Relic Weapons-Broken Promises

if you cant find people to do 17 mins speed runs then yes that will break your motivation to do relic. im on the 17 min av speed run for my relic but cant find people to do it with. what SE should have done was yes 17 min speed run 100% drop for the relic material. at 25 mins give at least a 25% drop rate.

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Originally Posted by Crimzon

The only reason you aren't doing relic is you can't be bothered to take a few hours out of your time to 17min SR AV&CC a couple times? Really?

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No, I don't even bother with speed runs. I don't do them anymore with the dungeons, and I won't do them again with the Relics. When SE can actually make content that doesn't require you to stack the sh*t out of one class/job, I'll do it.

I'm not in an endgame linkshell aside from my social one, and a lot of stuff I do is pick up groups. The majority of endgame linkshells don't even let people into them anymore, and I'm not going to join one just to complete content... I never see a shout for 17 min speed run and that's where A LOT of people get sh*tted on for relics. It's pretty much a stopping point for everyone.

EDIT: Pretty much what dbrewer225 said. But no, SE requires you do the 17 min speed run or you have a 1/100 drop rate on the item you need.... Um, no.

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Originally Posted by DeadRiser

No, I don't even bother with speed runs. I don't do them anymore with the dungeons, and I won't do them again with the Relics. When SE can actually make content that doesn't require you to stack the sh*t out of one class/job, I'll do it.

I'm not in an endgame linkshell aside from my social one, and a lot of stuff I do is pick up groups. The majority of endgame linkshells don't even let people into them anymore, and I'm not going to join one just to complete content... I never see a shout for 17 min speed run and that's where A LOT of people get sh*tted on for relics. It's pretty much a stopping point for everyone.

EDIT: Pretty much what dbrewer225 said. But no, SE requires you do the 17 min speed run or you have a 1/100 drop rate on the item you need.... Um, no.

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"This game is hard and I don't think it's fair and I'm going to pull every excuse out of my ass that I can so I don't sound like a failure."

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Originally Posted by Reika

The part that Irks me is that Paladin requires a double meld of Hells Eye IV, while some other Jobs relic requires Mind IV, which is just plain imbalanced.

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How? PLD gets ACC on their relic; WHM gets MND on theirs. This isn't a bait-and-switch. Your relic is everything you meld plus more.

How about a trade? MNK can have that "imbalanced" 40ACC, and PLD can have this super-duper-fair-and-balanced 70MP.

woah ash, dead is not complaining but i do see where she is coming from. i had an opportunity to join a linkshell but due to work schedule i wasnt able to join on the weekdays but weekends im good to go. are you gonna tell me that im complaining also. nope not all. but when your at a point to where you cant advance further on the objective because a lack of people then yes it is a motivation killer. but im not gonna give up ill keep searching for people to these runs. like i said im on the 17 min av run myself and finding people to do it with is harder than the relic quest itself.

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Originally Posted by Ashenspire

"This game is hard and I don't think it's fair and I'm going to pull every excuse out of my ass that I can so I don't sound like a failure."

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Excuse me? Let's make the assumption that I'm a "bad player" because I don't like the route SE is taking with content and running through everything and calling it "hard". I hate that I have to bring this up everytime someones starts crap like what you said. I'm a full time college student with a part time job... do you think I have the time to join an endgame linkshell to complete stuff? Come on dude, how thick can you get? Oh wait, I'm talking about the XIV community. They don't even think before they type, they just reply with something to get a couple of quick likes and sound like a total douche.

EVRYBODY CALM DOWN BEFORE I GET MY BELT

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Originally Posted by dbrewer225

EVRYBODY CALM DOWN BEFORE I GET MY BELT

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I just can't stand when people make the assumption that I'm a pathetic whiner lol. Sometimes I can't stand this community...

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Originally Posted by Almalexia

How? PLD gets ACC on their relic; WHM gets MND on theirs. This isn't a bait-and-switch. Your relic is everything you meld plus more.

How about a trade? MNK can have that "imbalanced" 40ACC, and PLD can have this super-duper-fair-and-balanced 70MP.

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I suppose it is imbalanced in multiple ways then. AF/Relic weapons were done wrong. I would prefer to have the enmity of warriors weapon on my paladin weapon over accuracy myself.

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Originally Posted by DeadRiser

I just can't stand when people make the assumption that I'm a pathetic whiner lol. Sometimes I can't stand this community...

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No one likes speed runs. No one likes dismal drops rates. But it's the name of the game, at the moment, even if it's a horrible name. To say you "don't have the time for it" makes you sound like a pathetic whiner. Not having the patience for it would be more appropriate.

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Originally Posted by Ashenspire

No one likes speed runs. No one likes dismal drops rates. But it's the name of the game, at the moment, even if it's a horrible name. To say you "don't have the time for it" makes you sound like a pathetic whiner. Not having the patience for it would be more appropriate.

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I said I don't have the time to join and endgame linkshell because of my school/work schedule, I didn't say I don't have the time to do speed runs because of school/work schedule. I gave my reasons why I don't like them and I'll stand by that. What you get out of what I said is you...

And don't tell me what's more appropriate when what little posts you do post don't even contribute to the thread.

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Originally Posted by DeadRiser

I just can't stand when people make the assumption that I'm a pathetic whiner lol. Sometimes I can't stand this community...

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If you're skilled enough to clear the content but a full time college student with a part time job you should probably just get used to the idea that you won't be getting a relic for a few months.
You have to understand that if they build this game around people who can only play for 3 hours a week than the people who can play for 10, 20, 30 hours a week are just going to quit because it will become so ridiculously gimp to them.

Then you'll be logging in to an empty game shortly before the servers are shut down.

I thought "the community" already had this discussion. We were all happy and in agreement that there should exist content for casual players AND hardcore players. Hardcore players stopped whining about casuals getting stuff a long time ago (don't see any QQ over Skirmish) yet casuals still feel entitled to everything.

No NA PUG is going to clear Ifrit Extreme. It's not the most challenging thing ever devised but it is sufficiently difficult enough that it requires 7~8 players to go through a learning process together. If you think only speed runs are holding you back but you'll be able to roll into Ifrit with a bunch of random people from Ul'dah and clear it you're in for a lot of wipes. It's a lot more difficult than Garuda and one person screwing up at any given moment can wipe your party.

Get yourself a fancy new Skirmish weapon and start thinking about a relic weapon after you graduate and have time for a linkshell/effective static.

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Originally Posted by Ashenspire

No one likes speed runs. No one likes dismal drops rates. But it's the name of the game, at the moment, even if it's a horrible name. To say you "don't have the time for it" makes you sound like a pathetic whiner. Not having the patience for it would be more appropriate.

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And no one likes Ashenspire.

....Really wondering where these "I don't have time for a linkshell but want the stuff anyway" rants are going to go when we reach HNMs....

Try not to generalize too much, Darth.

There are plenty of Hardcore players still whining. And there will always be outliers on both camps.

I'm quite content to let the players with more free time camp/hunt/peruse a HNM endgame. Might even stop and watch them fight if I'm permitted to.

I think the issue here is people are equating the FFXIV Relic weapons to FFXI AF weapons, a distinction I have long ago corrected in terms of expectations.

Haven't had much experience with this, though I know a few people who are trying to get one and are just agonizing over the hamlet defense bullshit.

I thought SE finally learned their lesson about relic-class weapons when they introduced Empyrean Weapons into FFXI - that was doing it right (mostly - the patch that added AF3 to the older Abyssea NMs made the process much more bearable). Making it a challenge that takes time and dedication, but is also accessible to anyone who wants to attempt. We don't need more Relic/Mythic Weapon BS where only the super rich elitists with entire linkshells of unwitting slaves can attain these things.

As far as the actual stats go for these, most of them are so-so when compared to the alternatives available on Mozk-Tabetai. The only ones that seem to really stand out (to me) are Bravura, Gugnir and Stardust Rod. Curtana is almost there, just needs some enmity on it to make it really stand out from Garuda's.

what u just said right there nefgp, sums up all whats right and wrong about relic in this case. you have surpassed the knowlegde of whats really going on. i sir give u 1000000 thumbs up.

I think if there had been a job specific weapon to go along with our other AF type gear and at the same level of difficulty as the other pieces there would be less bitching about the relic weapons.

My server is full of people still farming seals and many people I play with have like 2/9 and aren't in a super hurry to get their weapon done. I took the view that I will probably be able to obtain a relic weapon or two but it would probably be quite awhile down the road.

It would be nice if there was a little less RNG and more actual difficulty involved but right now I think it is fine for what it is.

If I can't manage to get one then it just isn't for me. There are many other completely acceptable weapons out there for every job to use while we are working towards our relics.

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Originally Posted by NefGP

Haven't had much experience with this, though I know a few people who are trying to get one and are just agonizing over the hamlet defense bullshit.

I thought SE finally learned their lesson about relic-class weapons when they introduced Empyrean Weapons into FFXI - that was doing it right (mostly - the patch that added AF3 to the older Abyssea NMs made the process much more bearable). Making it a challenge that takes time and dedication, but is also accessible to anyone who wants to attempt. We don't need more Relic/Mythic Weapon BS where only the super rich elitists with entire linkshells of unwitting slaves can attain these things.

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Entire linkshells of unwitting slaves? Little dramatic, don't you think? We passed all seals to people one by one and now everyone in our linkshell has either a relic weapon or are at least 9/9 on seals with their double meld complete (unless they just joined the LS this week).

Sounds more like working together than having a linkshell based on slavery and exploitation to me.

Hamlet is horrible. No argument there. It's incredibly boring and tedious even if you ace it every time, nevermind if you're with a group who can't complete it effectively. The special conditions (NPC's having to be responsible for special mob deaths for zombie mage pop) killed it because that and pretty much that alone prevented parties from entering with battle classes and more diverse set ups. The entire event seems to me to be a prototype for something in 2.0.

They should have added grand company seals as individual rewards to make it more tolerable.
Right now it's an incredibly boring super-grind (I can't think of ANYTHING in XI I would rather do Hamlet over), but like i've said before, if your roadblock to a relic is the Hamlet seals I highly doubt you'll have much luck with anything else (the skill based content) further along in the quest.

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Originally Posted by DarthTaru

Entire linkshells of unwitting slaves? Little dramatic, don't you think?

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Stopped reading right there.

Zilart's endgame as a whole was a badly designed, broken pile of trash. Sky was stupid, Kings were even worse, and Relics were just the epitome of bad game design (until Mythics came along which are still to this day the hardest freaking things to get and only really become good at 99).

Getting into Dynamis was easy, getting a relic weapon to drop from mobs was even easier (still don't know why they changed the drop rates and turned Dynamis into mini-abyssea but that's another topic.) but getting a good amount of currency?

Yeah, unless you had a horde of slaves willing to farm it for you under the premise that their turn would eventually come, or had 200+ million gil, you could just forget about getting a Relic Weapon. And again, most of them weren't even that amazing - Apocalypse was #1 until the haste nerf (and now the Souleater nerf making it even worse though it's still a good weapon), and then you had Gjallar & Aegis. The rest were all marginal improvements over the alternatives.

Hell, Hagun was just as good if not better for years because of how stupidly OP Tachi Y/G/K were. Oh yeah, and let's not forget about the attestations & fragments... even if you did have a willing army of people to farm a relic for you, it STILL TOOK AT LEAST A YEAR TO COMPLETE! A YEAR!!! FOR ONE IN-GAME ITEM! That doesn't strike anyone as even a bit little extreme? I'm willing to put money saying most people are looking for a challenge, not a second career.

Then they brought in Mythics, the majority of which were worse than their relic counterparts and took 10x more effort.
- Defeat Odin
- Defeat the 3 Beast Kings
- Collect 100,000 ampoules of therion ichor
- Obtain Captain Rank in Assault (Clear all 50 assaults and the ToAU storyline)
- Obtain a Runic Key, the base weapon & unlock the weaponskill from Nyzule Isle
- Collect 30,000 Alexandrites from Salvage (the only stage you could skip via money, though at 3k+ each that's hefty)
- Re-do all 50 assaults and record them in the book you're given
- Spam ZNMs until you get a full popset for Pandimonium Warden (which itself is extremely valuable to others...)
- Boss battle that if you screw up, requires another PW popset to retry (fun)

And to add one last bit of insult to injury, Naja gives you a measly 3 imperial silver... vs the x30 100 pieces you get for finishing a relic.


At least with empyreans it was mostly farming NMs that you could all do as a group up until the Abyssea NM stages, which as I said, after the later patches all dropped multiple AF3+2 trial items (among other goodies) so it wasn't terribly hard getting others to come along to help - unlike Relic & Mythic weapons where there was often very little to gain over the long run.

tl;dr - I'd really like to believe that these guys have learned some valuable lessons from past endeavors and can better construct genuine, rewarding challenges as opposed to stale grind-fests that rely largely on luck or obscene amounts of money for players to succeed. Also ideally they shouldn't take more than a few months to complete as opposed to a year or longer. If that's what it takes to keep people interested in your game, then you need to make a better game.

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Originally Posted by NefGP

tl;dr - I'd really like to believe that these guys have learned some valuable lessons from past endeavors and can better construct genuine, rewarding challenges as opposed to stale grind-fests that rely largely on luck or obscene amounts of money for players to succeed. Also ideally they shouldn't take more than a few months to complete as opposed to a year or longer. If that's what it takes to keep people interested in your game, then you need to make a better game.

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I'm just curious what was your problem with sky? You seem to be complaining about things taking too long, yet sky allowed "casual" less active players to obtain high end 75 gear without too much effort.

Also, you mentioned earlier that at this point you are very busy and can't play very often. If the most difficult items in the game take YOU only a couple of months to obtain, the highly active players will obtain them in weeks, and what will they do with the rest of their time? Having long term goals and incentives will give the highly active players something to work towards, and it will keep them playing longer. If the endgame winds up how you want it this will become WoW easymode and we'll burn through an entire expansions worth of content in short order. I'm sorry, just because you can't play very often doesn't mean the game should be designed strictly to accommodate your needs. The best way for them to go about this is to have a fair balance of content that will not exclude anyone based on their playtime, yet allow the more active crowd to stay busy working towards items most others will consider a luxury.

edit: looks like I mixed you up with the other miqote who said they couldn't play much, but It still applies anyway

I think its important in this discussion to remember there is a difference between:
Hard-Core Player and Player-Who-Plays-A-Lot.

One does not equate the other.

The system presently caters more to those who play a lot (due to the need to repeat content rather than do content well). For example, it does not matter you can do Hamlet Defense flawlessly in your sleep and get 65k+ scores (a sign of a good player/team). It just matters that you do it often (to get the lucky drop).

Likewise, it does not matter you can easily defeat AV/CC (a sign of a good player). It only matters that you have memorized every click/move/action in a perfect <17 min script (a sign of playing a lot due to memorization).

This also has nothing to do with easy versus hard. What one considers hard, the other can consider easy and vice-versa. I think the real legitimate concerns here are:

The Relic System is geared more towards those who have a lot of time to play. Unfortunately being exceptional at one's job is not sufficient to make up for lack of time to play.


I'm not saying this is right or wrong, good or bad. Just how it is. I do think it is intended this way as FFXIV seems to enjoy its time sinks. What does this mean to those who do not have the ability to fill the time sink? They must manage expectations accordingly I think.

Anyways, good luck out there everyone ^.^;

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Originally Posted by Asiaine

I think its important in this discussion to remember there is a difference between:
Hard-Core Player and Player-Who-Plays-A-Lot.

One does not equate the other.

The system presently caters more to those who play a lot (due to the need to repeat content rather than do content well). For example, it does not matter you can do Hamlet Defense flawlessly in your sleep and get 65k+ scores (a sign of a good player/team). It just matters that you do it often (to get the lucky drop).

Likewise, it does not matter you can easily defeat AV/CC (a sign of a good player). It only matters that you have memorized every click/move/action in a perfect <17 min script (a sign of playing a lot due to memorization).

This also has nothing to do with easy versus hard. What one considers hard, the other can consider easy and vice-versa. I think the real legitimate concerns here are:

The Relic System is geared more towards those who have a lot of time to play. Unfortunately being exceptional at one's job is not sufficient to make up for lack of time to play.


I'm not saying this is right or wrong, good or bad. Just how it is. I do think it is intended this way as FFXIV seems to enjoy its time sinks. What does this mean to those who do not have the ability to fill the time sink? They must manage expectations accordingly I think.

Anyways, good luck out there everyone ^.^;

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Someone who gets it!

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Originally Posted by Asiaine

I think its important in this discussion to remember there is a difference between:
Hard-Core Player and Player-Who-Plays-A-Lot.

One does not equate the other.

The system presently caters more to those who play a lot (due to the need to repeat content rather than do content well). For example, it does not matter you can do Hamlet Defense flawlessly in your sleep and get 65k+ scores (a sign of a good player/team). It just matters that you do it often (to get the lucky drop).

Likewise, it does not matter you can easily defeat AV/CC (a sign of a good player). It only matters that you have memorized every click/move/action in a perfect <17 min script (a sign of playing a lot due to memorization).

This also has nothing to do with easy versus hard. What one considers hard, the other can consider easy and vice-versa. I think the real legitimate concerns here are:

The Relic System is geared more towards those who have a lot of time to play. Unfortunately being exceptional at one's job is not sufficient to make up for lack of time to play.


I'm not saying this is right or wrong, good or bad. Just how it is. I do think it is intended this way as FFXIV seems to enjoy its time sinks. What does this mean to those who do not have the ability to fill the time sink? They must manage expectations accordingly I think.

Anyways, good luck out there everyone ^.^;

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Then we get people that make sub categories of that and the constant bickering goes on and on... Lol. But you are right in every instance.

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Originally Posted by Yucie

And no one likes Ashenspire.

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Well that's just not true.

Uh, Sky wasn't "easy" to get stuff until well after SE changed Ulli and started cracking down on botters.

Oh yeah, 1-hour kirin fights were just oh so much fun too.

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Originally Posted by Asiaine

I think its important in this discussion to remember there is a difference between:
Hard-Core Player and Player-Who-Plays-A-Lot.

One does not equate the other.

The system presently caters more to those who play a lot (due to the need to repeat content rather than do content well). For example, it does not matter you can do Hamlet Defense flawlessly in your sleep and get 65k+ scores (a sign of a good player/team). It just matters that you do it often (to get the lucky drop).

Likewise, it does not matter you can easily defeat AV/CC (a sign of a good player). It only matters that you have memorized every click/move/action in a perfect <17 min script (a sign of playing a lot due to memorization).

This also has nothing to do with easy versus hard. What one considers hard, the other can consider easy and vice-versa. I think the real legitimate concerns here are:

The Relic System is geared more towards those who have a lot of time to play. Unfortunately being exceptional at one's job is not sufficient to make up for lack of time to play.


I'm not saying this is right or wrong, good or bad. Just how it is. I do think it is intended this way as FFXIV seems to enjoy its time sinks. What does this mean to those who do not have the ability to fill the time sink? They must manage expectations accordingly I think.

Anyways, good luck out there everyone ^.^;

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I'm hoping more people quote this throughout the rest of this thread... just to simply reiterate the fact that this is a sensible, informed and rational response to the mass of text I had to read to get here...

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Originally Posted by NefGP

Uh, Sky wasn't "easy" to get stuff until well after SE changed Ulli and started cracking down on botters.

Oh yeah, 1-hour kirin fights were just oh so much fun too.

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Hmmm well I wouldn't know about that I never had any trouble with botters farming sky NM, but that is certainly a problem if it was happening. I could maybe see 1 hour kirin fights if a group had no idea what they were doing the first few times, but with a little practice it shouldn't take near that long. What do you expect from a mob that dropped one of the best pieces in the game? Was there any endgame content in XI that wasn't too hard for you?

It is very sad to me every time I see people in this community bunch up and begin arguing about this shit in a manner that seems oddly similar to the political debates going on.

"I have money so you should have money and if you don't you're lazy and that's the only reason." Being a notable attitude going on here.

The issue is that some of the Job's weapons require Materia that is more expensive than the other Job's, and that is imbalanced.

I personally do not think Gil should have any real place anywhere in the Relic Weapon quest and that it should all be very difficult fighting achievements, but that is MY opinion. What is not opinion though, is that these quests should be balanced between the Jobs so that no one Job is much more or less expensive than the others in this regard.

Things like Archer/Bard being more expensive to play because you have to buy ammo, or another job being expensive because the type of food it uses VS another class are usually things you will find out early on while leveling or know ahead of time, but the fact that at 50 your Relic will magically cost more than someone else's is not something a newer player is likely to pick up off the bat, and it's unfair to subject them to / punish them for that down the road when they really had no idea (nor is it fair to expect them to know it ahead of time).

So please, quit turning this kind of thing into the "have and have not" argument where everyone WITH shit calls the ones without lazy and the people without who ARE lazy bitch that everything should be handed to them or whatever. It causes people like me who just want good design and balance to get chewed out by people who don't even listen to what I have to say and just ASSUME I want everything handed to me when in fact I want what they want, just not through BAD design.

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Originally Posted by NefGP

Oh yeah, 1-hour kirin fights were just oh so much fun too.

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Some of us thought so... I loved the hell out of sky before and after they changed around some of the stuff to help prevent botting. My LS did sky twice a week for a loooong time and we had a blast. We never felt bored and always felt a sense of accomplishment when we killed a boss and even more excitement if we got the drop we were looking for.

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Originally Posted by Riaayo

The issue is that some of the Job's weapons require Materia that is more expensive than the other Job's, and that is imbalanced.

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This is merely due to the fact that some jobs share the same materia for their required melds. You can bypass this entirely by acquiring the materia through spirit binding, which would require no more time than getting melds for any other weapon. The fact that the melds are more expensive are only an additional barrier to those who only wish to buy their materia or weapon straight out, and a clear bypass is readily present.

No matter what, Relics are going to require time. Time some players simply will not have. If anything I would encourage SE to create job-specific alternatives that are more in line with AF weapons from FFXI for those concerned for a 'complete' appearance.

But as far as the investment required to finish Relics, my statements on the first page still stand.

Issues regarding Random Number Generator is an entirely different conversation, and many of us do not like Speed Runs nor Random drops verses a steady progression system.

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Originally Posted by Byakko

Hmmm well I wouldn't know about that I never had any trouble with botters farming sky NM, but that is certainly a problem if it was happening. I could maybe see 1 hour kirin fights if a group had no idea what they were doing the first few times, but with a little practice it shouldn't take near that long. What do you expect from a mob that dropped one of the best pieces in the game? Was there any endgame content in XI that wasn't too hard for you?

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You obviously didn't play XI from launch like I did, so I don't blame you for not knowing just how God awful many aspects of the game used to be. Zilart's endgame was just badly designed all around, sky was only the tip of the iceberg. Even after they fixed Ullikimi, farming the Diorites or w/e it was called was just un-freaking-bearable. Sometimes you'd get lucky and get a few within an hour, and then we'd go entire nights without getting even one which as you might expect, left a bitter taste in everyone's mouths.

But that's all Tanaka's brand of sadism, which is largely absent from this game now thanks to Yoshi P. I just don't want to see it ever come back. There are better ways of making something a legitimate and engaging challenge without simply turning everything into a luck-based grind that leaves you feeling more like you're working a 2nd job instead of playing a game.


EDIT: Speaking of materia, wasn't Yoshi supposed to give us a list what what items make which materia? And I'll take it a step further by saying HQ items, when converted, should always give either the maximum value, or near max.

For example if the parameters are 6~10 STR, then an HQ version when converted should give no less than 8 with a good chance of 10 and a very high chance of 9. As it stands, you can still get bottom-tier materia out of HQ items and to me that's just all kinds of wrong.

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

This is merely due to the fact that some jobs share the same materia for their required melds. You can bypass this entirely by acquiring the materia through spirit binding, which would require no more time than getting melds for any other weapon. The fact that the melds are more expensive are only an additional barrier to those who only wish to buy their materia or weapon straight out, and a clear bypass is readily present.

No matter what, Relics are going to require time. Time some players simply will not have. If anything I would encourage SE to create job-specific alternatives that are more in line with AF weapons from FFXI for those concerned for a 'complete' appearance.

But as far as the investment required to finish Relics, my statements on the first page still stand.

Issues regarding Random Number Generator is an entirely different conversation, and many of us do not like Speed Runs nor Random drops verses a steady progression system.

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The unfortunate side effect of SB items is that meany of the other Materia. the ones you don't need for relic weapons, are in such supply that any market for them is unfortunately gone. It would have been i think a worthy goal to use any tier 4 materia that either had similar stats, or that job's Primary and secondary stat to give people more leeway in how many materia they need to create vs sucsess/explosion of the Class weapons.

If for relic we had a choice of 3-5 different Tier 4 materia. i think we wouldn't have to see such a flooded market for every other materia. Thus allowing a few more materia to retain some value.

What the current system has done is strip any value from many other materias and funnel all that value to certain ones. and place a large percent of that new value on the 1 materia used for 2 relics. And i find that a shame.

(Some fault lies on the "simplistic" stating for jobs as it is. rendering many materia borderline useless. But thats another thread entirely.)

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Originally Posted by NefGP

You obviously didn't play XI from launch like I did, so I don't blame you for not knowing just how God awful many aspects of the game used to be. Zilart's endgame was just badly designed all around, sky was only the tip of the iceberg. Even after they fixed Ullikimi, farming the Diorites or w/e it was called was just un-freaking-bearable. Sometimes you'd get lucky and get a few within an hour, and then we'd go entire nights without getting even one which as you might expect, left a bitter taste in everyone's mouths.

But that's all Tanaka's brand of sadism, which is largely absent from this game now thanks to Yoshi P. I just don't want to see it ever come back. There are better ways of making something a legitimate and engaging challenge without simply turning everything into a luck-based grind that leaves you feeling more like you're working a 2nd job instead of playing a game.


EDIT: Speaking of materia, wasn't Yoshi supposed to give us a list what what items make which materia? And I'll take it a step further by saying HQ items, when converted, should always give either the maximum value, or near max.

For example if the parameters are 6~10 STR, then an HQ version when converted should give no less than 8 with a good chance of 10 and a very high chance of 9. As it stands, you can still get bottom-tier materia out of HQ items and to me that's just all kinds of wrong.

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Hmm no I was doing sky at about the same time, but I don't remember these issues being as bad as you describe. Actually I found it to be just the opposite. In 04 sky was kind of deserted because there weren't a ton of NAs doing gods yet, but as time went on there was alot more competition and the RMT showed up there later. It must not have been as bad where I was. I certainly remember being frustrated with HNM botting, but not Ulli,despot, farming water etc.

I really hate how relics have been approached from difficulty level. You do hamlet over and over.. never improving in skill getting your 60 and 70k victories.

No drops.

At least I can use the 15 minute break for productivity... It's just not in a realm of "difficulty" that I would expect, and unfortunately tends towards boredom and mindless grinding. My experience with it hasn't been enjoyable.

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Originally Posted by Hyrist

This is merely due to the fact that some jobs share the same materia for their required melds. You can bypass this entirely by acquiring the materia through spirit binding, which would require no more time than getting melds for any other weapon. The fact that the melds are more expensive are only an additional barrier to those who only wish to buy their materia or weapon straight out, and a clear bypass is readily present.

No matter what, Relics are going to require time. Time some players simply will not have. If anything I would encourage SE to create job-specific alternatives that are more in line with AF weapons from FFXI for those concerned for a 'complete' appearance.

But as far as the investment required to finish Relics, my statements on the first page still stand.

Issues regarding Random Number Generator is an entirely different conversation, and many of us do not like Speed Runs nor Random drops verses a steady progression system.

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Great point. Except Some materia (Heavens' Eye IV) Is much more rare.

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Originally Posted by Platinumstorm

I really hate how relics have been approached from difficulty level. You do hamlet over and over.. never improving in skill getting your 60 and 70k victories.

No drops.

At least I can use the 15 minute break for productivity... It's just not in a realm of "difficulty" that I would expect, and unfortunately tends towards boredom and mindless grinding. My experience with it hasn't been enjoyable.

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This is precisely the point I was making. You don't keep people interested in a game by making them repeat the same tired, flawed mechanics/events over and over until they finally get lucky - you have to come up with content that is genuinely challenging and engaging. Nyzul Isle & Assault were very good examples of this, Salvage to a lesser degree (mainly because of the horrid drop rates).

And again, I cite Empyrean Weapons - up until the 95 update (which is when I threw in the towel because Tanaka was back in charge and decided to bring back his brand of bs in with the 1000+ plates from Voidwatch) Empyrean Weapons were about as close to an ideal challenge as you could get.

A little grindy, but nothing strenuous and most people could do it together in the early stages. In the later stages you had to make sacrifices, but this was offset somewhat by people needing zone boss clears, AF3+2 and other misc. items (I will forever hate Carabosse with the fiery passion of 1000 suns however. I earned that Masamune damn it!)