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

[Lumis_Arvalo]

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.

[MageBlack]

We got an expert over here!

[Mahrze]

1) NM Spawns rates need an increase.

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.

2) The Elemental Conflict FATEs need to give Exp.

Nope because they serve a different purpose. Basically free maps every time the fate spawns.

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

* Take breaks
* Use magia board appropriately
* Timer is fine and so is the HP. Some people just don't use the magia board.

4) Experience gains across the board should be increased.

Because its not meant to level via NMs. This is clearly made obvious by the pagos people in the eureka discord. You get more exp from chains per time investment (you mention it in the previous category). NMs are no more than a bonus.

You still have to chain because of the kettle light farm. Adapted/Mutated monster chains can yield more exp than fate

*-*-*-*-* Suggestions *-*-*-*-*

If we're to discuss suggestions to improve things. the HP on the bunny fate change is a good step since it shouldn't be so difficult considering the 'best' reward is a trivial item to unlock gold ratings for a hat (rng-ception).

Somethig that would benefit overall is to remove the need to manually adjust the magia board since plenty of players don't know how to use it because Anemos really didn't let them know.

Better for it to be a buff they have to refresh every time via the special action option (like Vril).

Another step in the right direction would be to party up with people in the same level range and get a special buff that makes it work for everyone. EXP penalties on level ranges are a bit extreme so you have people constantly migrating to better areas/groups if the one they are at yields too low exp. (You can be gainig 2.2k at x lvl, level up and you go down to 1.4k or less on the same mob)

And no, not even with the pagos elemental and the eureka exp pot can you compensate a loss.

[Souljacker]

I just want Level Sync.

That is literally the one thing that could make the whole thing tolerable. Let us level sync and create parties out of WHOEVER happens to be in the instance and not have to instance-hop hoping there is enough people at our level to xp with. And give us some reason beyond popping an NM to continue to grind post-35 so that max level players won't mind syncing down and chaining with others who are just starting.

[CaeliaCat]

We definitely need party level sync. Let friends play together without punishing high level disparities. Even before party level sync was a feature in FFXI, we still had the option of changing jobs to one of another level. Now, once there's a 2 or 3 level gap between friends, you may as well be in different instances.

[ElazulHP]

The NM train is the only reason Anemos wasn't a total clusterf***. It let people switch off grinding the mobs so nobody got sore wrists and you had fun social interactions. People also were more friendly and helpful as a result.

[Marxam]

-Challenge log needs to scale better.
-Mounting from the start and not gated behind lvls, especially after you earned mounting in the previous area.

[RyuDragnier]

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.

The reason a minority complained in Anemos. On the mentioning of previous relic steps, not a single one was at this level of horrible. I've played FFXI, chain grinding wasn't bad there because the battle system allowed it to work. You didn't press a button every 2.5s, and it took a while longer for the bonus chain to go out to compensate for the slower play. Due to this, you could socialize, joke, and do other things while battle was in play, things you cannot do while in battle in FFXIV. Chain grinding as a primary exp source cannot work in FFXIV due to how much faster the gameplay is.

[Fawkes]

The bunny fate should at least give everyone a pile of normal lockboxes. They made NMs more rare and made them give you less, so I've barely seen any lockboxes. It's hard to get excited about content that spits in your face as a reward.

[Elamys]

So last night I was laying in bed, thinking about how bored I was with this game, and I ended up thinking of what I would do to "fix" Pagos. Below is just a pipe dream; it'd probably be far too big of an overhaul. There are also probably plenty of problems with it.

1.) Improve rates of NM spawns, reduce the amount of mob grinding needed to spawn one, increase EXP earned
Mentioned by numerous people. Sitting in Pagos grinding mobs forever is super punishing. Even "taking a break" doesn't help because the EXP earned is so miniscule, you'll still need to go in there over and over and over again.

2.) Encourage exploration
Anemos and Pagos have both been very interesting, well-designed zones. But I don't feel tempted to wander around. The bunnies tried, but the risk is too great for the reward. So give us reasons to wander off the beaten path. Make use of vertical space. Implement jump puzzles, winding trails, etc that lead to places that aren't packed with mobs, but are instead harder to reach because you must look for them. By reaching these places you could find treasure, or a sightseeing/vista point that will give you experience. By tying both experience and items to these areas, you give people in any situation in Eureka a reason to go.

Also - similar to WoW's various endgame zones - scatter around items or treasures throughout the zones not necessarily tied to solving a movement puzzle. Just little things you can pick up. A chest with a few crystals, or something like that.

3.) Discourage camping
Killing worms for an hour isn't fun, but there's no reason to ever move from that spot. But paired with better NM spawns, I'd add in something else building off what I've seen suggested. After the party has killed so many of a certain elemental monster, an item would drop that would spawn a monster weaker than an NM but stronger than normals. Only the party may attack it. After the monster is killed the party receives a buff that increases experience gained by killing monsters of a different elemental type. They can now benefit from going somewhere else. Give the buff a decent duration so that they can still be there and help kill the NM they helped spawn. Maybe limit how often you can get this item, I'm not sure. This item would disappear upon exiting Eureka.

4.) Allow manual level sync
Please allow players to sync to the level of their lowest level party members. We want to help our friends.

5.) Offer daily quests
A simple idea that has also been suggested. Offer daily quests at the hub, but rather than just one, I'd do something like this: Offer a set of daily quests, the same ones every day, that each have a different task to complete. You can only pick to do so many of them, but you can repeat the same one if you'd like. That way, a player can decide what they would like to do that day.

Examples of quests: Kill x elemental monsters, Kill x Notorious monsters, Discover x treasures, Visit x vista points, etc. Maybe someone only wants to grind monsters that day, they can just do the quest to kill monsters as many times as they are allowed to do dailies. Or maybe they just want to relax and poke around. Same thing.

6.) Incorporate gatherers and crafters
Another big one! I really liked gathering in Diadem so I was sad to hear that Eureka did not continue this trend. I would change this so that gatherers could join in - those areas I mentioned earlier, the ones without monsters, would be where you could find things to gather. Stealth would be disabled. Crafters could also join too, with those little treasure boxes containing materials used for Eureka-specific crafts, much like they do now. You can now craft in Eureka. You can't craft normal items, only the Eureka specific ones, which you can craft outside Eureka. BUT, while you're there, you gain buffs that improve your ability to craft these items.

7.) Allow mounting from any level
Making me have to wait to mount isn't fun, and it doesn't make the game harder, just slower. Flying would not be allowed, but you should be able to use your ground mount from the moment you step inside.

8.) Defend our home bases
This is the biggest change I'd make. Eureka is a very dangerous place, but it doesn't feel like it when you're nice and cosy in the base. I'd bring back some of hamlet defense/emergency mission in this. Every once in a while the monsters will rally to attack home. Gatherers and crafters will build up the defenses (reinforcing walls, providing medicinal herbs, etc) while the battle jobs will do what they do best, fighting. Those who participate will receive a reward of experience, crystals, etc. Players must organize and cooperate to successfully complete the mission, but not to the level that just a few people out of a hundred can ruin it for everyone.

9.) Make dying a little less punishing on the EXP
Seriously, this isn't a very fun mechanic. I can understand wanting a bit of loss, I guess, but losing all your work because of one misstep is just not very fun.