JP interviews [pre-6.5]

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Disappointing. What is the problem of having fewer people making a relic? It should be something you are proud of, not some welfare check you receive. Should we also give Savage weapons to everyone now for 1000 tomes? Or let everyone get <The Necromancer> by doing PotD 51-60 5 times? While getting a relic does not take combat skill, it does take effort, and effort is apparently not something that SE wants to reward nowadays.

"Want a system that makes it easy to obtain weapons". That is called tomestone weapons, which are higher ilvl than relics until the last patch of the expansion.

And it means that there isn't much hope for 7.x's relic series to be better, since they are adamant about their position being correct.

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Be proud of what? That I slogged through the boring grind? A grind that takes literally no skill and only time? That's what relics are: boring content. I will take less boring content over more boring content any day of the week. The comparison to savage and necromancer is laughable as is the "just get a tome weapon" bit. Why do you hate so much how relic weapons look?

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Originally Posted by Saraide

Be proud of what? That I slogged through the boring grind? A grind that takes literally no skill and only time? That's what relics are: boring content. I will take less boring content over more boring content any day of the week. The comparison to savage and necromancer is laughable as is the "just get a tome weapon" bit. Why do you hate so much how relic weapons look?

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There was nothing forcing you to do the grind but yourself. All the previous relic quests were optional side content so if you didn't want to do it then you could skip it and do something else. This relic process using outdated tomestones basically just took content away from people that enjoyed it while giving nothing back in return.

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

I really wish they could go back to form and take a page of some of the less grindy steps from the ARR relic chain where you had to do a unique trial, or had a book that required you to run certain content or go on a treasure hunt, or do Fates where you only needed one item per zone (rather than the bullshit 20 of 3 types of memories like in the Shb relic....) Like literally give us SOMETHING different and a tad long lasting rather than making it too boring and quick to get or making it too boring and grindy to get a single one. There has to be a sweet middle and he's not aiming for that.

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This. I'm okay with a task list to fill out, but not with the "do the same task a hundred times" grind.

The best thing about ARR and Heavensward relic design is that it was designed to ensure that people unlocked all the optional content by requiring completion of specific dungeons, not just running the easiest option into the ground.

(On a side note, I don't understand why people insist on running the Antitower for their six green tokens. Maybe it's fractionally faster than other level 60 dungeons but at the price of the music making it feel twice as long. Give me Sohr Khai or Xelphatol any day.)

I don't see the point in tying every relic step to a tomestone grind. You can already acquire a weapon from the tomestone vendors so the only difference is locking it behind a few quests and a greater number of tomestones.

It's worrying that Yoshi-P seems to downplay that a lot of players actually liked jumping into Eureka and Bozja for the sake of working not only on a relic weapon but securing other rewards along the way. Some of the items available in Eureka in particular still sell for a decent amount of gil as well.

I used to chip away at relic weapons in Eureka and Bozja with my partner every few evenings. It served as a goal we could both work towards. We've long since grown tired of doing roulettes for tomestones - if you're a veteran player then you've already likely completed the majority of dungeons in the game many times already.

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Originally Posted by PredatoryCatgirl

"We already have tomestone weapons"

No, we don't. We have tomestone/raid weapons. Which would be fine, except that the drops from normal raids are limited to once a week. I'd like to get an upgrade to my green gear on all four jobs I play without having to wait a literal half year. So either keep relics as they are or uncap the drops from normal raids.

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You have to wait anyway for the rest of the pieces of tome gear anyway, there is no need to gimp the relic because of that, this is a tome gearing issue not a relic one. On top of that there are some ways to upgrade the weapon without waiting that much like doing Ex/Savage which drop uncapped better weapons (ex) and items to get tome weapons and even better weapons much faster (savage) so there is even less need to lose the relic content

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Originally Posted by Atelier-Bagur

Again, its because not many players obtained more than one weapon and I can vouch for that statement because yeah...past relic chains were such a grind that it was a huge chore to do multiple ones, even when you try to do many of them at the same time, its just not appealing to do unless you are just THAT BORED in the game.

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I'm going to quote my response from reddit:

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Nobody is really asking for an exact copy of ARR or HW relic grinds though. Running Gordias normal 600 bazillion times wouldn't be fun either.

People want a middle ground between two awful extremes. We went from absurdly tedious to so laughably easy they may as well be free. Eureka and Bozja were that middle ground for a lot of people despite neither being without flaws. It seems the dev team has conflated players not getting every relic with it being too hard.

But let's put all that aside. Why can't they be innovative? Take the old book phase from ARR but instead of making it awful, borrow from Wondrous Tales.

They could also scale down Criterion slightly, toss in all the Lost Actions and let us build our relic in there. Make it like a harder Variant, and the actions help balance out the difficulty. You could also have Variant reward these relic "tokens" or whatever but simply less of them.

And just like that you've fixed V/C's terrible reward structure and made the relic step not "lazy."

That's the issue people have. They didn't even bother doing anything with the relic this time around. It's one step away from mailing it to you after downloading the patch.

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I don't know why but this dev team seems to only operate in massive extremes. Yeah, previous relic steps were a slog. That doesn't mean do a 180 and make them an absolute joke. Making it so everyone can get them with virtually zero effort devalues the whole purpose of getting them in the first place. Instead of being able to show off this cool weapon you've worked hard on, you'll pop into Limsa and see 50 other players with the exact same weapon because y'all logged in with 2,000 tomes capped.

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Originally Posted by PredatoryCatgirl

"We already have tomestone weapons"

No, we don't. We have tomestone/raid weapons. Which would be fine, except that the drops from normal raids are limited to once a week. I'd like to get an upgrade to my green gear on all four jobs I play without having to wait a literal half year. So either keep relics as they are or uncap the drops from normal raids.

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The tome weapon is better though. If they unlocked it, not only would it completely invalidate the relic until the very last patch but basically every other weapon that isn't Savage. Speaking of which, you have options to upgrade your gear. Go do Golbez. He offers the exact same ilvl was the relic just with slightly less substats. That "green gear" of yours, assuming it's crafted, is only 5 ilvls below the relic. Why do you need to upgrade it so desperately that the relic should be sacrificed into a welfare weapon? Full i640 is already hilariously overgeared for any content that isn't Savage or Ultimate.

The main thing that grinds my gears is their approach to the relic grind. Yes, relics were never really hard to do, just time consuming, but that was the entire point. It gave players something to do over time, which kept them logging in regularly. It was a mid to long term goal, and those are important in an MMORPG of all things. As of EW, what would have been considered standard tomestone weapons suddenly require more effort to obtain. They didn't need to swing so far in this direction. Trying to appease both parties here is hard, and I understand that. But they didn't even try to make those who enjoy an actual relic grind happy. They just threw them under the bus and said that it was "hard" to satisfy them. It seems like they shy away from anything that they deem as difficult, and that is part of the problem. Not just with the relics this time around, but with the game itself.

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Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

Making it so everyone can get them with virtually zero effort devalues the whole purpose of getting them in the first place. Instead of being able to show off this cool weapon you've worked hard on, you'll pop into Limsa and see 50 other players with the exact same weapon because y'all logged in with 2,000 tomes capped.

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"Oh noes, other people have the same shiny thing! However will I show off my superior dedication to pouring hours of my life into a videogame?"

I couldn't care less about what other players have or not. I'll get the thing if it looks good to me.

We'll probably never know the actual answer and it may be just my own speculation ... but I can't help but think originally the plan for Criterion was to serve as the platform for the 6.0 Relic, but for some reason they decided to decouple them when the content went live. Like think about it, Criterion is definitely an elaborated piece of content, so it's weird to see it came with barely any reward. On the other hand, you have the relic which traditionally the longest grind of the game now just drop from the sky.

It's like these 2 pieces of contents are just half of what they should be, and would have been made whole if they were together.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

I don't see the point in tying every relic step to a tomestone grind. You can already acquire a weapon from the tomestone vendors so the only difference is locking it behind a few quests and a greater number of tomestones.

It's worrying that Yoshi-P seems to downplay that a lot of players actually liked jumping into Eureka and Bozja for the sake of working not only on a relic weapon but securing other rewards along the way. Some of the items available in Eureka in particular still sell for a decent amount of gil as well.

I used to chip away at relic weapons in Eureka and Bozja with my partner every few evenings. It served as a goal we could both work towards. We've long since grown tired of doing roulettes for tomestones - if you're a veteran player then you've already likely completed the majority of dungeons in the game many times already.

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I think to believe they are worried by adding another Eureka/Bozja that future players, or those who tackle the relic after Dawntrail arrived, have a hard time getting their relics even more once the 'mainstream' moved on. We already get frequent complaints about those zones regarding their activity, bots and that there aren't enough for Delubrum.