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

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Originally Posted by Raikai

Honestly, to me, the only good relic grind was the Stormblood's one, because it had 4 whole zones dedicated to it and you could only do there, and although it was just as grindy, it was a more interesting grind.

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But even this is hindsight bias because people *HATED* Eureka when released.

To me, the relic has always been more about making the world feel more fleshed out than it actually was.

Say what you will about the past relics, making you tirelessly run X Dungeon or do Y Fate for a drop/book completion/light farm/whatever but at least you had a reason to do content. We all complain about getting nothing but CT raids all the damn time but there's virtually no reason to do any of the other raids. However, when the Bozja relic required doing Mhach and Ivalice raids, those started showing up much more frequently in Alliance roulette. It offered actual variety. For Fates, BLU mage actually got to be used for something outside of the 1 patch per expansion that people take it out of cold storage for to see the light of day again. Same thing with running old Dungeons like AV or the Antitower. While that was only true for the Bozja relic, it was a welcome change of pace to the normal day to day of roulette spam. It was nice seeing old content with the community being there alongside one other, doing the same fates and whatnot.

Now the most the community does together is Hunt Trains and while still a nice activity from time to time, right now, it feels like it's the ONLY activity because of being the far and away most effective means of getting tombstones, other than roulettes, which means there's hardly any reason to even leave whatever city you fancy. You could park yourself at Limsa or any other city, do your roulettes and then sign off again. You'll get your relic in 3-4 days, assuming you're doing even half of the Roulettes on a Level 90 character.

Would it have killed them to at least make the other EW content relevant to the Relic in some capacity? Let me trade in Potshards from Variant Dungeons for a Meteor, or some Island Scripts, or a random drop from Eureka Orthos bags as well as the Tombstone purchase.

I wonder if the people that actually like this relic are actually even playing the game. Hell, I saw someone say the reason they like this relic is because it gives them more time to play FIFA. That's the crowd this relic is for? People that don't even play the game? That doesn't really seem like a sustainable demographic to cater to for an MMO.

Idk, I just feel like the journey to getting the relic was just as important as the relic itself and that's been lost with this Tombstone weapon.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

Hell, I saw someone say the reason they like this relic is because it gives them more time to play FIFA. That's the crowd this relic is for? People that don't even play the game? At doesn't really seem like a sustainable demographic to cater to for an MMO.

Idk, I just feel like the journey to getting the relic was just as important as the relic itself and that's been lost with this Tombstone weapon.

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I would like to touch base on this a bit more as I don't think this is even an FFXIV or MMO exclusive problem. It dawned on me a while ago that many video games seem to be adapting to this pick up, play, and move on mentality. At the risk of possibly going off topic a bit, I noticed that the concept of unlockables in video games is dwindling. The reason you might ask, "People don't have time to play video games like they used to". So new games tend to just give most of it their meat at the start of the game or make the process relatively quick. How this relates to FFXIV and the relic weapon? Well, there is just no sense of journey in any of these games anymore. I mention this because it really feels like one of those, the rabbit hole extends beyond just the scoop of this game. I don't know when it happened, I don't know why it happened. Suddenly people are way more hyper casual, have a lower attention span, and just simply do not have the time to play video games. Doing anything that's considered a "Grind" people struggle to fit into their daily lives if they aren't living on the game. It probably doesn't help that this game has it's self-convinced that glamour is the true endgame so many more people don't tend to care about these grindy parts of the game as a result. Honestly, I don't even really know what demographic they are trying to aim towards anymore. Besides new players. But yeah, the feeling of community is basically absent unless you join one of the magnitude of community discords. Which are often discussing other games or topics instead of this game.

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Originally Posted by Nav_Fae

I would like to touch base on this a bit more as I don't think this is even an FFXIV or MMO exclusive problem. It dawned on me a while ago that many video games seem to be adapting to this pick up, play, and move on mentality. At the risk of possibly going off topic a bit, I noticed that the concept of unlockables in video games is dwindling. The reason you might ask, "People don't have time to play video games like they used to". So new games tend to just give most of it their meat at the start of the game or make the process relatively quick. How this relates to FFXIV and the relic weapon? Well, there is just no sense of journey in any of these games anymore. I mention this because it really feels like one of those, the rabbit hole extends beyond just the scoop of this game. I don't know when it happened, I don't know why it happened. Suddenly people are way more hyper casual, have a lower attention span, and just simply do not have the time to play video games. Doing anything that's considered a "Grind" people struggle to fit into their daily lives if they aren't living on the game. It probably doesn't help that this game has it's self-convinced that glamour is the true endgame so many more people don't tend to care about these grindy parts of the game as a result. Honestly, I don't even really know what demographic they are trying to aim towards anymore. Besides new players. But yeah, the feeling of community is basically absent unless you join one of the magnitude of community discords. Which are often discussing other games or topics instead of this game.

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This is unfortunately state of gaming nowadays. Short term rewards, cheap dopamine shots, and sense of accomplishment that can be only acquired by reaching high ranks in competitive modes. There are no long term goals anymore. You don't need to look further than Overwatch 2, which removed levels and progression for no reason whatsoever, which were present in Overwatch 1. Or other games which work on seasonal basis.

If you look at most popular games, nearly all of them are like that - you just queue in, have quick dopamine shot, end match, rinse and repeat. It's shallow entertainment. To be clear, this is fine and has been present since gaming started, but this doesn't mean you should put this in every game, especially not in MMORPGs, which are known for exact opposite.

It's so sad to see players advocating for this. There are 10s of extremely popular games like that, why won't people play those instead? They're all better at those short dopamine boosts anyway. Why can't MMORPGs stay true to it's roots? At the very least, let us keep the last bastion of this design, which were relics. You can already get most of the stuff you could possibly want in less than a day, why can't at least relics be something more worthy, grindy, and meaningful?

In the early days of gaming, arcades were purposely designed to be difficult to the gamer so that they kept injecting tokens into the machine. Nowadays, games are designed to be easy so you can go purchase another game entirely faster. Games aren't designed to last anymore. They want you to get bored so you can buy another game (preferably one of their products) sooner. If games are made to last, then it creates a backlog for the gamer, and they may not even buy those other games at all because they are still playing something else. Unlockables were removed in favor of DLC. It's the new marketing strategy. They WANT you to be bored so you spend your money on more games or DLC.

I did the ARR relic relatively recently and grinding light is not the only thing you do for that relic. There are the books which have you doing specific FATEs, dungeons, and killing overworld mobs which while the number of them is ridiculous the concept of I actually enjoy. There was also the step where you filled a scroll with materia, which if I remember right set the substats of the relic at that time, or that might have been another step, it was just before EW launched that I did this. Anyway the point being dungeon runs were not the only thing you did to complete that relic, and it wasn't during HW either.

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Originally Posted by Deo14

You don't need to look further than Overwatch 2, which removed levels and progression for no reason whatsoever, which were present in Overwatch 1.

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Progression in Overwatch 1, outside of Ranked mode SR, was solely cosmetic. One of the larger reasons for smurfing was literally just to shed the tacky/garish borders and avoid the stigma of "being a plat-border in plat" if playing the game casually.

In Overwatch 1, each time you "leveled up" you got 4 random rewards, with only the slimmest chance of them not being crap. Most of the best skins were also only available during seasonal events, available once per year, or occasionally during a specific other event that'd briefly unlock all seasonal skins, but such would also be horribly 'overpriced' if purchased outright instead of gained as random rewards.

In Overwatch 2, each time you "leveled up" your Battle Pass, you'd get an exact reward that you knew from the start you'd get at that level, with anything not crap being spaced out very infrequently and the majority of crap rewards (and a significant but not overwhelming number of the good ones) being available only to Battle Pass holders, which you could usually afford by having done the previous Battle Pass. If you don't get it during the Battle Pass, it's available only for ridiculous prices (relative to the grind during the BP that granted it).

Neither was/is good, but OW2 did not significantly remove a preexisting structure of progression. It merely traded out general levels and RNG rewards the size of the entire loot table (since you could and would get things you already owned for a pittance in exchange-value) and event-specific skins for BP-specific levels and known rewards among BP-specific skins (with BP seasons lasting far longer than any of the old events).

What was awful was simply the sudden price-inflation on anything from OW1 once the shift was made (RIP anyone who didn't spend all their in-game currency prior) and the new surplus of skins available only via direct purchase (previously limited just to the MVP skins).

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Originally Posted by Nav_Fae

I would like to touch base on this a bit more as I don't think this is even an FFXIV or MMO exclusive problem. It dawned on me a while ago that many video games seem to be adapting to this pick up, play, and move on mentality. At the risk of possibly going off topic a bit, I noticed that the concept of unlockables in video games is dwindling. The reason you might ask, "People don't have time to play video games like they used to". So new games tend to just give most of it their meat at the start of the game or make the process relatively quick. How this relates to FFXIV and the relic weapon? Well, there is just no sense of journey in any of these games anymore.

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There's a significant difference between just making the fun of the game more immediately reachable (such as if each class/job were to reach what felt like a relatively complete kit by level 40, instead of only upon reaching 60 or 70)... and optional grinds, though.

It's not a bad thing, imo, that many MMOs aren't gating the core experience behind as arduous of grinds. Yes, there's a problem when the game lacks the longevity to feel like their sub is worth it, but that's almost always an unrelated issue faced only long after matters of making the game accessible to "hoppers".

Simply put, the first bolded part tends to be relevant only to early progress through a game, and the latter only relevant to optional components of endgame. They're mostly unrelated domains.

(Now, if your example was overly-accelerated leveling or the like making everything feel like a rush to endgame and a waste of everything in prior thereto, then yeah, they'd overlap. But that's a far cry from the likes of Relics.)

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To be clear, I'm with you guys on that the current Relic grind feels lackluster and has some pretty fundamental issues (mostly due to imbalanced reward-efficiency overly trending the community towards only a very narrow band of content).

But, let's not conflate the likes of OW1 borders with an actual progression system (it was merely tangential, an indicator of the number of times one was able to pull the gacha machine lever, with luck still being at least as large a factor in getting one's favorite skins -- OW1's only "progression"), nor making it so a game can reveal its potential even within its first few or dozen hours of play (the end essential for catching those MMO-jumpers) with stifling the ability to have long-term optional goals at endgame.

One reason I could think of, is that they assumed a lot of people hadn't done any hildi at all, so the entire "grind" was gonna be doing the entire questline from ARR to EW.

Imagine being a new player in a year, and then realizing the amount of quests you gotta do to get those relics. That's a lot of work already. I think making them based on Hildi was a big mistake to begin with tho

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Progression in Overwatch 1, outside of Ranked mode SR, was solely cosmetic. One of the larger reasons for smurfing was literally just to shed the tacky/garish borders and avoid the stigma of "being a plat-border in plat" if playing the game casually.

In Overwatch 1, each time you "leveled up" you got 4 random rewards, with only the slimmest chance of them not being crap. Most of the best skins were also only available during seasonal events, available once per year, or occasionally during a specific other event that'd briefly unlock all seasonal skins, but such would also be horribly 'overpriced' if purchased outright instead of gained as random rewards.

In Overwatch 2, each time you "leveled up" your Battle Pass, you'd get an exact reward that you knew from the start you'd get at that level, with anything not crap being spaced out very infrequently and the majority of crap rewards (and a significant but not overwhelming number of the good ones) being available only to Battle Pass holders, which you could usually afford by having done the previous Battle Pass. If you don't get it during the Battle Pass, it's available only for ridiculous prices (relative to the grind during the BP that granted it).

Neither was/is good, but OW2 did not significantly remove a preexisting structure of progression. It merely traded out general levels and RNG rewards the size of the entire loot table (since you could and would get things you already owned for a pittance in exchange-value) and event-specific skins for BP-specific levels and known rewards among BP-specific skins (with BP seasons lasting far longer than any of the old events).

What was awful was simply the sudden price-inflation on anything from OW1 once the shift was made (RIP anyone who didn't spend all their in-game currency prior) and the new surplus of skins available only via direct purchase (previously limited just to the MVP skins).

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Yet even this simple progression is still missed today. I really don't care about some BP bullshit simply because you can buy levels, so you never know if someone actually achieved the level, or if he just outright bought it. I don't even know if you can see other's people levels, and it also resets every season, so it's whatever, it's really hard for me to care about this "progression".

I don't even care about the items in OW2 (or well, in those first 2 seasons that I tried to like that dumpster fire), I did somewhat care about skins in OW1, but having simple level up and being rewarded with a dumb lootbox every now and then still added nice flavour. It also made events interesting, it was simply fun to farm events. There was also bonus lootboxes for doing weekly arcades. Now you get like 60 credits for weeklies, but you need like 1800 for single legendary skin. None of these are some significant progression systems, but it's still nice to look at your account and see big numbers and how many cosmetics have you unlocked. Considering that you cannot just get better equipment in this kind of games, I would say that was somewhat solid system. And I don't know anyone who was actually buying lootboxes, you could get most of the stuff without any MTX, unlike OW2, where you cannot get nearly any skin without opening your wallet, legendary skin takes like half a year to get without paying.

And no, removing levels certainly does classify as significantly removing preexisting structure of progression, along with other major changes.

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Originally Posted by Deo14

Yet even this simple progression is still missed today. I really don't care about some BP bullshit simply because you can buy levels, so you never know if someone actually achieved the level, or if he just outright bought it.

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You... could also buy Lootboxes. Which was the sole thing the OW1 "levels" gave. It was literally a just counter of how many lootboxes you'd gotten in-game without weekly Endorsement rewards, but those Levels' reward was likewise purchasable with real money then, just like the result of BP "Levels" can be purchased with real money now.

I preferred the OW1 model, but they're identically illusory in terms of any indication of 'progression'. The main difference is simply that you tended to get drab generic rewards 85% of the time and cooler thematic FOMO event rewards 15% of the time before, and the availability of generalist skins has since declined far more than the event skins (BPs being those FOMO events now) have increased.

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And no, removing levels certainly does classify as significantly removing preexisting structure of progression, along with other major changes.

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Those levels still exist, though? They're just Season-specific.

Or does Savage progression not exist simply because it's effectively reset each new 'season' (Savage tier)?

They're the same. I say this as someone who played since Beta and preferred OW1. OW2 has the same degree of (or, maintains the same lack of) progression that OW1 had. It was purely cosmetic then, and it's purely cosmetic now; it was --if pure cosmetics could ever warrant the term-- just as 'pay to win' in terms that progression back in OW1 as it is now in OW2.

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Originally Posted by Striker44

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“Making your own relic step” with the least efficient way to grind tomestones isn’t content I’ll say that again, and how am I making her point stronger, I offered 9 ways I’d like to grind a relic considering the prevailing argument around this relic is “do it yourself”, she offered one of those 9 ways as a possibility despite it being so inefficient you would literally have to be forcing yourself to do it at the expense of any other route and then completely ignored the other 8

The anima relics had steps in which you had 8 different options for progressing a particular step and that pulled from all the games content, using roulette tomes as a patchwork “see you can do whatever you want” isn’t content

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

You... could also buy Lootboxes. Which was the sole thing the OW1 "levels" gave. It was literally a just counter of how many lootboxes you'd gotten in-game without weekly Endorsement rewards, but those Levels' reward was likewise purchasable with real money then, just like the result of BP "Levels" can be purchased with real money now.

I preferred the OW1 model, but they're identically illusory in terms of any indication of 'progression'. The main difference is simply that you tended to get drab generic rewards 85% of the time and cooler thematic FOMO event rewards 15% of the time before, and the availability of generalist skins has since declined far more than the event skins (BPs being those FOMO events now) have increased.


Those levels still exist, though? They're just Season-specific.

Or does Savage progression not exist simply because it's effectively reset each new 'season' (Savage tier)?

They're the same. I say this as someone who played since Beta and preferred OW1. OW2 has the same degree of (or, maintains the same lack of) progression that OW1 had. It was purely cosmetic then, and it's purely cosmetic now; it was --if pure cosmetics could ever warrant the term-- just as 'pay to win' in terms that progression back in OW1 as it is now in OW2.

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You could not buy levels, that was second most prominent indicator of you as a player, right after your rank. There was much better form of progression for "f2p" players, because you could get theoretically anything. In OW2, getting skins as f2p is chore and it is impossible to keep up, no matter how much you play. So even if you consider BP as a meaningful progression, this progression is limited to people who bought it (unless you're satisfied with the free leftovers in BP). And yes, it's all illusory, it makes you think you're progressing something when you're not, it's just like EW relics, but at least in OW1's case, it gave a decent illusion of progress. Same cannot be said about OW2 or EW relics.

And obviously it's all cosmetic, what else do you imagine OW could give you?

In the end, OW1 progression isn't masterpiece, but it's still miles ahead of it's pathetic "sequel".

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Originally Posted by Deo14

You could not buy levels, that was second most prominent indicator of you as a player, right after your rank.

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But what was actually being progressed? Your collection of skins. Which, in OW1, you could buy with real money directly or via lootboxes.

We don't look at an XIV raider and think, "Ahh, yes, their hours-played is their real progression, not his ilvl," do we?

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In the end, OW1 progression isn't masterpiece, but it's still miles ahead of it's pathetic "sequel".

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On the whole, agreed. But both allowed you to speed your way towards their actual rewards / progression via direct payment. Neither was a closed economy.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

But what was actually being progressed? Your collection of skins. Which, in OW1, you could buy with real money directly or via lootboxes.

We don't look at an XIV raider and think, "Ahh, yes, their hours-played is their real progression, not his ilvl," do we?


On the whole, agreed. But both allowed you to speed your way towards their actual rewards / progression via direct payment. Neither was a closed economy.

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Your level was being progressed, that by itself is a valuable stat. If you went over some threshold, color of your portrait changed and so on. I could find you some very old reddit posts from early OW1, where people were really satisfied with this simple element and were excited to get these better portraits. You always saw level and player's portraits in the tab screen, whenever you were loading it, etc. That, by itself, is a decent progression, because games like OW simply cannot have much more than this and some cosmetics.

Nothing meaningful was, in essence, being progressed, you're right about that, but what is being progressed in here? You work towards your gear, and in 8 months, you can throw it in a trash. Way you get glam here is different than in OW, but in essence, you just do X, and skin unlocks for you. You get achievements, but you cannot flex your achievement points. Progression is generally just an illusion, just a value game gives to our account for doing X or Y. Only real progression is you getting better, that's about it.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

“Making your own relic step” with the least efficient way to grind tomestones isn’t content I’ll say that again, and how am I making her point stronger, I offered 9 ways I’d like to grind a relic considering the prevailing argument around this relic is “do it yourself”, she offered one of those 9 ways as a possibility despite it being so inefficient you would literally have to be forcing yourself to do it at the expense of any other route and then completely ignored the other 8

The anima relics had steps in which you had 8 different options for progressing a particular step and that pulled from all the games content, using roulette tomes as a patchwork “see you can do whatever you want” isn’t content

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So let's look at the ways you offered:

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

What if I want to earn my relic doing eureka, what about POTD, ocean fishing, PVP, gathering, crafting, beast tribes, variant dungeons, Bozja

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Eureka is the only way to make progress on the Stormblood relic. It would make no sense to tie a second relic to it (not to mention it would create an even larger mess of items in a player's bags than the first one did - I've still got my chocobo saddlebag filled with crystals, etc. I'll never use and keep forgetting to discard).

PotD is already an option for at least one stage of the Bozja weapon (I never finished mine so I don't know if it could be used for multiple stages). If you're thinking of Deep Dungeon in general, Eureka Orthos will reward Causality if you're using a level 90 job. There's an option for you.

Ocean fishing is a gathering activity. Gathering and crafting now have their own relic tools to work on. It makes little sense to use them to earn a relic weapon (even if it had been done in the past) when players now have the relic tools to get.

PvP - has PvP ever been a method for getting a relic weapon completed? I don't PvP so I would automatically tune it out if it was offered as an option. That said, I personally wouldn't have objections if PvP was an option as long as players had non-PvP options to choose.

Tribal quests - unfortunately, Arkasodara rewards Comedy when done on a level 90 job. Even if it was Causality instead of Comedy, it would end up replacing Variant as your least efficient option so it surprises me you'd bring it up.

Bozja - like Eureka, it already has a relic weapon heavily tied to it. It would make no sense to add a second.

To me, the only one out of your list that would make sense to add as an option is PvP. Adding current expansion FATEs could also be an option if they can solve the problems seen with the FATE farming in the early stages of the Resistance weapons.

In general, it makes more sense to me that level cap content would be the preferred source when working on relics. Lower level content frequently had its own role in other relics.

If players want to pursue the most efficient option simply because it's the most efficient instead of because they actually enjoy the content, that's their choice. Nothing says you have to choose the same. Getting a relic isn't a race.

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

So let's look at the ways you offered:


Eureka is the only way to make progress on the Stormblood relic. It would make no sense to tie a second relic to it (not to mention it would create an even larger mess of items in a player's bags than the first one did - I've still got my chocobo saddlebag filled with crystals, etc. I'll never use and keep forgetting to discard).

PotD is already an option for at least one stage of the Bozja weapon (I never finished mine so I don't know if it could be used for multiple stages). If you're thinking of Deep Dungeon in general, Eureka Orthos will reward Causality if you're using a level 90 job. There's an option for you.

Ocean fishing is a gathering activity. Gathering and crafting now have their own relic tools to work on. It makes little sense to use them to earn a relic weapon (even if it had been done in the past) when players now have the relic tools to get.

PvP - has PvP ever been a method for getting a relic weapon completed? I don't PvP so I would automatically tune it out if it was offered as an option. That said, I personally wouldn't have objections if PvP was an option as long as players had non-PvP options to choose.

Tribal quests - unfortunately, Arkasodara rewards Comedy when done on a level 90 job. Even if it was Causality instead of Comedy, it would end up replacing Variant as your least efficient option so it surprises me you'd bring it up.

Bozja - like Eureka, it already has a relic weapon heavily tied to it. It would make no sense to add a second.

To me, the only one out of your list that would make sense to add as an option is PvP. Adding current expansion FATEs could also be an option if they can solve the problems seen with the FATE farming in the early stages of the Resistance weapons.

In general, it makes more sense to me that level cap content would be the preferred source when working on relics. Lower level content frequently had its own role in other relics.

If players want to pursue the most efficient option simply because it's the most efficient instead of because they actually enjoy the content, that's their choice. Nothing says you have to choose the same. Getting a relic isn't a race.

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You heard it here first guys, anytime a method has been used by a previous relic it can no longer be used for a current relic
Your current options for completing this relic now consist of……….variant dungeons

But seriously who cares if a previous relic has used a method, the older relics didn’t give a crap that the even older relics had already used these methods, if they want to sell this relic as “achieve it your way” then give us more than roulettes

The problem with Relics in FF14 is the ethos behind them. As they are, relics effectively serve as semi-disposable 'catchup' gear, whereas other games would maybe have them as prestigious rewards for a demonstration of significant skill (Ultimate Weapons take their place here).

If you want to have them function as 'catchup' gear, then what's the point in locking them behind an obnoxious grind? People will just ignore the content and find other ways to get weapons, and making lower-tier relics better than Savage loot results in the same issues as WoW, with mandatory grinds purely for the sake of it. And if you want them to be 'prestigious', then you'll have to make them worth the grind and eternally relevant for gameplay purposes, which this game isn't built around.

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Originally Posted by ElysiumDragon

The problem with Relics in FF14 is the ethos behind them. As they are, relics effectively serve as semi-disposable 'catchup' gear, whereas other games would maybe have them as prestigious rewards for a demonstration of significant skill (Ultimate Weapons take their place here).

If you want to have them function as 'catchup' gear, then what's the point in locking them behind an obnoxious grind? People will just ignore the content and find other ways to get weapons, and making lower-tier relics better than Savage loot results in the same issues as WoW, with mandatory grinds purely for the sake of it. And if you want them to be 'prestigious', then you'll have to make them worth the grind and eternally relevant for gameplay purposes, which this game isn't built around.

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The relics used to have prestige attached because the grinds were just that long and requires skills from wide swaths of the game, sure it’s not comparable to the prestige of the ultimate weapons but people used to appreciate when you could do a relic on patch because they were long grinds most people weren’t willing to commit to

Seeing someone have a finished first step anima weapon on patch indiciating they either did the grinding for the 18 Fate rewards (which had a disgustingly low drop rate) or turned in a complete zeta relic they completed in ARR was a point you kinda just went “wow they out a lot of effort into grinding that relic”

As for use beyond the current patch there is a reason why people continue to collect anima relics, 14 maintains their use via glam, which is fine

My take on the relics so far is, honestly, I miss having all of my friends get on and work together to get their weapons. That's it really. Now that every step so far is "1500 tomes" they just log in for the new relic step, and then log off. :(

I just want the "everyone go out and do the thing" feeling back to relics.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

You heard it here first guys, anytime a method has been used by a previous relic it can no longer be used for a current relic
Your current options for completing this relic now consist of……….variant dungeons

But seriously who cares if a previous relic has used a method, the older relics didn’t give a crap that the even older relics had already used these methods, if they want to sell this relic as “achieve it your way” then give us more than roulettes

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Well, first, that's not what he said. Second, this entire discussion is about the plethora of ways besides roulettes that you can use to achieve these relics your way. What we have here is the definition of a bad-faith poster.

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Originally Posted by Striker44

Well, first, that's not what he said. Second, this entire discussion is about the plethora of ways besides roulettes that you can use to achieve these relics your way. What we have here is the definition of a bad-faith poster.

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He refuted every method I offered by basically saying either “another relic already used it” or “it doesn’t fit with a combat relic” (you know despite older relics using non combat methods) so yes that is pretty much exactly what he said

And yes all the methods besides roulettes we have….checks notes…..variant and EO (let’s ignore they are also the 2 least efficient methods of getting causality tomestones), unfortunately picking to do the aetherfont for x random reason rather than just the expert roulette doesn’t count as 2 seperate pieces of content

So I’m still yet to see this mythical variation people love to preach about

In theory relic quests add content to the game to keep players busy deep into an expansion. You have to actively go out of your way to grind instances/fates/etc. Yeah it’s tedious but you get a cool weapon for it and feel accomplished.

Endwalker relic quests add nothing. No content. All you have to do is log in and spend your tomes. All you need is to do expert semi-regularly which active players already do. At most maybe you do an expert 90 dungeon run or hunt train. I have kept up with four relics just by doing this and running some trains once in a while. Unless you want all the relics or something but almost no one does that.

It’s boring for current players and future players are gonna have to spam MSQ roulette for a mind numbing poetics grind

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Originally Posted by Jonnycbad

Older relic grinds involve steps such as doing dungeons, trials and other duties to farm hundreds of thousands of points of "light" or to awaken mahatmas or whatever. These resources are really just thinly veiled: "do this old content repeatedly for a specific resource". What they did in EW is remove the specific restriction of forcing you to repeat the same duties instead to Tomes, which allow for you to do ANY relevant content.

So previously you had to do 60+ Garuda HM to maximize light. Instead of spamming the same duty, you have the freedom to do any duty and the relic just requires the common currency they all award. It's literally the same difference, they are just not pigeon holing you into only doing dungeons and trials and 24mans, which btw were content that already gave tomes. Instead of making a separate light, it's just tomes. You're still doing duties for them, you just get to pick your poison.

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I just completed the next step in my Manderville Weapon yesterday and was thinking this exact thing. The only difference really is it isn't requiring FATEs, too. Only if they added a bicolor gem requirement. Or made it so gems could purchase the items, too. Then it'd be pretty much identical. But yeah. Agree.

People once again do the atma/anima relics in EW then act like they are same as the EW relics

Fine, its ARR relics if you only had to grind a 4th or so of the light. But still, its the same principles at play. Grind content from content list, get currency, turn in currency to get item, turn in item to get weapon.

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Originally Posted by Alleluia

Fine, its ARR relics if you only had to grind a 4th or so of the light. But still, its the same principles at play. Grind content from content list, get currency, turn in currency to get item, turn in item to get weapon.

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No I mean the relics are not remotely like they are now

Anima used to have a step that had 7 different options to obtain the requisite the options whos options included

-regular dungeons
-dematerialising
-crafting
-gathering
-extreme trials
-fates
-beast tribe quests

Saying it’s the same thing because it’s “gathering currency from a list then turn it in for a weapon” is just completely disingenuous as a comparison

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

No I mean the relics are not remotely like they are now

Anima used to have a step that had 7 different options to obtain the requisite the options whos options included

-regular dungeons
-dematerialising
-crafting
-gathering
-extreme trials
-fates
-beast tribe quests

Saying it’s the same thing because it’s “gathering currency from a list then turn it in for a weapon” is just completely disingenuous as a comparison

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Yeah, the content options are definitely streamed down, given that list. Though I imagine there was a "optimal" way to do it among those methods that people who cared about being optimal (which presumably is a large chunk of the people who would take on a current content weapon grind like Anima) would almost always choose to use? Maybe the devs' numbers showed that. If the split was such that there might as well not have been multiple options cus only one path was chosen most of the time, I can understand why they've narrowed down the options to "duties that give x currency".

Going into total Inner Release unhinged mode, so just going to HB this so people can skip past it if they're not in the mood, but seriously, this entire conversation is making me feel like I'm in some kind of Twilight Zone or Black Mirror episode

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Originally Posted by Alleluia

If the split was such that there might as well not have been multiple options cus only one path was chosen most of the time, I can understand why they've narrowed down the options to "duties that give x currency".

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This kind of reductive reasoning is a mind-numbing way to design games and, unironically, will slowly lead to games with no gameplay whatsoever, where you just log in to press a button and be told you got a reward.

The entire. Point. Of. A. "Game". Is. That. There. Are. Rules. To. Follow. If. You. Want. To. Win.

This whole, "BUT YOU CAN MAKE YOUR OWN RLeIC GRIDN ♥ " non-argument is just so excruciating to keep reading reformulated over and over again.

The point of prior Relic designs was that there were arbitrary constraints and rules which you, as a player, needed to navigate and solve — usually completely-different ones at each step of the process.

Entire tactics and strategies for not just a single stage, but the way that you personally would navigate all of the stages, would be developed.

There was actual discussion involved in figuring out not just how the steps worked, but the best way to complete them.

The same reason that every single boss encounter is not identical in design, even if you inevitably end up formulating a strategy for all of them.

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"But owieeeee, real Relic grinds are hard, and not instant, and I don't like it"

Yes. That was the point. Relics were originally something done because you wanted to navigate the logistical challenge of completing it in exchange for the stats and glamour. It was a game in and of itself. It was something that you built and worked towards. It was a game activity.

"Now everyone gets a relic ~ Haha hilbirand so funy he upside down again and gObert is naked XD" — This is not a Relic. This is just a quest reward. EW does not have a "Relic", in the sense as previously defined by the game.

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"Wow, I noticed that in basketball, the ball always ends up going through that metal circle thing. Why don't we just remove most of the court, most of the players, and just put two metal circle things next to each other? Because all anyone ever does is approach the metal circle things, anyway!"

"...Wait, also, I noticed that sometimes the ball misses the metal circle thing, and people get frustrated. And then teams just come up with OpTiMaL PaThS for getting the ball into the metal circle!"

"Sooooo... why don't we just lower the height of the metal circle to, say, 1 meter! And also make it... hm... 5 — no! TEN — times larger in diameter—!"

"...Because, like... people are just going to put the ball in the metal circle either way, right...?"

" ~ Haha wow ♥ I love this version of basketball so much more ♥ I can put the ball in the metal circle in like 10 seconds ♥ and then still have time to catch my favorite [redacted] on [redacted] ♥"

———————————

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Originally Posted by Confusing people

Nooooo, but see, I like this kind of Relic so much more, because I don't have to do all those things that old Relics made me do, which I hated doing!

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PERHAPS RELICS WEREN'T THE CORRECT CONTENT FOR YOUR TASTES, AND YOU SHOULD HAVE JUST ADMITTED THAT TO YOURSELF AND NOT PURSUED THEM.

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Originally Posted by Confusing people

Ahhhh I enjoy DSR so much more now that they reduced it to the same difficulty as Expert Dungeons! Thanks SE! Now I finally like Ultimates!

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You basically just want a log-in reward?

Great. Then you can have one.

But why does it have to come at the cost of an entirely different kind of content that other people actually enjoyed working through ?

SE's reaction to everything is, "We noticed some people didn't like X. Therefore, we eradicated X with a nuclear warhead, and built this shallow drinking-bird atop its smoldering corpse."

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Originally Posted by ZephyrMenodora

I actually liked the first part of ARR honestly. A quest where you are actually looking for an ancient relic as the base of your Relic, maybe get a crafter's help for refining, and I'm pretty sure then the Chimera raid fight.

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I do miss this from back in ARR. If I recall correctly, the relics were a bit more individualized in terms of story whereas nowadays they all fall within a general "we are going to craft [WEAPON], warrior of light!" format. I realize that making job-specific narratives for the relics is more cumbersome given the number of jobs we have nowadays but I miss that nonetheless.

My issue with the relic is that it has no longer become something I want to do because now I will just get it passively by playing the game so it is now content that doesn't matter.


I used to love doing books, atmas and light farming. Especially the Atmas. People always talk a load of wet over Atmas but you know what happened with that phase? You could go to practically any ARR zone and see it booming with life. The MMO game felt like an MMO game because people weren't stuck in cities, they were out adventuring. Be honest, when's the last time you went to a zone from any of the expansions and seen loads of lads just pumping away at fates or flying and running about. You're practically playing Hans Solo when you are out and about.

Same goes for the roulettes, 24mans, Trials, Dungeons, they used to be jammed packed with players all working away to the same end. Sure most people would go for the fastest route [Garuda/Sycus ect] but make no mistake, all of those trials, dungeons and 24 man raids were absolutely popping off. Queues were fast, you met loads of new players each time and everyone was excited to get their new shiny weapon.

Now it's just, ah I got 1500 tomes, I better spend them before I cap, ack sure I'll just buy 3 meteorites. Obviously that for a lot of people is nice, they don't feel obligated to grind anything and they'll just get it. I'm just saying....why not give us both options.....you could grind the 24man and lesser known raids to help them pop more often for people and speed up your relic or you could just take your time.

I feel like the world personally suffers from not actively having people out in the zones making it look lively.

I know it’s a relic weapon, but I wish I could still earn tomestones while leveling other jobs.

If you have a level 90, they could either let you choose your reward, or just reduce the number of tomestones you gain.

Maybe what I "miss" (EW is the first expac where I've had the opportunity to work on a relic when it was current) are steps where you have to be on the job the weapon is for. That alone would help distinguish them from ye olde tomestone currency-du-jour vendor weapons.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

“Making your own relic step” with the least efficient way to grind tomestones isn’t content I’ll say that again, and how am I making her point stronger, I offered 9 ways I’d like to grind a relic considering the prevailing argument around this relic is “do it yourself”, she offered one of those 9 ways as a possibility despite it being so inefficient you would literally have to be forcing yourself to do it at the expense of any other route and then completely ignored the other 8

The anima relics had steps in which you had 8 different options for progressing a particular step and that pulled from all the games content, using roulette tomes as a patchwork “see you can do whatever you want” isn’t content

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Isn't it though? You're just doing some repetitive task -X- amount of times, literally the exact same thing so many steps from old relics required. The only thing different from choosing to grind However many runs of a variant dungeon for an EW relic vs grinding Deluburum 15 times is Square's authoritative voice saying you're not allowed to have fun any other way on the latter and must do it his way. At the end of the day, you're still doing some sort of repetitive task -x- number of times.

I also like how you used HW relics as an example when back in their prime and I did them on content before any nerfs to each steps, several steps had farming a sole instance for poetics as the infinite easier choice compared to all others they may as well have been obsolete. Nothing came close to spamming ARF 50+ times. You could easily mirror that experience in today's relic by the exact same Variant grind I mentioned, do a single instance x amount of times for y resource. Also plenty of the HW steps only had tome farming as an option, what are you on about? (Umbrites, 5x aether oils, Archaic enchanted ink) or as an insanely more efficient option compared to how else you could get the items in question (Pneumite, unidentified items)

You gave a list of options you'd want to do besides roulettes, I told you quite easily how you could turn one of said options into a full blown relic grind if you so chose. You could also grind PVP till you have 1500 tomes since they give tomes when playing at 90. Get a relic by 100 floor clearing Eureka Orthos three-four times. You could exclusively get the tomes from helping people get their first time clears of savages in PF for the hardest relic ever obtained.

People create self-imposed challenges for themselves all the time in video games, it's nothing new. If you need Yoshi-P's absolute authoritative voice telling you to go spam Crystal tower 15 times or grind FATEs till your eyes bleed, then enjoy your roulettes. before the current step, I had 4 amazing manderville relics and have done a grand total of like, 5 roulettes since 6.3. You want a grind? go out and reach it. if you want to complain about the lack of that authoritative voice telling you "no fun allowed do it this way", have fun, I'll be in the middle of getting another relic after I finish this next Eureka Orthos solo run.

As I said before, it's why I laugh at half these complaints. Making your own self imposed challenges before you allow yourself to buy a relic is such a trivial thing to do for anyone with a slight bit of restraint that's wanting grinds. You can make the exact relic grind you want, you just don't have Square's voice telling you you can't anymore.

But I'll just go back to eating my popcorn as I browse these forums for my daily amusement.

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Originally Posted by Daeriion_Aeradiir

People create self-imposed challenges for themselves all the time in video games, it's nothing new.

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If you want to be this reductive, then XIV doesn't need an MSQ — in the old days of MMOs, players were just "characters" who had to invent their own RP and reason for exploring the world. You could do that too, rather than relying on "Yoshi-P's absolute authoritative voice telling you to go help orphans in the Void".

Likewise, XIV doesn't need any structured content at all. The developers can just put mobs in the open world, and it's your responsibility to create your own imaginary motivations for attacking and defeating those mobs.

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At some point, part of what differentiates a "game" or "RPG" from LARP or VRChat is that there's some amount of rules and structured goals that the player is challenged by, and attempts to navigate in response.

And yes, in the sense of structured goals and rules, "You want X item, but it can only be obtained by doing these specific activities" is in fact a different player experience than, "You want X item, and it can be obtained by doing almost anything, so just play the game normally and get X as an incidental consequence".

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Your comparisons for HW neglect aspects like navigating the Crafting stage of the HW Relic (which, at release, was a significant bottleneck, and also made Crafters feel like kingmakers), that accumulating enough of the Tome items or Light was a prolonged and goal-driven process (not completed on login), and that steps like Crystal Sand offered you so many ways to complete it that players were actually creating Pro/Con lists and flowcharts for the different options, and the preferred method of grinding it changed multiple times in response to other game system changes, even long after HW had been left behind as primary content.

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You're also neglecting that "self-imposed challenges" only work when everyone is held to them.

If the Blue Mage Morbol Mount could be obtained by Unsyncing the duties with level 90 friends, would you consider it justified to tell BLU players who find the achievement underwhelming, "Well you can choose to MINE it, so it's your problem for not making the self-imposed challenge that you're looking for".

That something could be more challenging does not empirically make it so, and for a lot(?) / some(?) players, that in turn directly affects how satisfied they actually feel with whatever they're obtaining.

The reality of Endwalker relics is that they released in the 'next expansion' state, after all the nerfs and reductions from materials to tomestones.

After several expansions wherein various iterations where you actually had to do some work to get that feeling of fulfilment after an arduous, time consuming quest that you could either chip away at gradually over time or go ham and grind it to your heart's content... because it was one of, if not the best weapon you can get for your job?
To go from that to welfare relics, with no real grind at all, is just indefensible really no matter how you spin it.