Since exploration is desired in here due to the bunnies I would request that the experience / level loss penalties be removed. Just losing your bunny and being sent back to the start is plenty of penalty. With the massive emphasis on keeping chains going you see a lot less people willing to go help someone who died especially if they die in one of the caves. Loosing potentially hours of work because a mob turns while you are following a bunny is way too punitive. I would also like to see the bunnies become more party friendly. Make it like maps where everyone in the party has a chance to have random materials drop in their bags if they are near. Even if the players other than the one with the bunny only received normal crafting mats obtained outside of Eureka it would still make the party feel better for going along and helping the player with the bunny.

Another addition I would like to see is a chance of cold-warped lockboxes just from the chaining with the mutates / adapts still having a higher chance at them. Then you would at least feel a little bit more rewarded for your efforts.

[Zyneste]

Quality of Life:

Phoenix Downs- Make phoenix downs non-unique, stackable to 99 and purchasable in pagos next to the potions.


Experience Gain:

Chain Experience- Monster's hitting you hard is fine but we could definitely use a better Chain scaling system to make it worth it. Something like 10% for the first mob, 110% for the 11th, 210% for 21 and the current multiplier at multiples of 5/10 on top of these.

Deleveling- Just remove this. A penalty is fine, but what is the point of level if we can just be sent back one for dying. Most games that do have the loss of experience due to death (korean Free to play games...lol) dont have delevel in the system.

Daily Quests- We should get daily quests for killing mobs or even on a levequest timer would be amazing.

Levelsync- - We really should be able to sync towards the lowest party member's EXP and gain the same EXP as them. We shouldnt go from getting 4K exp to 1k because you leveled up one level. Mobs should give a flat max EXP that you get when you're over their level or a level sync system should be made to allow fair grinding with friends.
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Those are my biggest gripes. Im fine with not having a mount and the EXP loss on death as long as the EXP is made worth it and that EVERYONE has access to a raise.

Also, Can we please have all 10 Role skills before 4.4? This content makes quirky skills worth having.

[Shurrikhan]

Chain grinding as a primary exp source cannot work in FFXIV due to how much faster the gameplay is.

While I share your conclusion that chain grinding as it stands at the moment is a poor fit for XIV, the pace of gameplay has nothing inherently to do with why chain grinding would or would not work. It's all relative to the timer and duration of continuous killing necessary to max the gauge. Assuming the same timer or number of kills, it works better when gameplay is faster...

[Liam_Harper]

Going to be honest, I'd just like to see the NM train back, no compromises.

The NM train, flaws and afk players aside, had the huge benefit in that it made the entire thing far more social. Players were throwing out rezzes to each other like candy. Groups were joking around in party chat, making friends, having fun. Players of all levels, 1 to 20 were welcome to hop in. Players were acting as taxi's for the low levels with 2 person mounts. You could hop in for 20 minutes or two hours.

Compared to now where you have to be strictly within the level of the party, no duplicate classes, good dps, no breaks, no time to chat or joke or the chain will break, no time to rez others, must be able to dedicate several hours.

The NM train saved Anemos. I thought I'd hate it and ended up enjoying it. I was looking forward to Pagos. Just my personal opinion.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

So you want to bring back the same reason people complained in Anemos? We should first come to terms that the relic hasn't always been for everyone and not everyone has been on top of it 100%. Its grindy content that always had people not doing it. atma farms, light, unidentified mats, crystal sands. There's always been a grindy step and this one seems to be it. People still didn't do anemos with the train. People still don't do anemos with train and 2x exp buff.

All those steps at least incorporated some degree of variety. I can socialize or take a break in between fates, I can opt to farm different dungeons or bosses despite them not being as efficient. For example, I occasionally ran Weeping City and Dun Scaith for my Anima. They're nowhere near as fast as spamming ARF, but I love both raids. Pagos lacks even these basic attributes. If I stop at any point, the chain breaks and everyone loses a good chunk of EXP. And there is no alternative to chaining mobs. You simply do the same thing for hours on end while developing carpal tunnel from spamming the same handful of buttons over and over again. No one socializes anymore because again, that interrupts the chain. Even worse, if someone tags your mob, rip experience. Everything about Pagos punishes socialization even within your own damn party.

Only a small minority complained about the train; primarily because they couldn't get chain parties to form. That should tell you how the overall playerbase feels about chaining mobs. Despite it being a superior alternative, very few wanted to do it in Anemos. If you want to thwart AFKing, make a system where you're required to do x amount of damage to the boss instead of making it enmity based like hunts. Regardless, I couldn't care less how the devs intended for Eureka to function. Their vision is a monotonous, boring, uncreative chore. If I wanted to simply grind thousands of brainless enemies, I'd play Black Desert or Dynasty Warriors—games with far better combat for that style of gameplay. Or better yet, Monster Hunter World. Imagine if instead of cool "boss" like monsters, you were forced to kill the passive animals except they have millions of HP. MHW would be pretty damn boring. Welcome to Pagos. Instead of killing the cool bosses, we're killing trash.

[hynaku]

Be nice if they increased amount crystals and light you get for the frosted crystals. Wish they put a teleporter next to the crystal forge.

[Teraluna]

Going to be honest, I'd just like to see the NM train back, no compromises.

The NM train, flaws and afk players aside, had the huge benefit in that it made the entire thing far more social. Players were throwing out rezzes to each other like candy. Groups were joking around in party chat, making friends, having fun. Players of all levels, 1 to 20 were welcome to hop in. Players were acting as taxi's for the low levels with 2 person mounts. You could hop in for 20 minutes or two hours.

Compared to now where you have to be strictly within the level of the party, no duplicate classes, good dps, no breaks, no time to chat or joke or the chain will break, no time to rez others, must be able to dedicate several hours.

The NM train saved Anemos. I thought I'd hate it and ended up enjoying it. I was looking forward to Pagos. Just my personal opinion.

Agree.
Players helped me around when I first went in, and I enjoyed helping others in turn when I got to higher levels. Picking them up, helping them along, while joking about rising fuel costs and taxi fares. Pagos is just a lackluster instance in comparison. Unfortunately, this seems to mirror the developers current lack of innovation, drive and overall loss of ambition.

[Solarra]

Going to be honest, I'd just like to see the NM train back, no compromises.

The NM train, flaws and afk players aside, had the huge benefit in that it made the entire thing far more social. Players were throwing out rezzes to each other like candy. Groups were joking around in party chat, making friends, having fun. Players of all levels, 1 to 20 were welcome to hop in. Players were acting as taxi's for the low levels with 2 person mounts. You could hop in for 20 minutes or two hours.

Compared to now where you have to be strictly within the level of the party, no duplicate classes, good dps, no breaks, no time to chat or joke or the chain will break, no time to rez others, must be able to dedicate several hours.

The NM train saved Anemos. I thought I'd hate it and ended up enjoying it. I was looking forward to Pagos. Just my personal opinion.

I couldn't have put it better. I hated Anemos up to the point where I joined the train. Once I did that, I found the experience surprisingly social and enjoyable. I even took an alt in and levelled her to 20, too.

Making the NM train viable again would be an easy fix and one that would please most people (if you want to grind, the option would still be there). There are a lot of good suggestions in this thread, but I'm not sure the devs are capable of making Pagos better by adding to it; they just don't seem to be able to predict what people will enjoy or how they will play. It would be awful if they poured loads more time and resources into Pagos, only for it turn out like Diadem II.
That said, a level-synch is desperately needed in both Anemos and Pagos; we've been asking for that right from the start, I'm not sure why they seem so dead set against it.