The toxic Pagos bottleneck and how to solve it

[Ash_]

Will be going into 4.4 with an outdated relic for my main stuck at 365, a single tome weapon for maybe one of my tank alt classes at 370. The rest will be stuck at 355. My health and well-being comes first before any Korean style grind.

And I truly cannot be bothered for a weapon that will be out-dated so quickly. It used to be in HW and ARR the relic was a viable alternative for progression. Now it's not even worth the glamour. There's not even any lore or meaningful story behind it. It's just a reward for putting your health second with no real meaning to it.

[ShadowHunterrX]

Mmm, i thought you meant fixing it sooner. But even then, if i were you i'd worry a little more about that third relic step. They can make pagos easier, but no point if logos is worse than pagos.

It's not fixing. It's about more possible ways of playing to get the same end result. So everybody can it enjoy in some way. Even when it's old content.

Probably be best just to let pagos people just get a free first relic or two in logos, while subtly dropping any pagos requirement to progress

What a stupid idea.

[Solarra]

they keep taking steps to stop players from working together and pushing the game to be more single player (unsure why they are taking that direction in an MMO but whatever).

... As this goes on the level 35 will become more and more plentiful and optimal light grinding will be a single set of mobs. It will get ugly.

I suspect they have not considered the effect their design has on player behaviour, and they should have considered it. FFXIV does not have a generally nice community by accident. Helping others usually benefits you in this game or at worst, it is neutral. Turning this round so that helping others hurts your progress is obviously going to have an effect.

Since testing is done in-house, they probably got a very distorted idea of how Anemos and Pagos would play. I imagine if you were doing Pagos with a single group, with everyone at the same level and knowing the optimum way to play then the light-farm probably wouldn't look too bad.
It's completely different in a full instance with people at all different levels, and with all the light farmers competing for two small groups of mobs. Other people nearby can break your chain through ignorance or malice and there is nothing you can do about it. Since the optimum way to farm light apparently hasn't been discovered, you have the added fun of people arguing over different theories and the right way to do things.

You are right Miles, as more people hit 35 this can only get worse. Heaven help anyone coming into Pagos late!

[TheAzureDream]

OP here.

There has been a fair bit of discussion about the grind in this content here. I should add that I've got nothing against the grind (not that I'm a big fan of it mind) as we've come to expect that from Relic steps in the past. The point I'm making is that finding a place to grind out light at lv35 is a problem. I think someone earlier mentioned switching instances. I've tried that and since there isn't an ability to select a specific instance or start a new one it's total luck and more often that not you'll find yourself just thrown back in the same instance or if it is a new one the good spots are gone in minutes.

The initial design of Pagos would have forced users to basically light grind from lv25 onwards with the expectation that they would almost be at 31 crystals by the time they got to lv35. This would mean that players would have been spread out amongst mobs of different levels as they levelled and gained light during level grinding (as opposed to NM's). The change to boost exp and NM whilst welcome for levelling alone has broken that rule for light gain progression as a direct result. I don't know how someone in the Dev Team didn't see this coming as it was a fairly inevitable consequence of this change.

I proposed one solution earlier and others on this threads have also put across some other ideas as well. My view is either to reduce the light crystal requirement or make a change that removes the issue regarding lack of options/availability for light grinding given the number of lv35's fighting over few resources.

[WhyAmIHere]

OP here.

There has been a fair bit of discussion about the grind in this content here. I should add that I've got nothing against the grind (not that I'm a big fan of it mind) as we've come to expect that from Relic steps in the past. The point I'm making is that finding a place to grind out light at lv35 is a problem. I think someone earlier mentioned switching instances. I've tried that and since there isn't an ability to select a specific instance or start a new one it's total luck and more often that not you'll find yourself just thrown back in the same instance or if it is a new one the good spots are gone in minutes.

The initial design of Pagos would have forced users to basically light grind from lv25 onwards with the expectation that they would almost be at 31 crystals by the time they got to lv35. This would mean that players would have been spread out amongst mobs of different levels as they levelled and gained light during level grinding (as opposed to NM's). The change to boost exp and NM whilst welcome for levelling alone has broken that rule for light gain progression as a direct result. I don't know how someone in the Dev Team didn't see this coming as it was a fairly inevitable consequence of this change.

I proposed one solution earlier and others on this threads have also put across some other ideas as well. My view is either to reduce the light crystal requirement or make a change that removes the issue regarding lack of options/availability for light grinding given the number of lv35's fighting over few resources.

Yoshi could always just reveal what the "best way to get light" is instead of being all cryptic about it as well.

[Teraluna]

Good points raised by the OP and others. For me this is only one aspect of the whole mess that needs revising.
Sort out the Aethernet access levels - stagger the access more evenly.
Get rid of the sleeping mobs - a ridiculous gimmick that only serves to deter players from helping lower levels around.
Remove all the ridiculous jumping down geography from the landscape. An absolute joke that somehow makes your character immortal no matter the fall.
Honestly Pagos is the worst designed content this game has ever seen, and that includes 1.0 which had to be closed and rewritten.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Just wait for legit nerfs, I guess. The devs don't have that quick a turnaround time to rebalance the map before the problem solves itself, as people drop out naturally. I think it should stay as a cautionary "be careful what you ask for when you want it to be harder" tale, though.

Stop this nonsense right now. Pagos is brain dead. There is nothing remotely "hard" about it. You spam your rotation on the equivalent of a target dummy that procs. You can easily bot your way to 35, that's the degree of brain dead grinding Pagos is. There isn't any "git gud." People wanting harder content are referring to things like Mythic+ dungeons or a return to the difficulty of Thordan and Sephirot EX.

[Derio]

I am just going to wait for the nerf for this relic. There is no point for a casual like myself to try to get a relic weapon when it gets released at the very end of a tome cycle.

With HW and ARR the relic was close behind the raid weapon, and the multiple options to obtain the relic, it was a casual friendly experience.

However with Eureka, and pagos in particular, by now if you are not lvl30+ good luck. There is only 1 way to obtain the relic and that is by NM spawns and mindlessly killing mobs.

It is just a big mess. At this point I am just going to save up for the tome weapon and wait until the Eureka nerfs

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I am just going to wait for the nerf for this relic. There is no point for a casual like myself to try to get a relic weapon when it gets released at the very end of a tome cycle.

With HW and ARR the relic was close behind the raid weapon, and the multiple options to obtain the relic, it was a casual friendly experience.

However with Eureka, and pagos in particular, by now if you are not lvl30+ good luck. There is only 1 way to obtain the relic and that is by NM spawns and mindlessly killing mobs.

It is just a big mess. At this point I am just going to save up for the tome weapon and wait until the Eureka nerfs

I feel much the same. I may (strong may) do the challenge log, but otherwise this is getting relegated to when they nerf it into the ground. If I even bother at all. 4.5 is likely going to be a very long and hollow patch, so it gives me something to do outside raid stuff.

[Mahrze]

I am just going to wait for the nerf for this relic. There is no point for a casual like myself to try to get a relic weapon when it gets released at the very end of a tome cycle.

With HW and ARR the relic was close behind the raid weapon, and the multiple options to obtain the relic, it was a casual friendly experience.

However with Eureka, and pagos in particular, by now if you are not lvl30+ good luck. There is only 1 way to obtain the relic and that is by NM spawns and mindlessly killing mobs.

It is just a big mess. At this point I am just going to save up for the tome weapon and wait until the Eureka nerfs

And yet this was all done (the spreading content so much) because they thought its in the best interests of the player-base.

Silly SE.