EW Relic Grind is just a streamlined version of ARR/HW Grind

Streamlining doesn't mean it's good, they've essentially streamlined a journey, point of the journey is the experience and a fun you have while doing it. Even if part of the journey has obstacles, it can be fun, so this is not something you should mindlessly streamline, you are effectively removing the meat of the game. Sure, sometimes a little bit of streamlining might be needed, but that's not what they did, they just threw a towel into a ring and gave us the most bland, uncreative, boring way to get a relic.

You know what's streamlined? Old MMORPG leveling. Main source of your xp was simply killing mobs - so you had a choice of killing any mobs in a world within your level. Wow, so much freedom. But guess what, this design has mostly died out and it's very niche nowadays, because it was simply boring, now MMORPGs use combination of quests, dungeons, xp from mobs, dailies, and many other sources. In most of those things, you still pretty much just kill some mobs, so we went from killing any mobs, to killing only the ones game tells us to, so we have significantly less choices. There are also plenty of inconvenient middle men, in form of accepting quests, queueing for dungeons, traveling, and so on. So on paper, this seems worse and much more inconvenient, yet this design has overtaken all major MMORPGs.

Also, Forte has a point, you only realistically get tomes from daily roulette bonuses, and then you just do hunts, since most of other sources of tomes are really disproportionate. I have yet to hear about someone (who isn't a nutcase) farming tomes by spamming regular raids.

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

Yes technically you can get tomestones from roulettes, but only once a day and you still have no control over what duty you actually get.

On top of that you're doing the same thing you've been doing since potentially 10 years, it is beyond stale.


But let's ignore the fact that you're just doing what you've been doing for years for a moment, the OP's entire premise is nonsense.
60 runs of Garuda HM? You could acquire light from almost anywhere, frontlines (there's your pvp for the relic btw), ARR dungeons, HW dungeons, 24man, normal raids, savage raids, trials. In that regard actually nothing has changed.

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You could only get light from specific content for each relic.



For hw it was hw content. Arr content didn't count.

I completely get the point that this gives us the freedom to do the content that we want to do instead of being forced into one type of content or another. I know that was something I disliked about Eureka and to a lesser extent Bozja since you had more options, and even some steps on the older relics. And this is something that was a complaint I remember seeing a lot.

But I did like having some sort of specific checklist. It felt it was earned a bit more that way. I liked casually getting some items for steps through things I was already doing. And then putting some effort in on specific things I may not have been doing for some other steps. So I do hope they keep this quest away from adventure zones in the future (they can still have the zones, just don't tie the relic to it) but structure things a little more so it doesn't feel as much like a free for all.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

Old Relic: Patch Drops.
Unlock quest to gather X Item(s) to upgrade my relic. Spend however long to get items and upgrade.

Manderville Tombstone Weapon: Patch Drops
Unlock quest to upgrade. Buy item instantly and upgrade.

They are not comparable

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False. You still need to gather the Tomestones to upgrade the relic. A more accurate description would be:

"Old Relic: Patch Drops.
Unlock quest to gather X Item(s) to upgrade my relic. Spend however long to get items and upgrade.

Manderville Tombstone (sic) Weapon: Patch Drops
Unlock quest to gather Tomestones. Spend however long to get items and upgrade.

They are very comparable."

Only difference is that for the very first relic upgrade, you might already have some of the tomestones depending on what other content you have done and what you may or may not have already spent those tomestones on. I know I had just hit the threshold and bought the previous step upgrade for my BRD, so when the new quest launched, I only had a handful of tomestones left. I certainly wasn't able to buy the new item "instantly" (heck - it's a couple days later and I still don't have enough to buy it yet). And after the first relic upgrade, every single one of us most definitely is not able to "instantly" do anything. Try being honest next time, even though it doesn't suit your agenda.

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Originally Posted by Striker44

False. You still need to gather the Tomestones to upgrade the relic. A more accurate description would be:.

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I crafted full sets of gear for every single job (Tanks, Healers, Melee, Casters, P.Ranged, Crafters and Gatherers) and still, STILL have tombstones left over to buy the weapon upgrade for the Manderville Weapon on my main job.

In the same time it takes to complete 1-2 weapons of past expansions, you'll have probably completed 10+ of the Manderville Tombstone weapons.

It's not compatable, at all.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

You could only get light from specific content for each relic.



For hw it was hw content. Arr content didn't count.

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You might be totally correct. You can currently gain light for your anima weapon from level 50 ARR dungeons but it is hard to find any info on whether or not that was a thing in 2017 before Stormblood launched.

With respect, OP is incorrect in 2 ways:

First, OP is ignoring all the parts of old relics that weren't doing repeated instanced content. Previous Relics always included FATES; there are no FATES here. Both ARR and Heavensward Relics contain steps where crafting and gathering were among the methods available to progress your Relic. Not here. And there were plenty of steps that required players to do a series of specific dungeons or trials, which explicitly forced variety. These are all meaningful differences.

Second, nobody was ever limited to do the same Trial over and over again; they chose to do that because it was determined to be the optimal solution to acquiring the resource. In that way, it will be no different here: an optimal solution will be found, and that's what most people will do. You've always had the choice to stray from the optimal path if you prefer otherwise.

I will say that in terms of gathering a single resource, tomestones do offer a wide variety of different ways to earn them, and in that way it does allow the possibility for different ways to farm.

But in the end I think that benefit is negated by having 3+ consecutive steps that require gathering the same resource. For most players this isn't going to encourage a variety of play, but rather means that for 3+ consecutive steps of their relic they will be doing the exact same farm. In step 1 they will choose the farm that is most optimal for them, and that's the farm they'll still be doing when they finish step 3.

If you want players to vary their play, you have to incentivize them — or force them — to do it. This was baked into the design of previous Relic quests, but it is unfortunately absent here.

You're basically summing up the issue. Some relic quests seem to be same-ish.
But you know what's sad? Feedback/Criticism about relics exist since years.
And even though FFXIV is running since 10 years and overall 4 Expansions, they still fail to deliver.
This expansion, it feels like... they're not even trying anymore.

Once again people look at what the ARR and HW relics look like today and go “see the EW relics are the same” and obviously have absolutely no idea what those relics were actually like on patch

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

I crafted full sets of gear for every single job (Tanks, Healers, Melee, Casters, P.Ranged, Crafters and Gatherers) and still, STILL have tombstones left over to buy the weapon upgrade for the Manderville Weapon on my main job.

In the same time it takes to complete 1-2 weapons of past expansions, you'll have probably completed 10+ of the Manderville Tombstone weapons.

It's not compatable, at all.

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The only way it is comparable if one resorts to bad-faith logic. If you squint really hard, 4500 tomes is the same as 30k+ poetics, lots of FATEs, hunts, crafting, gathering, even combat levequests, new trials...