The relic weapon quest is OBSCENELY boring...

Well, did it half-way for my first Job. When I re-rolled, I didn't bother.

It's mostly a sequence of (time-intensive) chores. The story-line behind it isn't all that interesting - it's pretty much "filler" quality.

it was boring but i had something to do.

Pfft... Atma books grindy? If you want grindy try getting your Novus to Nexus. Now THAT is a grind.

- You can only earn light in party content or Fates.
- You need 2000 light to complete your relic, and even the best raids will only give you +32 light (which is the max for any one quest)
- Your options are to either relentlessly grind primals (500 runs of Garuda will do the trick, but at 5 minutes each you're looking at 42 hours of relentless grind)
- ...or you can do 'regular' content and not see any advance on your weapon for MONTHS.
- Relic has to be equipped while doing all of the above, so you're pretty much class-restricted for all content til its done.

Yeah... Nexus light is probably the least fun part of the grind. They should've quadrupled the light gain in that update, not merely doubled it.

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Originally Posted by Lemuria

- You can only earn light in party content or Fates.

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Maps also work, even if you solo them. Anything short of peisteskin (and even most of those) are soloable.

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- Your options are to either relentlessly grind primals (500 runs of Garuda will do the trick, but at 5 minutes each you're looking at 42 hours of relentless grind)

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I don't think I've seen Rooda take more than 3 min (unless there's 3+ new people in the party) in like... months. Now with people grinding the same content for Zeta, HM primals are getting their faces ripped off even faster.

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Originally Posted by Ashkendor

I don't think I've seen Rooda take more than 3 min (unless there's 3+ new people in the party) in like... months. Now with people grinding the same content for Zeta, HM primals are getting their faces ripped off even faster.

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Kill time is one thing, adding in load times, wait times and so on and 5 mins is a rather friendly estimate. Even if you have a party for it, who's going to stick around for countless hours of the same grind?

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Originally Posted by Lemuria

Kill time is one thing, adding in load times, wait times and so on and 5 mins is a rather friendly estimate. Even if you have a party for it, who's going to stick around for countless hours of the same grind?

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Let's not forget "Reserving Instance" which can take up to 5 minutes

The pacing of the Relic - Zodiac grind is meant to be done over months. Each new phase was placed in a major patch, months apart. Its not meant to be taken on in its entirety, though the current reductions are good.

I'm only at the atma books now. The only thing so far that is killing me is the kill 10 enemies thing. With some of them that only spawn 3 at a time, its like working an assembly line putting caps on chapstick. Getting the 500 tomes for each book gets a little boring at times, just been farming Titan HM for them it always seems there is a new player bonus every time I do it so it does go by quick though. It does sound like the next phases of upgrade are a hoot.

I actually haven't minded much of the relic quest. I grinded atma pre nerf, and I can agree that it was senselessly boring for a cosmetic upgrade. Camping book fates was dreadful. However, mob slaying made me hunt through parts of Eorzea I may not have been through before, which was a nice change of pace. Alexandrite grinding took me a long time, but only because I didn't spam things for soldiery. I took my time with it, and it didn't bother me in the slightest. I actually like light grinding, it lets me help FC mates in any instanced content, because who knows when you'll hit a nice bonus window. Currently at the crafted items step for the zodiac, and I'm feeling a bit of a squeeze for spending excessively on glamour and housing, but the gil sink necessary is hardly crippling.

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Originally Posted by BobtheBlackMage

The pacing of the Relic - Zodiac grind is meant to be done over months. Each new phase was placed in a major patch, months apart. Its not meant to be taken on in its entirety, though the current reductions are good.

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Yeah, and so was WoW's, and yet it wasn't a laundry list of boring. Instead, you progressed in this quest through doing things you were going to do anyway, with some fun and challenging content thrown in. I did WoW's relic quest across 3 characters. I couldn't even power through the boredom with ONE character here...

If FFXIV can take FISHING and give it an awesome storyline, there's 0 excuse for the relic weapon quest having as lackluster of a story as it does.

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Originally Posted by Lemuria

Pfft... Atma books grindy? If you want grindy try getting your Novus to Nexus. Now THAT is a grind.

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I'm sure that sucks, too, and OMG LEMURIA GLITTERHANDS!? My fiancee and I always thought your name was so adorable back on Rabanastre! :D

some of you clearly have not done Relic before they reduced tome costs for books, atma drop rate increase, and fates respawn times

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Originally Posted by Maero

some of you clearly have not done Relic before they reduced tome costs for books, atma drop rate increase, and fates respawn times

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Books were a tad bit easier to grind soldiery for back when it was new content. In case you forget you had 5 minute Brayflox mythology speedruns which generated at least 1k mythology per hour without much fuss. Now you're forced into doing random primals or roulettes (ugh) to get hopefully get a soldiery bonus that might succeed or fail. Thankfully both the FATE and Atma drop rates got a boost because you're spending more time grinding soldiery than actually doing the book content these days.

I still feel the biggest pain in the ass step is the Zodiac Braves dungeon atma portion. While I was fortunate to never have to repeat a dungeon more than 20 times I ended up having to pay for tank queues (100k each) for my last 3 dungeons because each queue was at a minimum 15 minutes as a healer. No exaggeration on the queue times.

Mind you, I started doing my relic in the first week of March and Finished it 2 weeks later, which is well after most of the hardcore relic grinding players are done and over the Relic quest.

Alex grinding for 2 weaps at the moment. I've done ex roulette for morbid motivation more times than I can count. The first 5, even 10 runs you find things to try, enhance your time getting thru them... on the 25thish run thru KotL, I decided I had enough and started fate grinding (again).

Keep in mind that I got the atma for one of those two weapons before the drop rate increase, to decide fate farming was the least worst option almost sent me back to WoW.

I stuck to my guns with the Relic Quest for my Black Mage Zeta. I actually took my time with it and have been working on my weapon on and off since Atma was first introduced last year. It really wasn't until a month ago that I started the grind up again and for the past 4 weeks I did nothing at all in game but grind for Lights/Zodiac drops/Company Seals, Gil, Soldiery Tomestones and more Lights until my fingers began to bleed and I lost lots of sleep.

As much as I complained to some people about having to run Dungeons upwards of 20-30 times for a drop and how it was driving me nuts doing the same repetitive content over and over again. I actually enjoyed satisfaction of the finished product I slaved over. It's not BiS compared to a Dreadwyrm probably but it's still the best weapon I currently own on any of my jobs and I feel like I accomplished something.

The relics in FFXIV were the worst grind I've ever experienced in a mmorpg, and I've played quite a bit of them (including FFXI and lineage II, for the grindiest ones).

I sure hope they ll change the way these weapons are obtained in Heavensward.

The worst thing is that in most of the relic steps you ended up farming the same tier of content than during the precedent steps.

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And its also a slap in the face for casuals. First, lest define casual gamer properly. The casual gamer is considered casual because of the time put into game, whether said time is available or just what they want to spend playing game, not because of skill level of game. Casual players are not lemmings or children that just play blindly and are just ok with hitting 2 buttons all day. Casual players are casual because of time invested.

Now, like previous poster has said, the problem with this game is that there only two ways to play. Either doing slow monotonous boring grinding or trying to raid. SE (and lots of others in this community) have a problem with how they perceive "casual" gamers. Casual gamers are not stupid. Casual gamers are not mindless zombies. Casual gamers are not just content with easy stuff. I consider myself a hybrid gamer. There are days when I have nothing to do and I can play games all day, hardcore. But also there is this thing called life. And not everyone is living the same one. So because of that, there are people that just can't put in the time to do some of the things in this game like relic grind. But also, those same people don't have the time to form statics, have time to be dedicated to certain times to play with others to enjoy end game content. Where are those people to play? The main problem with this game that many are having is the "time" you have to put in to do either of the two options in this game. I like to play all at one time as much as I can, but there are days where i only have maybe 1 hr or 2 each day for the whole week. So stop using the word "casual" so casually when talking about a group of players.

Now, I like a challenge. Time grinding same low lvl dungeon for hours and low lvl fates for hours for RNG is not a "challenge" as far a gaming goes. It has less to do with game skills and more to do with enduring monotonous boring stuff for hours, which many casual gamers do not have. Casual gamers are just asking for an increase in difficulty, increase in story/lore, increase in fun. All of you elitist think that if you are not hardcore, you must be casual. That's far from the truth. And the faster SE and the majority of this community realize this, the better the game will get.

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All this "casual vs hardcore" stuff is a lazy justification invented by Blizzard in WoW in order to justify half assed game design (they started with that crap during WOTLK).

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Originally Posted by Lemuria

Pfft...


- You need 2000 light to complete your relic, and even the best raids will only give you +32 light (which is the max for any one quest)
- Your options are to either relentlessly grind primals (500 runs of Garuda will do the trick, but at 5 minutes each you're looking at 42 hours of relentless grind)

Yeah... Nexus light is probably the least fun part of the grind. They should've quadrupled the light gain in that update, not merely doubled it.

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Assuming you only ever do Ruda while shes feeble, then yes 500. But when you do a bright primal, its 8 lights, so its only 250. A good pre made ruda party with 1 heal 1 tank and 6 dps can down her in 2m 15 seconds. assuming downtime, you can get 20 ruda runs in an hour, you can get novus to nexus done in 12.5 hours.

I got novus to nexus done in 4 days when it was still 4 lights per bright. and i have a full time job.

I don't mind the relic quest. Hated them at first, but then I stopped grinding and just did it in my free time. Yep, I'm pretty proud of my Nirvana.

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

The worst thing is that in most of the relic steps you ended up farming the same tier of content than during the precedent steps.

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Pretty much. Nothing worse than going through all of that content to level, only to then be told, "Now go do it again for your relic weapon!"

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All this "casual vs hardcore" stuff is a lazy justification invented by Blizzard in WoW in order to justify half assed game design (they started with that crap during WOTLK).

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For me, it's not even the length of time but the sheer lack of any kind of challenge in anything we have to do that makes me refuse to do it, coupled with the horrible excuse for a storyline to accompany it.

Had this been "Hildebrant's Relic Weapon Questline" or something similar, I'd be far more likely to see it through to the end. The pieces of storyline you got from WoW's legendary questline were by far the best in the game, too.

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Originally Posted by seraf

I stuck to my guns with the Relic Quest for my Black Mage Zeta. I actually took my time with it and have been working on my weapon on and off since Atma was first introduced last year. It really wasn't until a month ago that I started the grind up again and for the past 4 weeks I did nothing at all in game but grind for Lights/Zodiac drops/Company Seals, Gil, Soldiery Tomestones and more Lights until my fingers began to bleed and I lost lots of sleep.

As much as I complained to some people about having to run Dungeons upwards of 20-30 times for a drop and how it was driving me nuts doing the same repetitive content over and over again. I actually enjoyed satisfaction of the finished product I slaved over. It's not BiS compared to a Dreadwyrm probably but it's still the best weapon I currently own on any of my jobs and I feel like I accomplished something.

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You make a pertinant observation. However, please consider;
I propose a 40-hour race:
- You take ONE relic weapon from 0 - 135 (or as far as you can get in the time constraint).
- I take all my crafting classes to level 50 (or as far as I can get in the time constraint).

Who do you think would get "more" for thier time? Who will have more satisfaction in thier accomplishments? Who will get the most benefit from that time investment?

More importantly - is SE asking these questions?

Some people have seriously missed the point of these weapons.

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Originally Posted by Tiggy

Some people have seriously missed the point of these weapons.

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SomE people have serioulsy overestimated the replay value of some content.

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Originally Posted by Deathscythe343

Yes, it is. The relic quest in this game is far worse than the Epic weapons I farmed for in EQ1.

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We have had this conversation once before remember? Here is a convo you and I had back on the 29th of December to which you never responded back.

source: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...42#post2677342

Quote Originally Posted by Deathscythe343 View Post
It took me less time to get my epic weapon in EQ than it did for me to complete the atma portion of the animus upgrade

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Originally Posted by Donarudo

Then my question to you would be when did you complete it. I did my Epic quest in EQ when it was the new shiny thing to do at level 50ish or 55. (current level in eq is 105) It wasn't a quest that could be completed quicker then the Relic quest. Especially considering there was Epic 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, and 2.5. So my guess would be that you completed it sometime at a higher level? Some of the grinds took several months just to get one drop. Example Cleric 1.0 and Paladin 1.0. Not to mention they had requirements (at the time) which required a raid force of 72 people to help you (this was before they downsized raids to 54 people). If you were in a guild that raided that meant you had to wait your turn. So when quoting me, please tell the whole story, because as I stated before. Anybody who has done the Epic quest for weapons in Everquest can tell you that the relic quest line is easy. I will leave you with this last note, if you completed the Epic quest line quicker then the relic questline while it was in its prime then you would have been world first. If that were the case then cool for you. http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?quest=763 (just to give you an idea of (some) of the things you had to do to get this weapon.

As a side note - completing the Epic 1.0 in its prime meant you were already unlocking key zones in Planes of Power, which meant if you had not unlocked these zones you were not doing your Epic until those key progression zones were unlocked. Yes they gated content back then too. Anybody who was trying to get into the Plane of Time during that progression iteration would more then likely be able to tell you how long it took their guilds to clear all the demi gods and Time itself. This extra note I added just to give an idea of why it took many of us a long time to complete our Epics.

Plane of Power progression - had to do stuff like this before you could even get your Epic http://tancidtherogue.com/pop.html

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Originally Posted by radioactive_lego

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The only thing about your proposal is that it's entirely subjective to each individual player what is fun or not or what gives them a sense of accomplishment. I hate crafting in mmorpgs so I would not enjoy taking all crafts to level 50 in your hypothetical situation. I enjoy grinding content for some reason. I loved grinding Shiva Ex to get Diamond weapons for all 6 of my jobs. I enjoyed doing the Zodiac Saga and I enjoyed other Grindy content that I don't need to elaborate further on.

Relic quests are not that bad and I feel like I can farm the same dungeons over and over again no problem. Whats killing me is that other players' attitudes are getting worse and worse with each run or dungeon, resulting in rage quitters and/or crying enough until other players leave or get kicked and I'm left shaking my head helplessly.

I'm STILL working on books towards my animus where I should've had my Zeta by now. But every time I get a new book I stall a bit on completing the dungeons part because I'm just so turned off by DF runs, even in the easiest of dungeons sadly. :(

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Originally Posted by seraf

The only thing about your proposal is that it's entirely subjective to each individual player what is fun or not or what gives them a sense of accomplishment. I hate crafting in mmorpgs so I would not enjoy taking all crafts to level 50 in your hypothetical situation. I enjoy grinding content for some reason. I loved grinding Shiva Ex to get Diamond weapons for all 6 of my jobs. I enjoyed doing the Zodiac Saga and I enjoyed other Grindy content that I don't need to elaborate further on.

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Upvoted. I agree wholeheartedly. That sense of accomplishment is why people play MMOs, I think.
Personally, I'm only midly getting that feeling at each step of the relic grind. And that feeling is fleeting as I progress into the next step.

I love the smell of necromancy in the mornin'!

Different strokes for different folks. A lot of people like the current design. A lot of people dont. This is the only 'grindy' thing in this game. Let the grinders have ONE piece of content. Enjoy the other 99% if you dont.

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Originally Posted by Izsha

I love the smell of necromancy in the mornin'!

Different strokes for different folks. A lot of people like the current design. A lot of people dont. This is the only 'grindy' thing in this game. Let the grinders have ONE piece of content. Enjoy the other 99% if you dont.

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A weapon isn't content. The content is what you actually do in the game.

Funny how most FFXIV players forget that simple fact (it is not very surprising though, as in live letter SE has an history of featuring the rewards of any particular content rather than the content in itself).

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Originally Posted by RichardButte

and I've played Lineage 1.

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ROFLMAO that says something

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Originally Posted by Stanelis

A weapon isn't content. The content is what you actually do in the game.

Funny how most FFXIV players forget that simple fact (it is not very surprising though, as in live letter SE has an history of featuring the rewards of any particular content rather than the content in itself).

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Is the weapon not a piece of data within the game? Is the relic only what you believe it to be?
Oh god, it all makes sense now.
Eorzea is just a collection of 1's and 0's
A wheel upon which we adventurers trod
Our every accomplishment is merely an abstract experience, and as the numbers pile up our breakthroughs are measured in levels
The enemies we surmount are eternal!
I thought those pirates were twins! What if they're the same guy?

AAAAAAAAHHH!

I don't have an issue with MOST of the steps in this admittedly very grindy content.

HOWEVER the RNG based parts are utter hell for no real reason. What this mostly means is the Dungeon and Fate atma drops. This BS NEEDS TO STOP. Going to a dungeon without any progress counted towards the eventual drop of the atma is miserable torture and it's literally wasting an entire hour of your life for nothing.
SE NEEDS to rework their RNG system to fit today's standards. There needs to be a bump of percentage going up every time you miss until you're eventually 100% guaranteed a drop.

There are people who don't have any idea what it is to be one of those players who get stuck in one single phase for months JUST because of RNG.
Put this in perspective: I was farming my last atma drop in the same zone for 3 MONTHS non-stop every single day for hours before I was allowed to move onto the next phase. Even with an increased drop rate of today RNG makes this still completely possible. Even if YOU are one of the lucky ones never to have been in the same situation have some decency to at least understand the facts some players have to deal with. This is NOT good game design and there are dozens of games that have brought their RNG systems to 2015 already that SE could copy.

Im now at the Alexandrite part. I have gathered 7 of the 75 i need. And after reading that the Relic most likely will be a glaomur piece when Expansion launches 3.1... So what is the point now ?? RNG alexandrite. and spend huge amounts of gil on Materia.... I thought SE would let the Relic evolve all the way from ARR and into the future. Hence why I chose the Relic path and not ironworks LEviathan or other weapons. ..

But since I have started Zodiac now I must finish it. But will hold back the materia mending part as long as i can. So we can get some 100% facts about the future for Relics. If it goes "away" new relics etc. I will do cheap materia. If not we go the high road.

Just my thoughts. And yes its grindy as F. But then again not ment to grind it in one big go, but over days/weeks/months (also WHY we need it to evolve in expansion... argh)

I actually enjoy it. Didn't mind the Atma grind, but I did get it with the increased drop rate. Doing the books now and enjoying them, I may be singing a different tune when I am hunting 2000 light, but will see.

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Originally Posted by RichardButte

It is the most grindy, tedious, monotonous, bland thing I have seen in any MMO I have ever played, and I've played Lineage 1.

It's one thing to do a lot of stuff that's either fun or at LEAST challenging.

It's entirely another to give us a checklist of random, boring, unchallenging crap and tell us to hop to it...

The book phase is literally, "You know all that content you JUST did to level up? Yeah, go do it again, only this time with no reward for doing so..."

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So don't do it, go buy a weapon, problem solved

I've finished the Apocalypse Zeta but I have no immediate plans to finish off the book phase of either the Thyrus or Yoshimitsu anytime soon. If the Poetics cap is lifted, I may abandon them entirely in favor of Ironworks Magitek weapons (SMN is my main job, so every other job is just for fun).

Relic weapon is not necessary if you just want a good weapon.

So if you hate the grind, don't do it.

I personally enjoy it and feel that it gives me something to work towards. Maybe you need to spend less time grinding and just let pieces (atma, alexandrite, etc) come as they will.

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Originally Posted by Sartori

So don't do it, go buy a weapon, problem solved

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Can people please stop using this tired, worthless argument? It's the argument people use when they can't think of a better rebuttal. The argument that 'well, maybe that content isn't designed for you' is a ridiculous and archaic logic, because it doesn't excuse poorly designed and BORING content.

Perhaps it's convenient for some people to sweep the cobwebs under the rug so people pretend they don't notice any more. Perhaps it somehow justifies their own time wasted on the content, because they ground out this rubbish for hours and now feel some sense of entitlement towards their token reward. Whatever the reason, stop... just stop. There is a clear and defined FAILING in content which rehashes old ground for the sake of it and flatlines your visible progress.

Let's stop making up excuses for this content being rubbish, and just admit it sucks. Justifying bad content just gives them an excuse to continue these silly design decisions in the future. Take a step outside the bubble for a few seconds to look at the big picture and you'll realize what an utter train-wreck the entire zodiac quest line is. Let's not make any more excuses for them and start pitching suggestions TO them for improvements.

Things will never get better if we accept it like good little sheep.

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Originally Posted by Chevrefoil

Relic weapon is not necessary if you just want a good weapon.

So if you hate the grind, don't do it.

I personally enjoy it and feel that it gives me something to work towards. Maybe you need to spend less time grinding and just let pieces (atma, alexandrite, etc) come as they will.

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I enjoy it too. I think the relic quest over all is fine especially after having nerfed some of the harder content like ATMA drops and Light Farming. It's amazing how many relics I see these days in many of the dungeons and raids and a good number of people have more than one. Since the weapon hit ilevel 135 it seems to have exploded in interest with many of my friends.

Been stuck on the nexus rng for about 2 months now. Only have gotten 5 drops lol. But what I wanted to say is relic won't be a glamour yoshi stated it will always be relevant and bis one day

You gotta realise why they did it. It's the same reason why DF has been tweaked to match you with lesser experienced people/new. It's all about ensuring those newbies coming in, don't instantly run away from the long ass queue times (even more than they do already) / never get into the duty. Or the fact, if they didn't ask you to do some old ass dungeons, you'd probably never touch them again (unless levelling).

Same reason why they try to throw housing drops in these places. So they least get some of you to run it. So what do they do? Build the newer content, around older content. Get used to seeing this as long as this game is alive, and going. Because the day they just make newer content, include recent inductions.. is the day this section is filled with "I'm new, and I cannot seem to get into XYZ dungeons". Which is ultimately, yes you guessed it, a loss of money.

Even if they nerf the relic line, they won't remove the fact you'll still need to run these dungeons. The nerfs are usually only the costs of items from tomes, the chance of a drop, and the amount of lights. So yeah, 3.0.. get used to seeing those new 8 dungeons all the time, throughout the expansion. One can only hope, that its a more engaging relic line.

If they could increase a little bit more the drop rate to get atmas (like a 1% max) I don't mind the grind part because I have play ofther MMOs where your leveling depend entirely on your grind time. There is not dungeons to spam to level faster, at least you are in an elite guild that won a war and get a dungeon with just a slight better % but not by a lot. It is amazing how easy is to get exp here. I get half my exp bar in one run and a bit more with exp food until level 40 and then like 25%. One thing I do agree with some people saying that SE need to improve some aspects in game.