These Relics Aren't Relicing

Relics should feel like a journey. They should be introduced early, ideally at the very start of an expansion, with regular updates to keep you going across an expansion. The weapons themselves should feel iconic to obtain, and should have a bit of unique backstory to each of them. The ARR relics are still unmatched in this regard, both in terms of their names (Excalibur, Ragnarok, Sasuke's Blades, etc.) as well as their appearances.

The actual nature of the grind itself doesn't matter very much. Many relic steps do boil down to collecting a set number of tomestones or running DF/Fates a set amount of times for light/memories/atma/crystals/clusters. You can get a bit creative with this, like the Zodiac book step, but then it gets a bit prescriptive. The idea of sequentially adding stats over time by completing books was an interesting concept, though. The Resistance Weapons approach was pretty good, giving you the option of working through the exploratory zone or to do the usual DF content. Both Eureka and Bozja are surprisingly active, even now.

One thing that would be nice would be adding some form of storage or display for accumulated relics, especially if you've managed to collect all the relics in a given set.

At some point, I'd like to see a relic weapon set/exploratory zone draw reference to the Sealed Weapons of Kuza, from FFV.

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Originally Posted by Tint

That has literally nothing to do with each other. Also you are an ugly Viera yourself, lol. Somehow they managed to add the female Viera back in ShB and we got a relic grind anyway.

The ressources went into the island sanctuary instead of a new relic zone. And the rework of older dungeons and making them playable with NPCs, variant / criterion dungeons and Eureka Orthos. Basically all of it was badly designed and failed.
But even with the Island they simply could have made us grind fates and dungeons and whatever content there already is in the game like they used to back in ARR and HW. They simply decided not to add a grind by keeping the required amount of tomestones low. Because in the past entitled people complained about the grind I guess?

The ressources to create content were there, but by trying to play it safe all of it was dead on arrival.

When they can add a Moogle Treasure Trove grind then they also can add a relic weapon grind >.>

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Tbh it doesn't matter what SE does, or doesn't do. People will complain about most of it.

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Originally Posted by AlucaDragonheart

Agreed, thank god Endwalker is behind us though, and hopefully Dawntrail's relics are actually FUN to get this time, like Shadowbringers relics were.

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Wrong.

In DT the relics will be for free after completing a few quests, mark my words.

This game will continue to catter to ERPers/ casuals and people who don't want work for anything.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

I think increasing the rewards in PotD or adding additional places where you can get the items required for the relic. - Just making the yield guaranteed for the Timeworn artefact from PotD; that alone would go a long way, and would probably produce the best results.

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There's nothing wrong with the PoTD drop rate. The reason people complain about it, is because they're not willing to climb the floors and want it dropped from 51-60, so they can farm it in 10 minutes. From floor 100+ you'll get an artifact almost every 10 floors. There's 200 floors, and you can get to 150 easily, even solo.

An increase to the HoH floors step would be better, because the floors where the drop is almost guaranteed, are fewer and you're likely to die faster. But most people don't really complain there, because there's dungeons they can do instead.

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Originally Posted by Erzaa

There's nothing wrong with the PoTD drop rate. The reason people complain about it, is because they're not willing to climb the floors and want it dropped from 51-60, so they can farm it in 10 minutes. From floor 100+ you'll get an artifact almost every 10 floors. There's 200 floors, and you can get to 150 easily, even solo.

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It's really difficult to find a party for the later floors. Since you have to start at 51 it takes easily 8 hours to get there (floor 150+). And since you can't replace any player you can't continue when one person is not showing up the next day - and there is always one who is not showing up. So realistically you have to do it in one session - but who has the time for that?

Doing it solo is also not easily done. It takes skill and knowledge.

Plus before you can even start (group or solo) you have to farm your weapon and armor upgrades which also takes a while.

Alright, fair enough. I'll concede getting the required Aetherpool takes time, if the players hadn't already ran PoTD by the time they got to Bozja.

Still, getting to 150 isn't that hard with high Aetherpool, I can do so consistently, and believe me, I'm not a good player.

It does take around 8 hours, but you'd also get maybe a few drops on the way to 100 too. Realistically, it took me all of 4 days, during evening hours after work, to get the required drops, and I needed 30, as I was doing two relics at once. That's not a heavy grind. HoH took me over a week for comparison.

But yes, assuming the player never bothered with PoTD beforehand, I can understand in such a case it would become a mountain to climb.

Edit: Maybe they could add a few dungeons to farm instead, same as the HoH step.

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

Honestly, I feel like the books from ARR are a good format for relics. They have you do a variety of content, even some open world content, in exchange for progress towards your relic. The number of books it has you complete is a little too much and as a result you do end up repeating a lot of things.

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The entire ARR relic as it is today is a good format. I'm doing them right now for several jobs. It's taking me a few weeks per job, and someone made a Youtube video of them grinding it in under 24 hours. It's a perfect amount of time investment imo. That would be 17 days to grind 17 full relic quests non-stop without sleep or around 8 months if going at my pace. Sadly, there aren't 17 different ARR relics so I'll be done much sooner. The number of books could be reduced, though.

You can collect tomestones, craft, grind fates (not a big grind anymore!), do maps and beast tribes, do dungeons and trials, light farm, attach materia, desynth and do the books you mentioned that contain specific levequest and enemy objects. That's a lot of variety. When completing subsequent relics you can gain light or do book-dungeons at the same time as farming dungeon drops for another job. You can also gain light while you do maps to get drops for an earlier stage.

I've been getting my EW relics by dumping the excess tomes I get from hunts. That's all. Extremely disappointing and boring.

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Originally Posted by Erzaa

Alright, fair enough. I'll concede getting the required Aetherpool takes time, if the players hadn't already ran PoTD by the time they got to Bozja.

Still, getting to 150 isn't that hard with high Aetherpool, I can do so consistently, and believe me, I'm not a good player.

It does take around 8 hours, but you'd also get maybe a few drops on the way to 100 too. Realistically, it took me all of 4 days, during evening hours after work, to get the required drops, and I needed 30, as I was doing two relics at once. That's not a heavy grind. HoH took me over a week for comparison.

But yes, assuming the player never bothered with PoTD beforehand, I can understand in such a case it would become a mountain to climb.

Edit: Maybe they could add a few dungeons to farm instead, same as the HoH step.

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The concern is more just getting the Aetherpool in the first place. Putting it as a guaranteed drop from PotD just encourages people to actually participate in the content. It's utterly disgusting doing Palace these days from absolute scratch for the general player, regardless of the level you actually decide to start doing PotD. The point is you attach guaranteed drop rate to incentivize people actually doing the content more, and if so desired you could have it wherein, Floor 51-60 is guaranteed 1, and then 2 for completing floors 91-100, with 1 per each set of floors 100+. Doing the floors is easy until 170+, but that isn't the point, nor is that the issue, it's the required effort to get to the point where you can do that which needs to be factored in.

It's better to have people doing the content, even if the goal is slightly watered-down to the "Lul just gimme an artefact in 10 minutes plz", as you say - Especially when the relic is from an older expansion in the first place - Than it is to not having them do it at all, and by this I am referring to the number of people that engage with PotD where general players are most likely to also see benefits from approaching it like this.

As it stands, I would argue from their approach to relics, this is one of the very few where it has gone backwards. e.g., they've typically nerfed relics to compensate for the fact they won't be the relevant content, even if people still do engage with them. In this case, they've left it completely unchanged, and has only resulted in it being more tedious than it previously was.

Besides, doing it this way has cascaded benefits for other groups of players as opposed to just those doing the relic itself. Sorry for all the edits, I could only quickly write down notes, and edit them along the way.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

The concern is more just getting the Aetherpool in the first place.

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Yes I understand this argument. Getting Aetherpool is a long grind.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

Putting it as a guaranteed drop from PotD just encourages people to actually participate in the content. It's utterly disgusting doing Palace these days from absolute scratch for the general player, regardless of the level you actually decide to start doing PotD.

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I disagree with this. PotD is optional content for players who enjoy it. It's completely soloable from scratch, albeit slower. With a duo, it becomes a cinch. If people want to engage with the content, it's there to engage with.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

The point is you attach guaranteed drop rate to incentivize people actually doing the content more, and if so desired you could have it wherein, Floor 51-60 is guaranteed 1, and then 2 for completing floors 91-100, with 1 per each set of floors 100+. Doing the floors is easy until 170+, but that isn't the point, nor is that the issue, it's the required effort to get to the point where you can do that which needs to be factored in.

It's better to have people doing the content, even if the goal is slightly watered-down to the "Lul just gimme an artefact in 10 minutes plz", as you say - Especially when the relic is from an older expansion in the first place - Than it is to not having them do it at all, and by this I am referring to the number of people that engage with PotD where general players are most likely to also see benefits from approaching it like this.

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So, let me see if I understand this right... A player gets Aetherpool at around +50/+50 or so, 51-60 becomes a joke, then you give these players a guaranteed 1 drop each time they run those floors, they'll complete the farm for the 15 artifacts in a few hours and then? What's their incentive to continue engaging with it afterwards?

This isn't about being snarky with

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

"Lul just gimme an artefact in 10 minutes plz"

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It's what's going to happen. If a player wants to engage with PotD while farming artifacts, actually climbing the floors will net them the artifacts and a very good rate.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

As it stands, I would argue from their approach to relics, this is one of the very few where it has gone backwards. e.g., they've typically nerfed relics to compensate for the fact they won't be the relevant content, even if people still do engage with them. In this case, they've left it completely unchanged, and has only resulted in it being more tedious than it previously was.

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And I'm confused here, is grinding good or not good? According to all these forum posts, grinding for causality tomes is bad, because they're given so readily, making the relic too easy to get. But now, the argument is that grinding PotD, the way it was intended, to get the relic step done is tedious?

If you started to farm an Endwalker relic today, with 0 causality tomes, it would take about 2 days to get enough causality tomes to get your first stage. If you started the PotD farm today for 15 artifacts (assuming maxed Aetherpool), it would take about 2 days (maybe even less), to complete this step. Seems like they're on par as to how long they take. So what's the reasoning for making the Endwalker relics harder to get, but then make the Bozja relics easier to get?

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

they've typically nerfed relics to compensate for the fact they won't be the relevant content

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Have they though? I mean, you could make that argument for ARR and HW maybe, but is SB really nerfed? Eureka is still a massive grind, arguably much longer than Bozja.

And, as it stands, they could just add dungeons to farm for artifacts, in addition to PotD, so why not just do that? If your point is that players should engage with PotD, then why are there dungeons attached as well as HoH to the next step? Seems like, that would take away engagement from HoH to me. So are you arguing that there shouldn't be any dungeons included as options in the HoH step?

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Originally Posted by Erzaa

Yes I understand this argument. Getting Aetherpool is a long grind.
I disagree with this. PotD is optional content for players who enjoy it. It's completely soloable from scratch, albeit slower. With a duo, it becomes a cinch. If people want to engage with the content, it's there to engage with.

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Yes it is this does not, however, mean that you neglect trying to funnel some or a lot of players into doing or trying the content. Personally, if it takes upwards an hour to get into a queue with the high probability of needing to cycle a given set of floors multiple times because the game elected to not give sufficient amount of Aetherpool. – Then I see that as somewhat of an issue. If people cannot get past that initial hurdle of farming Aetherpool without essentially being told to do it all solo, then you’re likely to experience players that may like the content, otherwise dropping it because of frankly poor support for it.

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So, let me see if I understand this right... A player gets Aetherpool at around +50/+50 or so, 51-60 becomes a joke, then you give these players a guaranteed 1 drop each time they run those floors, they'll complete the farm for the 15 artifacts in a few hours and then? What's their incentive to continue engaging with it afterwards?

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This I would actually concede on, however I think having it guaranteed at 50, then guaranteed 2 at 100, with a further 1 per set of ten floors for 100+ would be an appropriate accommodation in this case.
You also need to consider the simple fact there are always people doing relics. Over a decade later, tonnes of people still do ARR relics. Over 5 years later – People are still doing Eureka relics, and arguably has some of the best shelf life of any given content.

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And I'm confused here, is grinding good or not good? According to all these forum posts, grinding for causality tomes is bad, because they're given so readily, making the relic too easy to get. But now, the argument is that grinding PotD, the way it was intended, to get the relic step done is tedious?

If you started to farm an Endwalker relic today, with 0 causality tomes, it would take about 2 days to get enough causality tomes to get your first stage. If you started the PotD farm today for 15 artifacts (assuming maxed Aetherpool), it would take about 2 days (maybe even less), to complete this step. Seems like they're on par as to how long they take. So what's the reasoning for making the Endwalker relics harder to get, but then make the Bozja relics easier to get?

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Yes, it is bad, and they are given it bountifully, and even more so under the premise that people were already doing the content which offers it anyway. My point was that relative to how the content was, it is more tedious to progress that given step. – The emphasis on more.

Your calculation wrests under the expectation that the only content people are engaging with in order to progress the relic is roulettes. If you are doing hunts, and if you are engaging with hunts even semi-actively then you progress an entire relic in 2 days, not just 1 step, and this is from scratch. On the other hand I could do a quick hunt calculation. Let's say you do hunts, there's 12 hunts, you have 8 servers, and each hunt gives 20 tomes, that's 240 per 12 hunts, which is 1 server. Multiply this across 8 servers, you then have 1920 tomes for a complete set of trains. Each A-Rank takes 4-6 hours to respawn, give a tiny bit of leeway for the train to be scouted. That's already 1920, and this doesn't factor in ARR/HW morning trains, or the occasional SB and ShB trains which give a further up-to 120, in between downtimes you can also do your roulettes. They aren't even remotely on par LOL

The reason why Endwalker relics should be harder to get, but the Bozjan relics easier? Well I don’t know – Maybe because for all intents and purposes outside of glamour, the Bozjan relic is near enough entirely irrelevant. Endwalker on the other hand is the current best weapon. Granted, it is the contrary in that Endwalker relics take less time to get than you apparently took to progress 1 step, and that is just a fact.

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Have they though? I mean, you could make that argument for ARR and HW maybe, but is SB really nerfed? Eureka is still a massive grind, arguably much longer than Bozja.

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Nah you an unequivocally say they all have been nerfed. Eureka takes maybe 4 days to progress a relic from start to finish, and arguably currently I would say it is still less of a grind than Bozjan. Why HW and SB? Well..
HW to my knowledge went from having, what? 3 Luminary Crystals per zone, in addition to the abysmal drop rate – To only needing I believe 1 per zone, on top of a significantly increased drop rate.
The fact all of it is dungeons, trials, etc., means it benefitted indirectly from undersized. Previously, it was what? Farm A1N, and Brayflox on bonus… Now you just farm A5S or A9S, and the game basically hands out light like candy, because you know… Level 60 isn’t exactly threatening to Level 90s

SB? The relics for Pagos were nerfed into oblivion. Vitiated light increased dramatically, and I mean dramatically. Then the crystal yield was doubled on those in something like 4.57, then you had the nerfs to the required level to attune to specific aetherytes across the zones. This made traversing a lot easier, and then the echo buff just overall made it significantly easier on top of how it was. Pazuzu would take people out in troves, now he’s barely a threat, as are the monsters needed to spawn him, and anyone else in Eureka. I don’t have a strong recollection of Anemos, Pyros, nor Hydatos aside from those.

So, absolutely yes HW and SB were absolutely, unequivocally, definitively nerfed.

As for the final point, like I said, because it incentivises more people to actually do PotD, which would probably help more people to actually like it since queues won’t be punishing, or because they wouldn’t need to go through the ordeal of soloing the place on 0AP, and 0 of the tradeable potions. All I did was specify a justification as to why I thought it would be a good idea for that particular step, and beneficial to the overall player base. The subsequent and final step to the relic is an entirely different discussion which doesn’t suffer the same problem as the Augmented Law’s Order weapon, IMO. But if you want to go there, then yes, they could add dungeons, but again, I just think it’s killing more birds with 1 stone to increase or guaranteed the rate on certain floors. The only saving grace with the resistance relics is much of the grind on the other stages is just a 1-time step thing.