The toxic Pagos bottleneck and how to solve it

[TheAzureDream]

Howdy all,

I rarely post here so I’ll try to make it count and avoid writing an essay. Anyway as we know a week or so after it came out SE massively boosted NM spawns and XP presumably after seeing a massive dropout in the number of casual players that it was designed for. This saved the content for a short time at least as it brought back the Fate Train which at least made the content bearable and gave it a social aspect. Unfortunately this has created another considerable problem in that when players get to lv35 they are still massively short of light crystals required to get a single weapon. The only way to do that effectively, albeit still taking a long time, is by light farming in a few specific locations. Since however there are now so many lv35’s and so few decent spawn locations there is a massive and increasingly toxic bottleneck as players fight over those locations that will just get bigger and bigger until once again the casual players you designed this for will just drop out.

To fix this I suggest the following changes: reduce light crystal requirements for a weapon to step 1=2 crystals, step 2=3 crystals, step 3=5 crystals. This will allow most players upon getting to lv35 to get a weapon then or shortly thereafter and then leave the content behind making room for others. Let’s be honest, it’s just not fun and I thought that “Should always be fun” was a central design principle for the game.

Anyway thanks for reading, Azure

[AppleJinx]

TIL competing to see who can occupy a good farming spot in a mmorpg is considered toxic.

[ChameleonMS]

An alternate fix would be change the kill credit system which is the root cause here. If you hit the mob and it dies, you get your credit. Make is similar to NM/Fate credit system.

Party does less than 10% damage - Bronze effort, 15% chance of feeble light and 25% XP.
Party does 10% to 30% damage - Silver effort, 30% chance of feeble light, 10% chance of gentle light and 50% XP.
Party does more than 30% damage - Gold effort, 50% feeble, 20% gentle, 5% bright, 100% XP.
Actual numbers are my suggestions and have no expectation of being used.

No more splitting credit that is currently in place. This will help both light farming and XP chain values.
There are many complaints around these forums about AFKers not helping spawn NMs because there is almost no incentive reason to bother helping out. Unless your whole party is strong enough, you will get absolutely nothing for your efforts, so, why bother.

[Iscah]

An alternate fix would be change the kill credit system which is the root cause here. If you hit the mob and it dies, you get your credit. Make is similar to NM/Fate credit system.

Party does less than 10% damage - Bronze effort, 15% chance of feeble light and 25% XP.
Party does 10% to 30% damage - Silver effort, 30% chance of feeble light, 10% chance of gentle light and 50% XP.
Party does more than 30% damage - Gold effort, 50% feeble, 20% gentle, 5% bright, 100% XP.
Actual numbers are my suggestions and have no expectation of being used.

I thought this is what already happened (approximately) with monster EXP? First person/party to hit it gets 100% credit, everyone else gets credit according to how much damage they inflicted?

[kenshinjr]

I thought this is what already happened (approximately) with monster EXP? First person/party to hit it gets 100% credit, everyone else gets credit according to how much damage they inflicted?

I believe this is how exp works in the main game but pagos appears to be different. The "first tagged" monsters do not payout full exp if even one other person attacks it. I don\\'t know exact percentages but it\\'s enough to discourage farming in that area. I think light works the same way so multiple parties greatly lowers light payouts - even if monster is claimed first by you. Once again I have no exact science, just commenting from my journey through pagos.

[ChameleonMS]

I thought this is what already happened (approximately) with monster EXP? First person/party to hit it gets 100% credit, everyone else gets credit according to how much damage they inflicted?

Well if they did, it is not working correctly. Many times I have seen mobs our party pulls that gets tagged by other party giving no credit.
The way it seems to work is the credit is divided by all people/parties which hit the mob, when NM spawning there are many parties hitting the mob and the credit is divided so often that no-one is getting credit.

[Moogly]

I agree with OP on the bottleneck problem, since I had the exact same problems with all the good light farming spots being taken. Once had a party in Pagos, went out and reformed through PF to get into a new and fresh Pagos instance, but as soon as we got in, the very same spot was already taken by another group...

But don't you think reducing the crystal requirement would make getting the relic a little too easy ? I would lower the value of the item, its "exclusivity". This kind of nerf is more welcome when the expansion is nearing its end, like the previous relic nerfs. It would anger quite a few people who farmed a lot to get those before everyone.

But it would be indeed the faster way to solve this problem.
Or may be add more dragons...

[BristolRuss]

It's almost as if fate-training your way to 35 wasn't the intended method to get light. What a pity that nobody ever told fate train whiners that this would happen...oh wait.

But to answer your question Yoshi said this about Pagos at Gamescon.

"So, with the last patch, we didn't really increase the NM spawn rate to as much as it was before [in Anemos], but we increased the amount of EXP they give. It's not as effective as it was in Anemos, but you can still wait for NM spawns if you want to. But for the weapon upgrades, your predecessors spent a lot of time and effort farming mobs to grow stronger, so we won't ease up on that. Please learn how to do that."

So I wouldn't hold your breath for any nerfs just yet.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

It's almost as if fate-training your way to 35 wasn't the intended method to get light. What a pity that nobody ever told fate train whiners that this would happen...oh wait.

But to answer your question Yoshi said this about Pagos at Gamescon.

"So, with the last patch, we didn't really increase the NM spawn rate to as much as it was before [in Anemos], but we increased the amount of EXP they give. It's not as effective as it was in Anemos, but you can still wait for NM spawns if you want to. But for the weapon upgrades, your predecessors spent a lot of time and effort farming mobs to grow stronger, so we won't ease up on that. Please learn how to do that."

So I wouldn't hold your breath for any nerfs just yet.

Only when they learn to develop good content.

In a zone with upwards of 144 people, there shouldn't be only a very small corner of mobs that are efficient for grinding light. This basically forces groups to either fight over it, in which case, no one benefits, one group to suffer insignificant gains or server hop hoping to get that elusive spot. It's a poor design no matter how you slice it.

[NessaWyvern]

It's almost as if fate-training your way to 35 wasn't the intended method to get light. What a pity that nobody ever told fate train whiners that this would happen...oh wait.

I didn't do the fate train to get to lvl 35 myself, and I was still left with 6-8 crystals I had to collect. I am wondering if it might actually be beneficial to de-level yourself, so you can farm at different locations and get more light

I have had it worse in another game when it comes to spots where there's too many players and too little mobs. I remember I would have to log into the german servers just to find a spare spot.