Atma Grind Needs Some Changes...

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Originally Posted by Gallus

This kind of reply is what kills me. We are talking about the most popular weapon in the entire game and the fact it forces you to put up with stuff like killing level 5 efts for the next 120 hours, and that's the best you guys got..."you don't have to do it". Right, we don't, in fact, no one has to even play this game, but guess what? We are all playing it, and if there's something we don't like we have the right to say we don't like it, because that's what a forum is for. It makes me cry every time I help a fresh player get his way to 50, start the relic reborn, we always make it up until Titan HM, he collects his 900 myth, and when I tell him what's the next step (atma) that person automatically quits. It has happened with 3 friends of mine already (one of them being my brother). It has NOTHING to do with entitlement, it's just something that is NOT fun (yes, bolded and in capital letters) and people simply refuse to do it. SE does not realize the atma quest does FAR more harm than good to this game, it remains unchanged. Makes me very sad how they are unable to see it.

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Why is it the most popular?

Because it's the strongest? No. Because it's the easiest to get? No. Because it's the best looking? Arguably, no.

It seems that people want it simply because it's something they can attain primarily on their own, and it's something of an achievement. Yet this mindset disregards that the Relic weapon was intentionally created as a grind, for those who wanted a grind, and it happens to be appealing to said people. Nothing in this game is created for everyone at the time of its creation, and just as Binding Coil is made easier over time, so too will the Relic line, but in such a case, people have to be willing to wait for it.

I'd even understand the complaints if it was just about the RNG. If the only problem was about the Atma and Novus grinds, but no, 'Animus' is being complained about when it's the very definition of solo progression. 'Every step' of the Animus has a definite, measured progression with no RNG outside of needing a FATE to pop, and okay, the timers on some of those suck, and they're working on that, but beyond that? Killing numerous enemies, doing dungeons, doing leves... what's wrong with this? How on earth else do we expect to progress through this?

The devs can't go around creating epic, sweeping quest chains for us to do for this, they don't have that kind of time and resources to burn on something that many people don't care about. Again, the Relic line was created for a specific portion of the population. Repetition and RNG are the tools at the devs disposal for creating long term content for select groups of players. They also can't go making some sort of epic raid requirement like Binding Coil, because that would go against the heavy solo lean of the Relic chain.

So if people don't even like Animus... just what do you want and expect from this? Realistically, anything they create is going to be a repeated grind.

'Anything.'

To the above poster. I don't know what most people think, but I was merely stating my opinion, and my opinion is that the Atma quest is absolutely horrendous. There's nothing wrong with the Animus books and the Novus grind. You'll never see me complaining about those. Though there is one problem about them, you need to put up with the tedious atma snorefest to even get to them.

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Originally Posted by ZephyrAM

Why is it the most popular?

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Because it is the iconic weapon for its corresponding job, there is dialogue and lore behind it, and you only had to fight through two boss monsters and three HM primals to unlock the basic form of it, followed by 900 mythology to finally reach Zenith.

All the others are just random drops.

If the atma grind was for any other weapon, people would not be complaining because people would mostly ignore it, but the job specific weapons are tied into the job stories by virtue of their origin. Since upgrading these weapons were well within the reach of everyone prior to patch 2.2, it is completely understandable that players would be ticked off about the fact that now only an elite cadre of players will ever see their weapons finished. Even among those players, you'd be hard pressed to find a single person who has done more than one of them. Also take into account this is a game that encourages players to play multiple class/jobs and it ends up being just a huge kick in the pants.

Also, it was these kinds of grinds that caused many players to mass exodus from FFXI to World of Warcraft upon its original release. Using RNG like that is doing RNG all wrong.

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Originally Posted by Evangela

grinding in MMOs is outdated. Yoshida said he doesn't want to make XIV another grindfest MMO and why he has to make this stupid quest? I don't get it.

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Didn't you know? Dev team believes FATEs are like the crown jewel of FFXIV. That they are SO FUN that all content must drive people back to FATEs repeatedly. That is to say, dev team does not believe this is a grind at all, but actual meaningful content. I mean, certainly I had just as much fun grinding Atma and Myth as I did beating the Hard Mode Primals, right? Right!? I wish I believed I was joking, but dev team literally seems unaware that FATEs are uninteresting (for many reasons, not the least of which that mobs are so low level you don't even have to care about their attacks... strategy for wave of Mob X is the same as for wave of Mob Y: cast AoE until dead) and actually possibly some of the worst content in the game.

@hiruke is partially false, the trouble is not that FATE are poorly designed... but the number of people that participate, i have seen FATE be destroyed simply because of the number. a lot of people hate FATE now because while the 2.0 it was the only good way to level up class/jobs. and they did it tons of time, until be burn out of it.

FATE are open world content with a generic UI, it allows a lot of people to participate. sadly, the number of people per server and the size of the world is killing it.

I think the animus line is perfectly fine really. I don't find it too grindy except for the fates, waiting for something to pop up for 2-4 hours is sort or really bad. That alone makes it on-par with the grind to just get your Atmas. Novus feels like the easiest. Definitely the most expensive and time consuming..but at the same time less monotonous.

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Originally Posted by ajx

+1
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Im still on animus (5th book) and thinking how bad ( gameplay wise and design) the whole thing is.

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Just wait until Novus, the whole thing is just 1500 myth for a scroll then 75 Alexandrites divided in 75 days of expert roulette and/or 75 x 800 myth and/or 75 x 200 allied marks and/or 75 FATEs with the same RNG drop rate or even lower than Atma + 75 materia, 12 of each tier depending on which stats you wish to enhance. The materia's meld rate reduces after each meld and can still fail at 90%, you don't lose the Alexandrite but pray it doesn't fail when you get to those expensive tier IVs.

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Originally Posted by Fendred

TBH, there isn't anything casual about the Atma farm. It takes less time to learn an EX fight with a good group that has the right attitude than it does to treadmill out an atma.

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I agree, it took me about 4 and a half months for my Novus, arguably more than enough time to find a group to learn and even beat Second Coil and get a comparable or better weapon. Of course you can do both Second Coil and the relic grind at the same time like I did, but still, I don't get this whole "it was designed for people who like long grinds" stuff, at least make the grind fun and less repetitive even if for some people just any grind is fun I guess.

Frontlines is arguably repetitive too in the sense that the arena doesn't change and the basic strats stay somewhat similar but there's still enough variation to keep it interesting each time, that's fun repetition and a fun grind for rank, wolf marks, myth and what not, so fun that it doesn't feel like a grind at all. Yes I'm comparing PvE to PvP, thanks for already thinking of a dismissive response for that.

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Originally Posted by Antanias

Sell each atma for 100 allied seals >_>

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farming Atma to buy oil and sand with them?

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Originally Posted by Hiruke

Didn't you know? Dev team believes FATEs are like the crown jewel of FFXIV. That they are SO FUN that all content must drive people back to FATEs repeatedly. That is to say, dev team does not believe this is a grind at all, but actual meaningful content.

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A solution would be if regular enemies drop them for around 1% chance. Then it would be no FATE involved.
Maybe in specific repeatable killing quests for level-synch. Or 10% chance to get them from specific enemies each zone with a pop-up timer (like Hunt)

I'm working on first book of animus now. It's a god send after atma. I can choose how much progression i make in a day. "Oh, i'll do x,y, and z while i'm on, do a, b, c next time i'm on"

It works for me.

I appreciate how annoying these fates are, but all i've been doing is making sure i'm in the area i need a fate when i'm about to full party into an extreme or something, and hope it's there when i'm out of it. Rather wait for a fate i know is definitely gonna be there soon, that i know i've definitely made progress when i've done it than farm that fate and have a 3% chance to get the tick in the box i need to move on lol.

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Originally Posted by Aldracity

Mostly this. I'm ok with running around in circles, spamming FATEs...but I'd like to get more out of the actual grindfest instead of just a pile of GC seals I can barely use.

Or, more specifically: The fatal problem with Atmas is that there is no sense of achievement whatsoever up until the Atma actually drops. I am literally wasting time, burning through Gil to keep up with equipment repair costs

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You can buy dark matter 5 with seals to reduce your repair cost to 0

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and the FATEs themselves are even wasting your Challenge log because of the EXP bonuses!

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Only if you do the one last FATE with a lv 50 job. There is a warning if the next FATE is the last FATE for the challenge log.