New Relic weapon quest - are we down to 1 hour content already?

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Originally Posted by LalafellDown

I enjoyed this relic step. Theres a story, dungeon and a extreme fight. It was much more fluid and not so burdensome.

The past relics it was just go kill 1000 of this or that while grinding 10000 fates. I hate those so much. That’s what Eureka was about. It was the worst.

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Eureka was bareable to some people cause all they did was stand around and afk waiting for the NM to spawn. Hell it didnt become relatively interesting till Pyros.

As for this Relic weapon - first stage has been easy in one capacity or another. Yeah they hand it to you after a small solo instance, but thats fine. Im seeing htis more as 'catch up' if you havent already. Remember were at 5.25, so this would be roughly halfway into the xpac already.

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Originally Posted by Avidria

I'm genuinely curious, but when were you queuing? I haven't waited hours for any CT pop since HW, before alliance roulette existed o.o

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I do remember having trouble when one of the Ivalice raids had come out recently and I was trying to queue with a character who could only access CT. I crept up to #1 in the queue and then just sat there for ages. (I was probably DPS but they're often in need for alliance roulette.)

Yeah I admit...

While I really liked the initial Shadowbringers Campaign... this... and most of the content since then have been... underwhelming.

In all fairness though, I did enjoy the cutscenes and the Storyline with going back to the Dalmud time period. That was some excellent story related content.

I was also waiting on the new Tier of Alliance Raids, but if these patches continue to underwhelm like this... I'm not exactly going to be expecting much.

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they should have done what they did for the DOL/DOH relics

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It takes about as long to do a dragonsung mainhand as it does to do a combat relic.

Can do mine/bot in ~90min total, and the crafting ones take a total of ~440 combines for all 8 (assuming you have the ingots/natron/silk/leather, if not, it takes ~5 min more to quicksynth it all) on a day you have syrup as a scrip turnin.

Everyone complained about Eureka, too. That it was a long boring grind. Now lots of people are complaining that this is too short. Never mind that this is just the first step.

And then when the next step goes live and people see the INSANE AMOUNT OF GRIND we’ll have to do, everyone will also complain about it.

So the devs are damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

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Originally Posted by Lium

Everyone complained about Eureka, too. That it was a long boring grind. Now lots of people are complaining that this is too short.

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I think they've missed entirely why we complained about Eureka.

It wasn't because it was a long grind. It was because it was designed poorly. It had no party level synch so it heavily discouraged grinding mobs with friends. Mob itself grinding was slow, very wearing over time with ff14's rotations and inferior to Fates. We were stripped of mounts, aetherytes were locked off and we were punished for dc'ing or not having a healer nearby to rez. The mobs weren't mechanically challenging, just insanely OP until you reached their level and they suddenly became target dummies. Fates were very messy because the game can't handle 200 people at once and it phased out aoe animations, or even the boss itself. The loot in anemos was inventory clogging. Pagos was painfully slow and the map extremely punishing to navigate and most of the extra rewards set to 0.1% drop.

They put work into making it better for Pyros and Hydatos, they'd just gone overboard with Pagos and needed to tone it down, iron out the bumps and make it more enjoyable and group friendly. So instead they scrapped the entire thing, did a full u-turn and made the complete opposite next expansion. Not what we asked for and nothing like any of the feedback we gave.

To be honest, I think this was just...the catch-up stage. I also have heard some people state they believe this was purposely planned to be an easy relic stage because it would be coinciding with the FF7 Remake release, and they are hoping people will play that, which is understandable.

The first stage of relics are usually not super involved; but subsequent ones will be harder. Honestly, just kick back, enjoy your easy relic for now, and relax a little!

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Originally Posted by Granyala

Still, there is no pleasing people or winning in this kind of scenario.
If they make it a FATE grind-> people bitch
If they make it a tome grind-> people bitch
If they make another Eureka -> people would grab molotovs and pitchforks and raid their HQ

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To be fair that is because a lot of Eureka was just an fancier fate grind, especially in the early stages.

But imo tomes and fates get a lot of hate because they are by far the laziest thing they can do. Something different and new would be much more welcome, and I cannot stress this enough, well tested by non developers without developer tools this is why public test servers are so incredibly important. Think of all the pitfalls they could avoid with some good public testing. From Eureka to Blue Mage, they could have saved themselves from getting so much ire.

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Originally Posted by Lium

Everyone complained about Eureka, too. That it was a long boring grind. Now lots of people are complaining that this is too short. Never mind that this is just the first step.
And then when the next step goes live and people see the INSANE AMOUNT OF GRIND we’ll have to do, everyone will also complain about it.
So the devs are damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

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No, the devs are not damned if they do or damned if they don't. The issue (at least for me) is that the devs choose one or the other; they go for the extreme grind or they go for the participation trophy. I would like something in the middle.. give me some things to do that might take me a casual week to do or a hardcore day.

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Originally Posted by Granyala

Imho, they should have done what they did for the DOL/DOH relics and implement the first augmentation stage along with the introductory stage.
That way, after a while, they could up the item level to 490, so that it doesn't feel so outdated if you have a tome weapon.

Still, there is no pleasing people or winning in this kind of scenario.
If they make it a FATE grind-> people bitch
If they make it a tome grind-> people bitch
If they make another Eureka -> people would grab molotovs and pitchforks and raid their HQ

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Is it too much to ask for a little more creativity? Yes, there will be some people who complaint regardless but that doesn't inherently make the criticism unwarranted. It isn't even those specific activities people often take issue with but how they utilized/implemented. FATEs are essentially trash mobs with beefier hit points and a level sync. In a game where combat is somewhat generic and reliant more on a mechanical dance, making a grind where you need to kill thousands of mobs gets boring. This is what made Eureka suffer, especially in Pagos. It was glorified FATE farming except even regular mobs also had massive HP totals (at least in Pagos). You can make mob or tome grinds decently engaging if the grind itself is well hidden. Notice how people complained far less about Pyros because the Logos system helped make things a bit more interesting.

Simply put. Making a quest series or zone where we grind 20,000 tomestones is boring. Add a little more spice to that grind and you won't notice it as much because you're actually enjoying the content.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

I think they've missed entirely why we complained about Eureka.

It wasn't because it was a long grind. It was because it was designed poorly. It had no party level synch so it heavily discouraged grinding mobs with friends. Mob itself grinding was slow, very wearing over time with ff14's rotations and inferior to Fates. We were stripped of mounts, aetherytes were locked off and we were punished for dc'ing or not having a healer nearby to rez. The mobs weren't mechanically challenging, just insanely OP until you reached their level and they suddenly became target dummies. Fates were very messy because the game can't handle 200 people at once and it phased out aoe animations, or even the boss itself. The loot in anemos was inventory clogging. Pagos was painfully slow and the map extremely punishing to navigate and most of the extra rewards set to 0.1% drop.

They put work into making it better for Pyros and Hydatos, they'd just gone overboard with Pagos and needed to tone it down, iron out the bumps and make it more enjoyable and group friendly. So instead they scrapped the entire thing, did a full u-turn and made the complete opposite next expansion. Not what we asked for and nothing like any of the feedback we gave.

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lemme add some points why Eureka was bad:
- the grind was locked behind another grind. You were only really able to properly work on your weapon after finishing grinding up your elemental lvl
- each step was effectively the same. Either farm fates or chain kill trash mobs for crystals, then farm more fates or chain kill trash mobs for light
- you could only ever work on one step at the same time. With the relic and anima weapons you were able to work on different steps for multiple weapons at the same time, and you could prepare needed materials beforehand. But with Eureka you were locked to one zone and step at a time

Only reason you seem to see more positive posts about Eureka now is because of the arsenal at the very end, but even that one came with a fair share of bad points. (it was announced as just an optional challenge with no relation to the Eureka story, yet it not only did continue the story but also invalidated the player choice at the end of Hydatos; the whole discord premades and portal sniping drama)

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Originally Posted by swiss_Momo

- each step was effectively the same. Either farm fates or chain kill trash mobs for crystals, then farm more fates or chain kill trash mobs for light
- you could only ever work on one step at the same time. With the relic and anima weapons you were able to work on different steps for multiple weapons at the same time, and you could prepare needed materials beforehand. But with Eureka you were locked to one zone and step at a time

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first one alot of relics was like this
ARR relics you had to light farm twice
and second ones not even true you can work on multiple weapons at once only difference is you had to swap zones but you could still have a couple going at once and you didnt even need to be said class to upgrade it nor did you have to take a quest every time

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

They put work into making it better for Pyros and Hydatos, they'd just gone overboard with Pagos and needed to tone it down, iron out the bumps and make it more enjoyable and group friendly. So instead they scrapped the entire thing, did a full u-turn and made the complete opposite next expansion. Not what we asked for and nothing like any of the feedback we gave.

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To be honest the feedback was more "eureka sucks its bad remove it" also we were told we'll get a new eureka like this expansion with a non eureka path for people who disliked it during the 5.2 LL iirc.

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Originally Posted by Granyala

Still, there is no pleasing people or winning in this kind of scenario.
If they make it a FATE grind-> people bitch
If they make it a tome grind-> people bitch
If they make another Eureka -> people would grab molotovs and pitchforks and raid their HQ

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The worst bit is realizing that I am one of those. Present me most grinds and I will not touch it with a 10 feet pole. Now they have tied it to the story and I feel salty. I finally get some answers for things i've been wanting to know for years and it's there... attached to the relic. Which I avoid like the plague. The ammount of resentment I will have if I get baited into a grind fest because there is (to me) important story locked behind it will be immesurable. So I will sit and wait. I will probably only do them when I find out how much of the story is actually locked behind it and/or if i really like the looks of some relics (doubful. I've never liked the looks of a single relic)

I believe people should be appropriately rewarded for the work they put in. If you want to do savage for the best gear / dyable stuff and weapons then do it. Same thing for Ultimate. Same thing for relics. Same thing for Eureka. Did I dislike some of those things? yes, but i don't resent the people who worked and got them because they found it to be worth their time.

I do get a bit upset when they sprinkle content with shinies that although admittedly optional still trigger player's fear of missing out and forces them into content they dislike. this is how i will feel if a good chunk of lore is locked behind the new relics.

Thus I am disheartened... For I have realized I am one of those people that no matter what I will never be pleased with what they do with the relics. They just can't win and that is kind of sad.

They could have just made the quest point to some existing content and told us to kill it 150 times. A lot of people are arguing for quantity over quality here. We need to be careful with demanding soul-crushing arbitrary grinds just to keep us busy, just more of the same. They get some appreciation points from me for not making this expansion's starter quest identical to that of any previous expansion. They should always aim to make side content fresh and surprising.

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EVERY OTHER RELIC WEAPON QUESTLINE was better than this. EASILY.

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Anima weapons took more time for the player to earn, but from a development point of view was easier since it added zero new instances across the entire series. Relic Reborn added just 2 instances (chimera, hydra) which are not up to the same quality as Save the Queen's solo instance and extreme trial. Then there's the polarising Eureka which was at least something different and a large dev effort; Save the Queen is actually getting some kind of field instance (pending corona delays) of its own which makes this complaining a bit premature. The 5.25 patch notes do warn you that if you choose to undertake this quest it will take a considerable amount of time to complete later stages, so yeah timesinks will happen. We're just on the introduction quest, peoples.

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Originally Posted by Lium

Everyone complained about Eureka, too. That it was a long boring grind. Now lots of people are complaining that this is too short. Never mind that this is just the first step.

And then when the next step goes live and people see the INSANE AMOUNT OF GRIND we’ll have to do, everyone will also complain about it.

So the devs are damned if they do, damned if they don’t.

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Or maybe the devs could go a middle road? Not these extremes? We dont need a boring mindless grind like Eureka (and the biggest turn offs were the fact that it was the only way to get the relic and that it was purely fates in a new zone) but also not something that is done in one hour and most of that are cutscenes and a solo fight..so will there always be complainers? Of course nothing will ever be perfect for anyone..the thing the devs have to find is a solution that can be fun for a big amount of those that do the relic..

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Originally Posted by Sesera

To be honest the feedback was more "eureka sucks its bad remove it" also we were told we'll get a new eureka like this expansion with a non eureka path for people who disliked it during the 5.2 LL iirc.

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No thats not true...there were huge threats with lots of people (even those that enjoyed it) who posted their view on what could have been done better..it was not just "it sucks". And at least one new eureka but with a path open to do different is already taken in some of our points. Because for Eureka you had to do it and only it.

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Originally Posted by Duskane

first one alot of relics was like this
ARR relics you had to light farm twice
and second ones not even true you can work on multiple weapons at once only difference is you had to swap zones but you could still have a couple going at once and you didnt even need to be said class to upgrade it nor did you have to take a quest every time

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you're slightly misunderstanding me. Sure, you could have multiple Eureka weapons in progress, but you can only actively work at at one specific step & zone at a time. With ARR relics for example you could run a dungeon that was both needed for the book stage and one of the zodiac quests at the same time. Or with Anima running the crystal tower weekly for aether oil would also give you a a bunch of poetics you could use for, say umbrites ect

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Originally Posted by Schan

The worst bit is realizing that I am one of those. Present me most grinds and I will not touch it with a 10 feet pole. Now they have tied it to the story and I feel salty. I finally get some answers for things i've been wanting to know for years and it's there... attached to the relic. Which I avoid like the plague. The ammount of resentment I will have if I get baited into a grind fest because there is (to me) important story locked behind it will be immesurable. So I will sit and wait. I will probably only do them when I find out how much of the story is actually locked behind it and/or if i really like the looks of some relics (doubful. I've never liked the looks of a single relic)

I believe people should be appropriately rewarded for the work they put in. If you want to do savage for the best gear / dyable stuff and weapons then do it. Same thing for Ultimate. Same thing for relics. Same thing for Eureka. Did I dislike some of those things? yes, but i don't resent the people who worked and got them because they found it to be worth their time.

I do get a bit upset when they sprinkle content with shinies that although admittedly optional still trigger player's fear of missing out and forces them into content they dislike. this is how i will feel if a good chunk of lore is locked behind the new relics.

Thus I am disheartened... For I have realized I am one of those people that no matter what I will never be pleased with what they do with the relics. They just can't win and that is kind of sad.

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Honestly,I salute you for your sincerity. It’s very rare these days for people to admit they are part of the problem. I don’t do it as often as I should, but I do it more often than not.

It’s refreshing to see someone just flat out say, “No matter what they do I’m just going to complain about it.” Really wish I could give you more than one like here.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

I think they've missed entirely why we complained about Eureka.

It wasn't because it was a long grind. It was because it was designed poorly. It had no party level synch so it heavily discouraged grinding mobs with friends. Mob itself grinding was slow, very wearing over time with ff14's rotations and inferior to Fates. We were stripped of mounts, aetherytes were locked off and we were punished for dc'ing or not having a healer nearby to rez. The mobs weren't mechanically challenging, just insanely OP until you reached their level and they suddenly became target dummies. Fates were very messy because the game can't handle 200 people at once and it phased out aoe animations, or even the boss itself. The loot in anemos was inventory clogging. Pagos was painfully slow and the map extremely punishing to navigate and most of the extra rewards set to 0.1% drop.

They put work into making it better for Pyros and Hydatos, they'd just gone overboard with Pagos and needed to tone it down, iron out the bumps and make it more enjoyable and group friendly. So instead they scrapped the entire thing, did a full u-turn and made the complete opposite next expansion. Not what we asked for and nothing like any of the feedback we gave.

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The short of it is that they tried to replicate content from an era of gaming where you were expected to do a LOT of autoattack damage, type in chat during encounters, and press significantly fewer skills inside a game where you're expected to do negligable auto-attack damage and be queueing a button press every single cooldown, and were legitimately shocked when people hated that aspect of it.

Parts of it worked, a lot of it was questionable at best.

I had a lot of fun in Anemos, and some fun in Pyros and Hydatos solo spawning NM's and doing the boss fights, but the 100% uptime requirements in parts were no bueno.

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

I think they've missed entirely why we complained about Eureka.

It wasn't because it was a long grind. It was because it was designed poorly. It had no party level synch so it heavily discouraged grinding mobs with friends. Mob itself grinding was slow, very wearing over time with ff14's rotations and inferior to Fates. We were stripped of mounts, aetherytes were locked off and we were punished for dc'ing or not having a healer nearby to rez. The mobs weren't mechanically challenging, just insanely OP until you reached their level and they suddenly became target dummies. Fates were very messy because the game can't handle 200 people at once and it phased out aoe animations, or even the boss itself. The loot in anemos was inventory clogging. Pagos was painfully slow and the map extremely punishing to navigate and most of the extra rewards set to 0.1% drop.

They put work into making it better for Pyros and Hydatos, they'd just gone overboard with Pagos and needed to tone it down, iron out the bumps and make it more enjoyable and group friendly. So instead they scrapped the entire thing, did a full u-turn and made the complete opposite next expansion. Not what we asked for and nothing like any of the feedback we gave.

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Also Pagos was intentionally designed to punish the player base for playing Anemos "wrong".

SE didn't like the FATE Train so they did everything in their power to stop it.
They restricted movement flow by using narrow corridors with densely packed mobs and cliffs you couldn't go around.
They put high level requirements on aetherytes so you couldn't get them right out of the gate.
They made a ridiculous 31 light crystal grind on top of everything else
Pagos only because bearable after 2 rounds of nerfs.

My biggest issue with Eureka? YOU COULDN'T USE THE GEAR YOU OBTAINED FROM IT! Why? Because of the freaking ilvl sync. Here's this 340+ gear with 5 materia slots you CAN'T USE IN EUREKA CONTENT because of a maximum 300 ilvl sync.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Also Pagos was intentionally designed to punish the player base for playing Anemos "wrong".

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Did they not say that by the time Anemos was released in 4.25, Pagos was already finalized and locked in for 4.35 and they couldn't do anything until after it was released?
So rather than actively punishing players, they just had wildly different expectations on how players would approach the content.

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Also Pagos was intentionally designed to punish the player base for playing Anemos "wrong".

SE didn't like the FATE Train so they did everything in their power to stop it.
They restricted movement flow by using narrow corridors with densely packed mobs and cliffs you couldn't go around.
They put high level requirements on aetherytes so you couldn't get them right out of the gate.
They made a ridiculous 31 light crystal grind on top of everything else
Pagos only because bearable after 2 rounds of nerfs.

My biggest issue with Eureka? YOU COULDN'T USE THE GEAR YOU OBTAINED FROM IT! Why? Because of the freaking ilvl sync. Here's this 340+ gear with 5 materia slots you CAN'T USE IN EUREKA CONTENT because of a maximum 300 ilvl sync.

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Off-Topic but I feel like your signature is the other way around when it comes to WoW and FFXIV.

Well, as easy as it is to buy the new relic weapons, the fact that we need to spend poetics (and we all know where we have to farm them from) is like a big bird flipping from the developers to the players.

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(and we all know where we have to farm them from)

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You can get 1k a day doing roulettes.

Or a few thousand a day doing hunts.

Or a few thousand a day running people through old raid series.

Or a chunk weekly for blue Mage quests.

Or 500 every 2-3 weeks for wonderous tales.


Theres a lot of poetics out there, and you've got months to get them.

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Originally Posted by Barraind

You can get 1k a day doing roulettes.

Or a few thousand a day doing hunts.

Or a few thousand a day running people through old raid series.

Or a chunk weekly for blue Mage quests.

Or 500 every 2-3 weeks for wonderous tales.


Theres a lot of poetics out there, and you've got months to get them.

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I think the point he was trying to make is that they mostly come from non-80 content, and implied that low level content is unfun.

Which I kinda agree with to a degree.

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Originally Posted by Lersayil

I think the point he was trying to make is that they mostly come from non-80 content, and implied that low level content is unfun.

Which I kinda agree with to a degree.

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Ding ding ding ding ding we have a winner.

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Originally Posted by SigSauer

Ding ding ding ding ding we have a winner.

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You get 360 poetics, 240 phanta, 120 allegory, 480 nuts from a 12/12 SHB A rank hunt train. A hunt train takes less than 30 minutes to complete. That's 80 level content. Join a hunt discord they'll ping you when one is starting. You can get 600 poetics from main scenerio with a new person in the party. You can be swamped with poetics simply by leveling a role with roulettes. Personally my poetics are always capped I'm actually happy to have something to do with them.

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

You get 360 poetics 240 phanta, 120 allegory, 480 nuts from an 12/12 SHB A rank hunt train. A hunt train takes less than 30 minutes to complete. That's 80 level content. Join a hunt discord they'll ping you when one is starting. You can get 600 poetics from main scenerio with a new person in the party. You can be swamped with poetics simply by leveling a role with roulettes. Personally my poetics are always capped I'm actually happy to have something to do with them.

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Oooooof

/facepalm

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Originally Posted by SigSauer

Well, as easy as it is to buy the new relic weapons, the fact that we need to spend poetics (and we all know where we have to farm them from) is like a big bird flipping from the developers to the players.

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Yes, imo they should have used the lower lv 80 tome as well, let us do levelcap stuff too >_>

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Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

So instead they scrapped the entire thing, did a full u-turn and made the complete opposite next expansion. Not what we asked for and nothing like any of the feedback we gave.

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I don't think they scrapped the whole thing. In the live letter Yoshi-p said that the next parts will be more work and that it will include a new field instance and he said this about it. "Please do not think of this as another Eureka, it is influenced by it, but it will be different." So it might be that they made this new area using the feedback. We don't know yet.

Personally I hate the relic grinds because the time investment never ever felt worth it. I got Excalibur just to see what was involved and between the RNG and straight up grinds for books, light etc it took forever. I realized I could get a weapon that will be obsolete in the next expansion....or level up maybe 2 jobs to cap in a similar amount of time.
Since that, I tried the other relics but ultimately quit due to excessive time use for little return. Eureka I enjoyed the look and feel..but it feels they wasted a very pretty zone/set of zones.

With this, I really appreciated the story. It is interesting enough that I might actually bear with the horrid grind bits if the story continues to be enjoyable... but at the same time, I really wish this had been part of the main story because I really dread the upcoming inevitable grind fest.

So, if SE’s point was to entice more people to burn playtime by offering a good story, mission accomplished..possibly.

people are funny, First step is always easy to do, we have 17 relics to do now. we have so many new people joining FFXIV Shadowbringers and this is a great way to ease the PAIN of relic, dont worry, the second step will be so much of a grind yall will be bitchin about that next.

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Originally Posted by kobe-sabi

people are funny, First step is always easy to do, we have 17 relics to do now. we have so many new people joining FFXIV Shadowbringers and this is a great way to ease the PAIN of relic, dont worry, the second step will be so much of a grind yall will be bitchin about that next.

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ARR Relic:
Find a broken quest weapon
Obtain a crafted weapon that needed dungeon mats and meld it
Defeat the Chimera Trial
Complete Amdapor keep
Defeat Beastmen
Defeat Hydra Trial
Defeat Ifrit
Defeat Garuda
Defeat Titan
Obtain Tome Items

HW Relic:
Obtain Crystals, let me quote here. This was a hardcore grind actually.

"Luminous Crystals can drop from any FATE in that zone, but you must complete them with a Gold Rating. It is completely random: you may get 3 Luminous Crystals in the space of an hour or just 1 Luminous Crystal after three days."

SB Relic:
Get Lv 20 Elemental and obtain 1300 Protean Crystals and 3 Pazuzu feathers.
The first part would probably take about 7-9 days unless you push it.

ShB Relic:
Complete 1 HM trial with npcs
Have completed old content like Ivalice raid
DONE

All other 3 Addons had a lot to do for their first step, you may argue that the SB relic i mentioned is a "finished" weapon but that is because the quest was available.
And if i go by that rule, all of the above have more to do even by allowing more steps then just the base ARR went till zenith and HW had the dungeons as well.

Asking for 1 Trial to be done that is ran with NPC's ... eh, also the repeating value of this quest is worth 1000 Poetics, im in my 2nd weak and i have 11 weapons already, i will finish it this week and most of that is simply doing msq roulette.

All they had to do was give players a 475 and gave us a grind to make it 485. It would have still given new players a good weapon and those who want to grind, some work.

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Originally Posted by kobe-sabi

people are funny, First step is always easy to do, we have 17 relics to do now. we have so many new people joining FFXIV Shadowbringers and this is a great way to ease the PAIN of relic, dont worry, the second step will be so much of a grind yall will be bitchin about that next.

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This. It's the first step...
(Less about the "grind" more about the ilevel of the relic that everyone can get)

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Originally Posted by Voidedge_Ragna

HW Relic:
Obtain Crystals, let me quote here. This was a hardcore grind actually.

"Luminous Crystals can drop from any FATE in that zone, but you must complete them with a Gold Rating. It is completely random: you may get 3 Luminous Crystals in the space of an hour or just 1 Luminous Crystal after three days."

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Please be fair here and mention the alternative way to complete the first step of the HW-relic: Turning in the completed ARR-relic.

If you say that completing the Ivalice raid for the ShB-relic is "old content" and that the first step in HW wasnt, thats simply not true for quite a lot of people. The first HW-step could be completly skipped by anyone who had their ARR relic at hand - I've never done the HW-FATE grind and still got 3 HW-relics. My first HW-step boiled down to even less content than the first ShB-step - unless you count in that I had to grind out my ARR-relic first, which at that point was old content... in which case one should also count that you need to complete the whole Ivalice-Saga for ShB.

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Originally Posted by Vidu

Please be fair here and mention the alternative way to complete the first step of the HW-relic: Turning in the completed ARR-relic.

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Sorry yea ... but thats not quite it, Relic in ARR was not something everyone had 3 of yet alone one. To reason that you can trade in your Zeta is about the same as asking a player to trade in their Eureka weapon. Most dont have it. To go a step further and say "well its old content" and to compare it with 3 lv 70 raids is pushing it.

About ARR relics, since i recently did my sword and shield for a glam because there was nothing to do. Take about 20h, so you can plan it out neatly over a week w/o hating yourself and spent about 500k give or take and thats now, back then it was months.

To say that "well if you have your ARR Relic the HW relic was so easy to get" is wrong.

But you know what, lets have a look at HW in detail ... Patch 3.>1<5

Crystal farm ... which we will ignore for the sake that we believe everyone had a free relic.
Run every HW dungeon, okay so thats prolly eh 3-4h no to bad.
And ... hmm unidentified items? ... oh yea that about 1 week per weapon grind ... if you pushed it.

The relic we got is
Free
Late
and has only 1 step

Its the first time we got only a base quest and nothing else.

I don't care to be honest with you. I got an anima weapon because I wanted it but eureka did not appeal to me at all and the last thing I wanted to do was spend hours upon hours grinding content that I considered to be trash. Plus, I love EX trials and savage raids so this gives me something else to do and master. Hopefully future steps in this relic will involve things like poetics grinding and not garbage like Eureka. That would be nice.

Lol no, heavensward first step was not a harddcore grind before it was nerfed, it was very fast even then and eureka first step took maybe 1-2 days but once you did that you pretty much had the relic for evey class and not just for 1 class.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Voidedge_Ragna

*Snip*
Its the first time we got only a base quest and nothing else.

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I'm kinda glad you said that, because I've been thinking about what we actually got for each relic quest - and by that I mean what we got in new content that was added, not how long it took you to get your relic.
I'm saying this because I think its not only important to look at how long your relic kept you busy, but also to look at how long it kept the devs busy - so to speak. Personally I dont mind a grind (and I got my relics in every single expansion), but I dont think that slapping a grind and/or RNG on to something and making you spend more time on your weapon that way actually make for good content - or for new content. You're free to disagree with me here, but I dont think that obtaining a relic gets better because it took me longer to obtain it - specially when the time is spend with repeating old content over and over again.

So, with that said, lets look at the first relic steps again and see what they added to the game:

A Realm Reborn
- 9 new weapon models (one for each job at the time - Ninja was added later) - I suppose you could argue 18, if you wanted to count the "unfinished weapons", but since they're the same model with just slightly different colours that feels like nit-picking to me...
- 2 new trials - Hydra and Chimera; one of them being a re-used model from Cutters Cry, with very similar mechanics and set in a pre-existing arena (since thats just part of the normal Coerthas map)
- Tomestone Items (being only an icon...)
- Quest with some nice lore-bits for each weapon (and the introduction of Gerolt and Rowena - unless they were already in 1.0, which I dont know anything about)
Everything else was already in the game and just got re-used.

Heavensward
- 13 new weapon models
- 2 new NPCs... I guess (Ardashir and Syndony - and I'm only counting them here to mention at least something)
- Crystals added as drops to pre-existing FATEs
- Quest being more or less non-existing
...thats it. No actual new content at all. Sure, it adds a huge grind, but basically without any development required whatsoever.

Stormblood
- 15 "new" weapon models (actually the artifact weapons we already had, but now dyeable)
- Eureka: Anemos - a whole new area that came with a bunch of extra-stuff, like special item drops etc.
- Dyeable Artifact gear
- Quest being rather bare-bone

Shadowbringers
- 17 new weapon models
- a new (but admittely small) area (but with new music! Scroll, please!)
- a relatively long solo-instance (design-wise this could have passed or been used as a small dungeon if more trash mobs had been added)
- Long, lore-heavy quest with a bunch of new NPCs and some resolve for old NPCs
- optional EX-trial to unlock dyeable AF-gear

My point is: While Shadowbringers might have been the expansion in which we got our relic-weapon the fastest, its not the expansion that added the least content - they just did away with some "artificial gates" like FATE-RNG- heaven and tomestone-grind (a grind that only makes you repeat old content and nothing else).
If you wanted to be just kept busy with "something" this relic is indeed doing a poor job for you - until now, we'll see about the next steps... but personally I'd argue that I rather have a "quick" quest like this, with some optional, midley challenging content than the FATE-grind in HW - which might have taken you longer, but was much more lazy in terms of development.

Just making us repeat old content again and again to grind more poetics to buy some more items to get a better weapon - basically what ARR and HW did - isnt to entertaining for me. And just because it took longer to complete doesnt make it better.
We didnt get all that much in ARR or HW either if you look at what we actually got, not at what we had to do and how long that might have took us to complete. They could have easly slapped something like a RNG-FATE grind or some nonsense like that onto this relic ("To charge the 'Memory Crystal thing*' it needs to be exposed to battle - could you please go and complete 10 FATEs in each area thats currently in the game?" - *I forgot what that Crystal thing is called, sorry). But at least I'm happy they didnt and instead "just" gave us a more involved quest.
(I will admit that the relic base quest we got here is nothing compared to Stormbloods Eurkea - seeing how controverse Anemos still was, partly thanks to their sloppy execution and breaking with the tradition that you can obtain a relic-weapon solo, I can see why they dont release a second Eureka straight away, though...)

TL;DR.: For me its not so much about how long the relic keeps me busy - I'd rather not be kept busy by mindless grinds of old content for no other purpose than being kept busy - but how much new content was added. Looking at it from this perspective, Shadowbringers is actually not doing to bad...
You're free to disagree, though - I most likely wont understand why people are so eager to just farm old dungeons for tomestones or pray that the next FATE might drop the thing they need...

This is the first step in the process. Who knows how many other steps there will be to get a "Complete" relic weapon. We don't know how much of a grind it will be and what we will need to do. But yet here we are, comparing it to past relic quests when ShB relic just started. Very special community indeed. We should only be comparing things that are both complete. Just because the first process was simple doesn't mean the rest of the relic quests will follow as such. This relic may be more complex, who knows. Quit jumping to conclusions and wait.