These Relics Aren't Relicing

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Don't they serve the purpose of being a relic to obtain easily with tomes then? Why have two?

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Can I ask what the difference is between needing 1500 tomestones per step and needing 18 macguffins from dungeon x, y, or z?

Usually the selection of dungeon is relevant to a story being told, it can help make specific content relevant again/in the future.
The tomestones are immaterial, in the sense that they are not tied to anything. There is no "story" tied to your tomestones. You can just save them up from doing roulettes and get the relic on login when the patch releases.
They are litteraly easier to get than tomestone weapons. getting a relic done is also about the journey, it's a culmination of a quest, an achievment.

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Originally Posted by Xaphire

Can I ask what the difference is between needing 1500 tomestones per step and needing 18 macguffins from dungeon x, y, or z?

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See, here's where it's interesting because... Whilst you can argue there's no difference, but the presentation, and the wider scope of the relic are what matters the most.

Sure, you might be farming 18 McGuffins from some arbitrary dungeon, but then the subsequent step may have you out in the open world farming FATEs, or it may have you participating in 24-man content, or trials.

Now, you can argue that functionally the tomestone steps present this opportunity, but where they missed the mark is that relics for a lot of people ultimately comes down to doing the best possible activities to complete the relic, this is where they missed the mark because developer intentions don't always map or align with community perception, nor how the community interacts with said content in actuality.

Like, for a lot of people they may also be just doing roulettes alone for the capped tomes anyway - At which point completing the relic is just natural, and aren't really being forced, or placed outside of that activity, which some people liked.

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Originally Posted by Xaphire

Can I ask what the difference is between needing 1500 tomestones per step and needing 18 macguffins from dungeon x, y, or z?

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That didn’t answer my question.

At this point, we have seen three "styles" of obtaining relic weapons: Tomestones (6.x), old content-grind (2.x and 3.x) and new content-grind (4.x and 5.x).

Each other the latter two caused significant pushback. New content-grind was hated by those who didn't want to do that specific content and saw the alternatives provided as insufficient (which considering some content remained mandatory, they were). Old content-grind was hated by those who saw them as tedious, boring and way too long (which they also were). The current state of relic grind was perhaps inevitable in the face of the feedback Square continuously received.

Now going back to either the SB/ShB relic stlye of the ARR/HW relic style still bound to get the people who dislike that specific style of relic grind to be up in arms again (I know I'll be if we ever get another ARR/HW style relic grind, as I loathe it with a vengeance). They probably know this as well, so at most I'd see them refining the formula a bit going foward (unless they decide the pushback against this one was so bad from both sides that they'd rather just anger one of the two groups).

So the question is what Square could do to improve the new "style" of grind? Prevent pre-grinding by tracking it via a separate currency that raises at the same increment as Tomes? Raise the tomestone cost per relic (though at that point they risk having to introduce another inventory-cluttering in-between currency)?

Unsure what they could really do to 'improve the new style of grind'.

I do think that Square really shouldn't forget that not all content must be made for everybody, especially when it's an entirely optional content like relic weapons with an established trademark of being grindy and/or time consuming for the past 4 expansions.

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Originally Posted by Xaphire

I hard-disagree though.

I prefer this method of obtaining relics (which is actually the same as every other iteration, it just lets you choose what thing you're going to grind). And I like the look and effect on the final stage weapons.

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This method is complete bullshit. I've just been redoing Eureka and Bozja and these relics involved work not just hand me 1500 tomes which I can get in running a few EW hunts in a few hours at most. Talk about a lazy way to get a relic this is it. So happy new zones are on the way and that people who want relics will actually have to work for them.

I like what they did for Bozja because that area added more lore to the world and it didn't feel bad at all!

This current way cuts time down, sure. Yet besides Manderville things, I don't feel like it added as much to the lore at large. Bozja sure did, but then again I am terribly focused on story stuff.

But maybe there ought to be a way to meet in the middle.

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Originally Posted by Xaphire

Can I ask what the difference is between needing 1500 tomestones per step and needing 18 macguffins from dungeon x, y, or z?

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If you perceive that there's no difference between "needing 1500 tomestones", and "needing 18 macguffins", than you should just be fine with the original tomestone weapons, no?
Which leads back to the (still unanswered) question from the person you quoted; why do you need two different kinds of tomestone weapons?

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Originally Posted by Nezerius

If you perceive that there's no difference between "needing 1500 tomestones", and "needing 18 macguffins", than you should just be fine with the original tomestone weapons, no?
Which leads back to the (still unanswered) question from the person you quoted; why do you need two different kinds of tomestone weapons?

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Another thing to consider is having two weapons cost the same currency means those weapons are both competing for that currency. Anytime past relic steps might overlap with Tomestone acquisition that was not required for the relic, you’d also be making progress toward a Tomestone weapon alongside the relic rather than in opposition to.

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Originally Posted by Rxvenluvsducks

Yeah, no. These endwalker relics just aren't it. Being a player who's played this game for almost 2 years and tried almost every relic grind, I must say the EW one has been the worst so far. Not only because of how lazy it feels but also because the final stage isn't satisfying to me at all. Firstly, where are the matte/alternative versions? ARR, SB, & SHB all had matte versions. HW had an alternative color version. What went wrong with EW? The 6.45 versions were so damn good in my opinion, and then we went onto the "Beep Boop Omega-Styled Extreme Vibed" final stage relic. I don't get what's the obsession of technological weapons as Relics. They're called 'Relics' for a reason. Grindy, Stages that aren't the same grind all the damn time and pretty unique ones. This just gives omega but at-home vibes. Honestly, I expected much more 'Fantasy' vibes, like the other damn relics. I can see why it's called a Tome Relic as a joke. They better not disappoint for DT, but yet again. This is Square Enix. Gotta listen to all the players and satisfy no one, don't we? Another thing I must question is Why aren't the damn AST cards, SCH & SMN pages, and the MCH box thing never changing. They don't fit the "Technology" vibes at all. I can understand that for a few other weapons but not these. They should've really saved these weapons for the new zone in DT, so that we can have armor that actually looks good with it. Make it make sense.

https://imgur.com/Qt8AIvP

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While I agree it's not fun and it's lazy, the real question is why did SE do this ?
They don't just do this to be intentionally lazy.
From ARR to EW the population has changed drastically.

I think what they're looking at is at least a few things:

• Amount of jobs and the increasing amount of jobs
  
  
• Ease of access
  
  
• Ease of final relic completion
  
  
• Understanding of target demographic

And the relics of the past did have problems:

• ARR's relic was long, at the time expensive, had A LOT of steps and phases.
  
  
• HW's relic was just as long if not longer, especially grindy, and required midcore full parties in some phases. The big draw was that they included the overworld in the grind.
  
  
• SB Eureka, imo the best relic system yet, was an exploratory zone that required group work to complete the relic. While it was fun and a new feature, SE failed to rennovate and rework these zones leaving them now lifeless and as a result largely unable to complete the relic.
  
  
• ShB Bozja is just an uninspired Eureka and the result was the same. A large majority of players will not return to its raids, including BA. Again, good ideas and features. But they fail to maintain and reuse. They waste so much resources.

And here we are, EW. The monkey paw:

• We don't rely on anyone as the DF is always there and always populated and anyone can access it.
  
  
• The currency is a single mode at all steps of the relic phases.
  
  
• We don't have to spend money on anything, which let's be honest when we spend money on relic currency that is controlled by the player base it is often taken advantage of (supply and demand, inflation, etc).
  
  
• We can easily gear most if not all of our classes at a leisurely pace.
  
  
• In future expansions, we don't have to go through the hassle of deserted worlds like Eureka to get relics (this is the biggest thing keeping me from Eureka).

The biggest issue SE has had whenever it comes to all their great ideas like Eureka and Baldesion Annex is that THEY DO NOT REUSE THESE CONTENT. And since HW relic, they have never used the overworld as a source of relic content again. Hello, SE? It's your biggest content.

But, I get it. SE has deemed access and ease much greater in this instance considering the past and their habitat of letting good content depreciate.

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Originally Posted by VirusOnline

snip snip.

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i loved doing erueka and bozja but bozja has one nightmare portion right in the middle: DR

The 10 minute wait for a single party kills momentum, and the only alternative being fuuggin PALACE OF THE DEAD (at 100+) is just as bad

it shoudl have had an alertnative that you got in zadnor, dear god

I don’t really know why DR wasn’t added to the alliance roulette. Yes it’s a very different experience from regular alliance raids, but the difficulty isn’t much different. It’s technically more punishing because you are instant KOed if you get hit twice, but the mechanics aren’t that difficult and it’s very easy to revive players.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

What's wrong with the tomestone weapons?

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Because You can only get 450 tomestone a week. The gate keeping sucks.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I don’t really know why DR wasn’t added to the alliance roulette. Yes it’s a very different experience from regular alliance raids, but the difficulty isn’t much different. It’s technically more punishing because you are instant KOed if you get hit twice, but the mechanics aren’t that difficult and it’s very easy to revive players.

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I have a mixed feeling about adding DR into the roulette. They would probably knock out the Lost Action system which was a huge selling point of the StQ content.

They obviously did not design this relic grind "for" the current veteran players who have already knocked out Eureka and Bozja. They designed it for today's sprouts and our future selves, I think.

I don't like it at this moment, but I'll be happy to go into Dawntrail having actually fully finished one expansion pack's relic grind and not worry about yet another old expac's Field Operations zones.

Having veteran players queue for duty roulettes instead of ducking off to Eureka or Bozja is good for the sprout player base since their duties will pop faster and have players who know what they're doing. That will keep them in the game going into Dawntrail, and when they eventually unlock Endwalker relics they'll be able to earn them passively with poetics instead of going to a dead field op or grinding out fates.

It's better in the long run that they did it this way since otherwise the players grinding for old relics would have been spread out across three field ops instead of just two. As for fates, shb and ew have shared fates/bicolor gemstones to grind, so there's no need to add a relic grind as a motivator.

There's no denying that the current relic grind isn't going to keep vets engaged though. I'll definitely be finished with these relics on my main within like a month, so I'll either need to find something else to do or spend my time in another game.

Maybe they should just allow the explorable zone to let you grind stages and take time to get the relics in DT, while ALSO allowing us to turn in tomes for 3 items and complete the stages that way.

People who want to have fun grinding can do so while still accomplishing their relic. And the rest of us can, you know, do other things.

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Originally Posted by Caesius

They obviously did not design this relic grind "for" the current veteran players who have already knocked out Eureka and Bozja. They designed it for today's sprouts and our future selves, I think.

I don't like it at this moment, but I'll be happy to go into Dawntrail having actually fully finished one expansion pack's relic grind and not worry about yet another old expac's Field Operations zones.

Having veteran players queue for duty roulettes instead of ducking off to Eureka or Bozja is good for the sprout player base since their duties will pop faster and have players who know what they're doing. That will keep them in the game going into Dawntrail, and when they eventually unlock Endwalker relics they'll be able to earn them passively with poetics instead of going to a dead field op or grinding out fates.

It's better in the long run that they did it this way since otherwise the players grinding for old relics would have been spread out across three field ops instead of just two. As for fates, shb and ew have shared fates/bicolor gemstones to grind, so there's no need to add a relic grind as a motivator.

There's no denying that the current relic grind isn't going to keep vets engaged though. I'll definitely be finished with these relics on my main within like a month, so I'll either need to find something else to do or spend my time in another game.

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Yeah it’s so much better designed that I; a paying customer; am doing horribly designed content to better fill the free trial players queues

Honestly stuff the free trial, it’s already overwhelmingly generous, leave something for those of us who actually pay please

I did not claim that it's "better designed" or even a better relic grind compared to previous expacs. All I'm saying is that it's good for newer players that it was done this way, even if I acknowledge that it's very lacking for the veterans itching to grind out another field op zone or 100 fates or 30 alliance raids or 50 eden levis.

Also it's not just the free trial players who benefit but also sprouts in free companies. My FC has some newer players, so myself and other FC vets are actually queuing for roulettes with them now instead of doing our own thing in Bozja/Eureka and leaving the sprouts to just catch up on their own. If a sprout joins an FC but nobody is available to queue into duties with them then it's not going to matter much if that's because everyone is stuck in Zadnor or if they unsubbed due to the lack of a relic grind.

And no, I'm not interested in hearing anyone proudly proclaim that they are in an "ultimate raiders only" FC and therefore couldn't care less about sprout players -- I personally am more than happy to queue roulettes with our sprouts and suffer through Halatali (Hard) together :p

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Originally Posted by 4clubbedace

i loved doing erueka and bozja but bozja has one nightmare portion right in the middle: DR

The 10 minute wait for a single party kills momentum, and the only alternative being fuuggin PALACE OF THE DEAD (at 100+) is just as bad

it shoudl have had an alertnative that you got in zadnor, dear god

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Just to remind everyone here - the 10 minute forced queue was deliberately installed by SE when Endwalker was released. As a safequard for new players to "not wait for a long period of time". Echo buff was supposed to compensate for the lack of players.

And this was one of the worst F-ing change EVER!

Explanations:

For new player:

• After 10 minutes, you get thrown into the DR with a 2-3 poor saps at best (because Bozja raids are kinda dead, amazing future-proofing right here, SE). And if someone will, understandably, nope-out - here goes ~20-50% of your DPS, lmao
• The Echo buffs scaling gets extremely wonky when it comes to party less than 8 players.
• Twice Comes Ruin makes obscene HP from Echo quite pointless. And dying causes damage penalty that, combined with general lack of proper essences, turns the raid into a two hour SLOG! Worst experience ever.

For old player:

• As a smart cookie, they all resorted to using Party Finder (again, good job with future-proofing, SE). But the 10 minute forced timer was taking its toll on a relatively quick 15-20 minute DR speedrun.

In summary:
With one simple change SE managed to ruin the DR both for old and new players. Hell, let them wait for longer amount of time but get a decent 8 player party or get dragged along with a passing-by Party Finder group.

SE really needs to learn how to keep older content relevant (and it applies to Duty Roulette too, by the way). Bozja would not be half as bad if they were peoperly addressing its issues.

And, for Endwalker, SE overcorrected everything and threw relic grind out of the game. Like they often do.

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Originally Posted by Remember_The_Name

Just to remind everyone here - the 10 minute forced queue was deliberately installed by SE when Endwalker was released. As a safequard for new players to "not wait for a long period of time". Echo buff was supposed to compensate for the lack of players.

And this was one of the worst F-ing change EVER!

Explanations:

For new player:

• After 10 minutes, you get thrown into the DR with a 2-3 poor saps at best (because Bozja raids are kinda dead, amazing future-proofing right here, SE). And if someone will, understandably, nope-out - here goes ~20-50% of your DPS, lmao
• The Echo buffs scaling gets extremely wonky when it comes to party less than 8 players.
• Twice Comes Ruin makes obscene HP from Echo quite pointless. And dying causes damage penalty that, combined with general lack of proper essences, turns the raid into a two hour SLOG! Worst experience ever.

For old player:

• As a smart cookie, they all resorted to using Party Finder (again, good job with future-proofing, SE). But the 10 minute forced timer was taking its toll on a relatively quick 15-20 minute DR speedrun.

In summary:
With one simple change SE managed to ruin the DR both for old and new players. Hell, let them wait for longer amount of time but get a decent 8 player party or get dragged along with a passing-by Party Finder group.

SE really needs to learn how to keep older content relevant (and it applies to Duty Roulette too, by the way). Bozja would not be half as bad if they were peoperly addressing its issues.

And, for Endwalker, SE overcorrected everything and threw relic grind out of the game. Like they often do.

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Stop! Our baby was in that bathwater!

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Originally Posted by LynxDubh

Stop! Our baby was in that bathwater!

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What are you talking about?

The COMMUNITY SAID they didn't want a dirty baby! It's not OUR fault YOU GUYS as a community of thousands cannot come to a universal consensus!

We're just doing what you said!!! Maybe you should take a break!

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I don’t really know why DR wasn’t added to the alliance roulette. Yes it’s a very different experience from regular alliance raids, but the difficulty isn’t much different. It’s technically more punishing because you are instant KOed if you get hit twice, but the mechanics aren’t that difficult and it’s very easy to revive players.

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It probably has to do with role requirements. The setup of the Bozja raids in terms of what raid formation and roles are required is much different than alliance raids.

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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Originally Posted by Remember_The_Name

Just to remind everyone here - the 10 minute forced queue was deliberately installed by SE when Endwalker was released. As a safequard for new players to "not wait for a long period of time". Echo buff was supposed to compensate for the lack of players.

And this was one of the worst F-ing change EVER!

Explanations:

For new player:

• After 10 minutes, you get thrown into the DR with a 2-3 poor saps at best (because Bozja raids are kinda dead, amazing future-proofing right here, SE). And if someone will, understandably, nope-out - here goes ~20-50% of your DPS, lmao
• The Echo buffs scaling gets extremely wonky when it comes to party less than 8 players.
• Twice Comes Ruin makes obscene HP from Echo quite pointless. And dying causes damage penalty that, combined with general lack of proper essences, turns the raid into a two hour SLOG! Worst experience ever.

For old player:

• As a smart cookie, they all resorted to using Party Finder (again, good job with future-proofing, SE). But the 10 minute forced timer was taking its toll on a relatively quick 15-20 minute DR speedrun.

In summary:
With one simple change SE managed to ruin the DR both for old and new players. Hell, let them wait for longer amount of time but get a decent 8 player party or get dragged along with a passing-by Party Finder group.

SE really needs to learn how to keep older content relevant (and it applies to Duty Roulette too, by the way). Bozja would not be half as bad if they were peoperly addressing its issues.

And, for Endwalker, SE overcorrected everything and threw relic grind out of the game. Like they often do.

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Twice come ruin is an easily avoidable mechanic if you... you know... actually do mechanics.

The only thing TBH I think they should do at this point is just nerf the HP values of the bosses inside. The duty is fairly soloable with proper buffs/actions. The only difficult part when at less than 4 people is the DPS check phase of the battle with the 4 bosses.

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Originally Posted by Rxvenluvsducks

They're called 'Relics' for a reason.

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I mean technically only the level 50 ones were relics, right?

you all know square, once they go lazy they never backtrack, so just like so many other features in game, prepare for the "economy class" relic quest from here on out.. but hey at least we have a cash shop with a 10$ charge to change eyes color or get a tan...

now take your weapon that was taken from the 1st raid tier of DT because the devs were to busy ripping us off with ff16 to actually develop a relic...

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Originally Posted by Xaphire

I hard-disagree though.

I prefer this method of obtaining relics (which is actually the same as every other iteration, it just lets you choose what thing you're going to grind). And I like the look and effect on the final stage weapons.

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Stop it....There is zero grind u can mindlessly hit a hunt mob one time with zero brain cells for 2 hours and get free relics...you CANT be serious

I like the tech feel. I think it is a nice break from the norm. My big beef is that the Manderville weapons don't seem to be sized to smaller models properly. They are all way too large to look good. Ex: the scythe on my Miqo'te female makes it look like she is going to fall over at any given minute. I would like to see a slight readjustment to how top heavy and large they are on small models.

I skipped this relic quest all together. I know the devs said more people done then this ti e around. I understand that’s due to it being way easier, but the whole expansion I skipped. Everything they released was a big downgrade. For the relic I didn’t like the story with hildibrand. If it was anything else lore wise I would enjoy it. I wish we traveled worlds for the relic and learned what happened to the other planets.

Relics were originally supposed to be cool weapon that progresses with you as you progress through the .X patches. That's what they were supposed to be, and ever since the raider hardcore nutjobs whined so much that SE changed the relics into lagging behind at least a full patch in ilvl, they became nothing more than another glamour weapon and that's what they were since. Grind is irrelevant, lore is irrelevant, it's core appeal was initially that it was a weapon that you take with yourself throughout whole expansion, but now you always have better options unless you're at .55 at which point you've already done everything that may need a weapon anyway. And if it's just a glamour weapon, I honestly don't think grind levels matter either way. The only gear that matters of any given ilvl is whatever was released first, everything coming after is just glamour and catch up.

Yep. This was the worst relic by far. The end stage is obviously designed to be a glamour weapon for cyberpunk city. But the problem is nobody is going to be stupid enough to grind 6k tomes per job to collect a second or third one, when it's going to be a straight poetry dump when 7.0 hits. So it's dead content on release. And the trial not only has no EX version, it only needs to be done once for the story. So you'll need to PF it in another month or so when DF queues die.

SE has consistently shown that they no longer understand the simple concept of making content repeatable and have never understood the concept of making it infinitely repeatable. At the bare minimum you should have needed to do the fight for EACH relic.

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Originally Posted by Immut

Yep. This was the worst relic by far. The end stage is obviously designed to be a glamour weapon for cyberpunk city. But the problem is nobody is going to be stupid enough to grind 6k tomes per job to collect a second or third one, when it's going to be a straight poetry dump when 7.0 hits. We need shit that ISN'T just relics to dump poetry into. Desynthing tomestone weapons for airship/submarine mats is still the best use of poetry which is actually very stupid.

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Doesn't feel cyberpunk to me. IMO it and the Solution 9 area they teased feels like an attempt of giving us a PSO2 collab after PSO2 got an FFXIV collab back in either ARR or Pre ARR. (so long ago I forget exactly when it happened.)

EndWalker was by far the worst expansion

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Originally Posted by Miguel85NYC

EndWalker was by far the worst expansion

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Period. No comment. This is just straight up facts. The end of the story was bad, the post ew content + story (except for the first patch I guess) was bad and the relic is just not helping.

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Originally Posted by Miguel85NYC

EndWalker was by far the worst expansion

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It was for me, but not sure I would rank it so far below the others. Some of my dissatisfaction is probably just from having played for so long, of course nothing feels new or as exciting when you've been playing the game for 10 or so years.

i'd honestly prefer slightly juiced up version of the previous form, heck even an option to choose the effect color would be better than 99% of the new forms imo. the grind for this, doing rolos, was even worse than the arr relics, i personally enjoyed stuff like eureka way more, a whole new zone, with its own gameplay and a relic armor on top that was goated

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Originally Posted by Xaphire

I hard-disagree though.

I prefer this method of obtaining relics (which is actually the same as every other iteration, it just lets you choose what thing you're going to grind). And I like the look and effect on the final stage weapons.

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let's you choose which rolo you gonna queue for LMAO

No one has yet to actually give me a good answer to my question.

We already have a tomestone weapon that one can obtain by grinding whatever content they want. "I prefer that I could grind whatever I wanted for EW" okay, awesome. That's exactly what the tomestone weapon was for. Meanwhile players who wanted more intricate steps with branching, yet specific resources to obtain had Relic weapons. What purpose was there to giving both weapons the same path to obtain them? Why wasn't the tomestone weapon good enough? Why do you need both? And what is left for the players who clearly don't like the tomestone grind path and preferred the relic grind path? If you would rather relics stay a simple tomestone grind every step, then what is it those of us who want the old relic grind experience get to have instead? What do you suggest we get?

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

No one has yet to actually give me a good answer to my question.

We already have a tomestone weapon that one can obtain by grinding whatever content they want. "I prefer that I could grind whatever I wanted for EW" okay, awesome. That's exactly what the tomestone weapon was for. Meanwhile players who wanted more intricate steps with branching, yet specific resources to obtain had Relic weapons. What purpose was there to giving both weapons the same path to obtain them? Why wasn't the tomestone weapon good enough? Why do you need both? And what is left for the players who clearly don't like the tomestone grind path and preferred the relic grind path? If you would rather relics stay a simple tomestone grind every step, then what is it those of us who want the old relic grind experience get to have instead? What do you suggest we get?

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You answered your own question, you just won't accept the answer.