Please no more "grind" relic quests before the expansion

All I know is that I have 2 weapons to do with a third in the book stage and I have ran Copperbell mines HM over 30 times, getting closer to 40 and STILL have gotten no drop. Someone at SE is a definite sadist.

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Originally Posted by Kirisu

Fanfest? Duh, what rock have you been living under the last couple of weeks?

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They never mentioned at fanfest that the new jobs would start at level one. They have only mentioned that people will be able to unlock the new jobs almost right away. They have also mentioned that there will be no class associated with the new jobs. Given that the current job quests unlock at 30, it seems unlikely that the new ones would start any lower than that.

It would be incredibly stupid to have the new Jobs start at level 30 :/

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Originally Posted by Nestama

It would be incredibly stupid to have the new Jobs start at level 30 :/

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I agree that it does seem impractical to have the new jobs start at 30.

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Originally Posted by Deathscythe343

They never mentioned at fanfest that the new jobs would start at level one. They have only mentioned that people will be able to unlock the new jobs almost right away. They have also mentioned that there will be no class associated with the new jobs. Given that the current job quests unlock at 30, it seems unlikely that the new ones would start any lower than that.

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They also don't mentioned that it don't start at level 1.

Don't forget, the current jobs have no level. They are not at lv30 after unlocking them, the classes are.
With no classes, the coming jobs get their own levels, that start with a very high possibility at lv1.

Also, what class do you need at level 30 for unlocking it if no class is needed for the job?

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Originally Posted by Skeith-Adeline

This might sound rude but, it is a way for casual players or persons unable to build a static to obtain powerful weapons outside of the final instance of the coils. If you aren't grinding through the final coil and facing their stupid RNG loot system, then yes, you should have to go through huge grinds, and I feel that the next grind should be great enough to hold players for a while.

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I constantly see this thrown around but it is flat out untrue. Casual players unable to find the time to do coil will NOT have the time to grind a zodiac weapon either. It is MUCH faster to simply get a weapon from a primal or tomestones than it is to grind a zodiac weapon AND those weapon drops are actually better at the time they're released.

The zodiac weapons have almost zero practical use for anyone in the game. They are purely cosmetic for glamour.

As for the current quest line, it will end before the expansion and there will be a new grind starting from scratch in the expansion. Anyone hoping their current zodiac will carry on into the expansion is deluding them self. Expansions are well known as being the ideal time for new players to join a game as they mark a clean start in all progression content. Having a weapon quest carrying on into the expansion requiring hundreds of hours of pre-expansion content grind would be pure stupidity as any new players would be completely screwed.

I'm also expecting that the three new jobs simply won't have zodiac weapons, but instead will just get whatever the new quest is.

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Originally Posted by Alberel

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- Someone mentioned this, and this is honestly the best way to reference the relic; it's a timesink for completionists. This is because of how some of the older steps (which can take a significantly long time [or demand a large amount of commitment/grind] when its not nerfed, such as nexus or atma if it never got touched, and arguably novus with the materia step) doesn't get changed as the questline gets longer. Taking 2-3 months for the current highest step is fine, taking 2-3 months for the 2nd or 5th step (out of 6) isn't for new players in the long run.

-To me as a bard, at least I can take solace in justifying my zodiac grind in the sense that my ironworks bow has very poor stat distributions and isn't worth taking the carbontwine over someone else...

- Zodiac shouldn't be required for the next step of weapons in 3.0, but it should provide some sort of boons for those...well...went through the entire progress of zodiac, like skipping the first step (relic reborn for example).

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Originally Posted by Felis

Also, what class do you need at level 30 for unlocking it if no class is needed for the job?

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It seems likely that the new jobs will be unlocked via the main story. I recall from the Vegas fan fest that the new jobs were going to be significant for the new primals.

Love the relic quest, hope its here to stay. Wish it were harder then it is. Did Atma before the nerf and thought it was easy. Time spent on atma grind 1 month, was a pretty short time. Anybody who has done an epic weapon in Everquest 1 can tell you the relic quest line is easy.

Would love to see an iteration of the relic quest require massive amounts of grind in coil runs. No this is not a troll post. Simply put the relic quest is easy.

Clarification - For the record I respect the opinions of all post in this thread which is why I didn't point out any single person. Instead I choose to explain what I like about it, as well as what I thought about it.

Grinds are okay, the length of the grinds however need some work. You could cut them in half and it would still be acceptably long.

Having a hard grind is ok. But having a grind that is different for everyone? I don't think so. One person that does a dungeon 10x and gets to move on isn't fair to the one that spends 40+ times doing the same thing. At least with books everyone had the same grind, even alex, and lights was fair. This is crazy. I'm cool with doing 50 dungeons each, if that is what SE wants, and expects of EVERYONE. Obviously they want to string people along. That's ok lets remove the RNG and just make everyone do dungeons 50 times each. So they at least know where they are in the process, and removes some of the stress involved.

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Originally Posted by Alberel

Having a weapon quest carrying on into the expansion requiring hundreds of hours of pre-expansion content grind would be pure stupidity as any new players would be completely screwed.

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I could see them having two sets of relic weapon quests beginning 3.0 (new relics and the continuation of the old). I didn't think this way until SE gave the zodiacs the epic Final Fantasy names (Excalibur, Apocalypse, etc.). To me, that was SE signaling that the zodiacs are here to stay. It would seem silly 6 years from now (when we are likely all level 80 or so) to look back and laugh at how weak that level 50 Excalibur sword is. There will be some way to upgrade it - I'm almost positive.

SE can call it a timesink or to keep content alive, cause in the end it won't work.

How I see it the game is currently divided between these three kind of people (talking about relic):
1) People that rush through
2) People that are behind, cause of a break or they're new to the game.
3) The players that literally ignore the relic, because it's just not viable with their playtimes or they just don't care about it anymore.

I'm one of those people that can't put in hours into the game, cause I have more things to do. I really want to get the final relic, but with the amount of time I spend ingame I would be able to do like.... one dungeon have my dailies. So if you look at what you need to do for all of them, and the time it would take me in the end I just gave up on it. To be honest I think that's kind of unfair for the players that want to, but just can't.

I'm OK with the item fetching and the dungeon crawls for Key Items. If the worst part of this is having to buy 3-star HQ stuff, I'll live.

Edited: Looked in Mor Dhona and it's Soldiery tomes for Sacred Spring Water. *whew!* GamerEscape, please update your entries!

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Originally Posted by Hayward

I'm OK with the item fetching and the dungeon crawls for Key Items. If the worst part of this is having to buy 3-star HQ stuff, I'll live.

Edited: Looked in Mor Dhona and it's Soldiery tomes for Sacred Spring Water. *whew!* GamerEscape, please update your entries!

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I doubt anyone will be still OK if 20+ dungeons in a row no item drop...
IMO 6400sol is nothing when I need to repeat many many times those dungeons.. ^^;

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Originally Posted by Donarudo

Anybody who has done an epic weapon in Everquest 1 can tell you the relic quest line is easy.

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It took me less time to get my epic weapon in EQ than it did for me to complete the atma portion of the animus upgrade.

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Originally Posted by Nicobo

I doubt anyone will be still OK if 20+ dungeons in a row no item drop...
IMO 6400sol is nothing when I need to repeat many many times those dungeons.. ^^;

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I did like... x30 SV and x23 Copperbells and I was okay with it. I also did the whole quest twice. Still okay with that. The only thing that bothers me is the pre-nexus and the light farming.

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Originally Posted by Deathscythe343

It took me less time to get my epic weapon in EQ than it did for me to complete the atma portion of the animus upgrade.

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Then my question to you would be when did you complete it. I did my Epic quest in EQ when it was the new shiny thing to do at level 50ish or 55. (current level in eq is 105) It wasn't a quest that could be completed quicker then the Relic quest. Especially considering there was Epic 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, and 2.5. So my guess would be that you completed it sometime at a higher level? Some of the grinds took several months just to get one drop. Example Cleric 1.0 and Paladin 1.0. Not to mention they had requirements (at the time) which required a raid force of 72 people to help you (this was before they downsized raids to 54 people). If you were in a guild that raided that meant you had to wait your turn. So when quoting me, please tell the whole story, because as I stated before. Anybody who has done the Epic quest for weapons in Everquest can tell you that the relic quest line is easy. I will leave you with this last note, if you completed the Epic quest line quicker then the relic questline while it was in its prime then you would have been world first. If that were the case then cool for you. http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=763 (just to give you an idea of (some) of the things you had to do to get this weapon.

As a side note - completing the Epic 1.0 in its prime meant you were already unlocking key zones in Planes of Power, which meant if you had not unlocked these zones you were not doing your Epic until those key progression zones were unlocked. Yes they gated content back then too. Anybody who was trying to get into the Plane of Time during that progression iteration would more then likely be able to tell you how long it took their guilds to clear all the demi gods and Time itself. This extra note I added just to give an idea of why it took many of us a long time to complete our Epics.

Plane of Power progression - had to do stuff like this before you could even get your Epic http://tancidtherogue.com/pop.html

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Originally Posted by Deathscythe343

It took me less time to get my epic weapon in EQ than it did for me to complete the atma portion of the animus upgrade.

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Relic to Zodiac took me ~3 weeks.

EQ 1.0 epic took me a year+ and I was in the top guild on the server who had sole access to PoF for months before another guild cleared Zek for access.

FFXI SAM relic took me almost a year and that was with my LS feeding me bills.

I guess 14's relic grind is considered hard by modern day gamers, but the old dogs are just looking at it and shrugging.

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Originally Posted by Deculture

I guess 14's relic grind is considered hard by modern day gamers, but the old dogs are just looking at it and shrugging.

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Not hard, just really boring because it doesn't introduce anything new (and often requires you to make you spam certain content until I grow to hate it) :/

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Originally Posted by Nestama

Not hard, just really boring because it doesn't introduce anything new (and often requires you to make you spam certain content until I grow to hate it) :/

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True enough, I do think that they're just using the relic questline to inject older content with a constant stream of players in an effort to reduce queue times. Hopefully in Heavensward they push out actual content for the new relics rather than rehashing old content over and over again.

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Originally Posted by Cyrus-Wallace

I did like... x30 SV and x23 Copperbells and I was okay with it. I also did the whole quest twice. Still okay with that. The only thing that bothers me is the pre-nexus and the light farming.

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Light farming is the worst for me given it locks you into one role in order to get that accomplished. I prefer to play multiple roles. I did the quest series twice too with a Lilith Rod and Yoichi's bow to show for it. Some dungeons were a bit tiring but overall I preferred this to some of the other portions of the relic quest. I'm looking forward to finishing my light collecting for my bravura axe and will then start the quest line a 3rd time.

I am calling it now there will be a pay 50k to some npc to catch up type of deal, so new players won't have to do level 50 content to start their relics when the lv60 cap is out.

More likely they'll either scrap the entire 2.0 relic questline for Heavensward or come out with an entirely new one for the expansion while still offering an upgrade path for those that did the 2.0 version (like FFXI did).

This allows players that did the original questline to be able to keep upgrading their current relic while new players will start off on even footing with the start of the new 3.0 relic questline.

No matter how you slice it, there's going to be grinding in the expansion. It's not an MMO if there's no grind.

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Originally Posted by NoahArks

SE can call it a timesink or to keep content alive, cause in the end it won't work.

How I see it the game is currently divided between these three kind of people (talking about relic):
1) People that rush through
2) People that are behind, cause of a break or they're new to the game.
3) The players that literally ignore the relic, because it's just not viable with their playtimes or they just don't care about it anymore.

I'm one of those people that can't put in hours into the game, cause I have more things to do. I really want to get the final relic, but with the amount of time I spend ingame I would be able to do like.... one dungeon have my dailies. So if you look at what you need to do for all of them, and the time it would take me in the end I just gave up on it. To be honest I think that's kind of unfair for the players that want to, but just can't.

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The Problem is SE is calculating from a player who already have finished all presteps and is doing the new questline the fastest possible. Then they make it so that those players need the whole time (or mostly a lot of the time) before the next upgrade comes and it continues... Because many complains from "normal" players they downscale this setting lets say 1/10 and the result is what we have now with zodiac questline.

I suggest to write a diary of what content you play and when you play, including what happens (disconnect, kicks, wipes, raids...).
That is the only way for us to tell SE how off they are with their time management.

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

Light farming is the worst for me given it locks you into one role in order to get that accomplished. I prefer to play multiple roles. I did the quest series twice too with a Lilith Rod and Yoichi's bow to show for it. Some dungeons were a bit tiring but overall I preferred this to some of the other portions of the relic quest. I'm looking forward to finishing my light collecting for my bravura axe and will then start the quest line a 3rd time.

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Dungeons generate 2 to 3 times more light than primals do. (6/8 for dungeons vs 2/4 for primals) You can pretty much farm both steps at the same time once you've finished your first.

Except dungeons also take 2 to 3 times longer than killing primals.

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Originally Posted by MilesSaintboroguh

Except dungeons also take 2 to 3 times longer than killing primals.

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Which is why you end up working on both stages in parallel.

Farming more than 500 primals and then farming 15 dungeons for a 15% drop chance takes longer than farming less than 334 dungeons for light and 15% drops.

Also the 334 dungeons will net you a couple mill in gil at the same time.

What drops are you talking about? You make it seem as if you can farm Zodiac Dungeon drops before obtaining (in my case) a Lilith Rod.

Nexus Light was easily the most annoying step.

Once the four component item quests (Ponze of Flesh, A Treasured Mother, Method in His Malice, Labor of Love) are unlocked and completed they can be repeated immediately. You do not need to have another weapon at Nexus to access them.

LaylaTsarra was commenting on the fact that she was waiting to max her light on her 3rd relic before starting on the dungeon farming for her 3rd set of zodiac components.

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Originally Posted by Prototype909

This is why the grind is here to stay

1) To keep people subbed with their iconic carrot on a stick quest-line
2) To keep old content populated even in the face of the expansion with all the steps which require you to farm/repeatedly enter old content - especially important since new players may join with the expansion's release (This is the big one, the entire Relic Questline is designed around keeping old content on life support)
3) The entire point of the Relic is to not be a "challenge" but rather a time-sink for players who can't or don't want to raid. In SE's eyes Coil is the "challenge" path and the way the game is arranged supports this conception of the two paths. It's the same reason why Relic has always been inferior to Raid drops until the very end of a patch cycle.

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I say bring it Yoshi-P! Is this all you can conjure? *cackles maniacally*

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Originally Posted by Deculture

More likely they'll either scrap the entire 2.0 relic questline for Heavensward or come out with an entirely new one for the expansion while still offering an upgrade path for those that did the 2.0 version (like FFXI did).

This allows players that did the original questline to be able to keep upgrading their current relic while new players will start off on even footing with the start of the new 3.0 relic questline.

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^this just like how the more or less scrapped 1.0 Relic quest line. They have to ease the relic line or very few would be interested in it.

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Originally Posted by Ultimatecalibur

Once the four component item quests (Ponze of Flesh, A Treasured Mother, Method in His Malice, Labor of Love) are unlocked and completed they can be repeated immediately. You do not need to have another weapon at Nexus to access them.

LaylaTsarra was commenting on the fact that she was waiting to max her light on her 3rd relic before starting on the dungeon farming for her 3rd set of zodiac components.

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Oh that's interesting. I might try activating one quest and get started on it then. I really prefer doing the last quest line that light farm. I'm also working on my Ninja Novus with 36 alex collected thus far.

As long as no more kind of atma type weapon, then it's fine mostly.. Atma is only troll and timesink where the weapon is having the same stat with previous weapon stage but different ilvl.. That's purely sux..

I dont mind grinding to keep me playing.. As long as it gives something from the effort..