Animus weapon quests and how they exemplify everything that's wrong with the game
I'll just jump to the worst part of the animus weapon quests: FATEs. My girlfriend and I watched Netflix for like 5-6 hours last night waiting for two different FATEs to pop in Coerthas: "Tower of Power" and "The Taste of Fear". Then we fell asleep. Then we woke up. And now 1-2 hours later, we still haven't seen either one. Are you serious?
Every time I see the director talk about the "difficulty" of the animus quests, I get angry. There's no difficulty here. This is a mindless grind, a time sink. There's nothing fun, interesting, or challenging about the animus quests. They just take a lot of time. And everything to do with FATEs is even worse. Is it truly necessary to wait half a day in a zone waiting for a FATE to pop? Do you think this is going to make people want to keep playing your game? Sure, I could DF some dungeons while I wait, but then I'll have left the zone, and it's entirely possible it will pop while I'm gone, making me wait in the same spot even longer, except now I'll probably have to leave eventually to repair or something. Thanks!
Bottom line, these quests show how little the dev team values the time of the player. It is a severe lack of respect.
Delving a little deeper, I feel this is actually representative of a flawed vision for the game. The emphasis is far too much on "casual play". The idea that "everyone should be able to do all content" is just... wrong. Some people just won't be good enough to do this or that. The echo buff is, itself, kind of ridiculous. Besides which, echo buffs don't help you dodge mechanics, so who even cares? You could have +100% echo buff for Coil, and if people can't dodge Twisters or Dive Bombs, they still aren't doing Turn 5. I always thought echo buff was funny to begin with, because the content should already become easier because people are getting better gear. You can get a level 95 weapon from Leviathan. You can get level 90 armor from soldiery. You can get a level 100 weapon from animus. If those, alone, don't give you enough of an edge to clear stuff from Turn 5, do you even deserve to clear it? But no, ON TOP OF THAT ALREADY SUBSTANTIAL INCREASE, you also get echo buffs.
I believe the dev team should completely give up on the idea that all content will satisfy all players, or that all players even want to do all content, and simply focus on content for different groups. Make stuff that caters to more casual players, and make stuff that caters to more hardcore players. There will be a lot of overlap, but there's no particular need to try to make every single piece of content all things to all people. For example, why try to force us to do FATEs? I know the dev team is in love with them for some reason, but they aren't very fun. There's effectively no difference from "FATE 1" and "FATE 187". You just run up and zerg mobs. It's really boring, with no strategy, and yet the dev team thinks it's like the crown jewel of the game, the BEST PART of the game. Well, it's not. It would need to be strategically interesting instead of just a grind for that to happen. Besides which, I don't even see the point in making us do FATEs for animus books. The dungeons you could be like, you are forcing us to do dungeons to help people who wouldn't get it done otherwise because no one is queueing for it, but FATEs? You often have to try to solo those damn things for your animus books, which can be rather challenging depending on job. Awesome.
But, back to more difficult content... If people can't clear something, tough. Unless you plan to remove all the mechanics, they are going to continue not being able to clear it... forever. That's just life. Really this game needs more skill-based objectives. It's very frustrating that the "beginner" level 100 weapons are: Animus weapon, and Tidal weapon. The animus weapon takes a million years or mindless grinding. The tidal weapon requires you to have skill, and clear a well thought out encounter (Leviathan, and primals in general, may very well be the very best well designed content in the game), but then you have this awesome 1% or less drop rate on the mirror (and on the mounts, somehow). Whereas if you clear Second Coil, you can have a level 110 weapon in the first week if you're lucky on rolls. Ok...
I thought we had gotten over the whole 1% drop rate thing. I've cleared Leviathan literally over 100+ times. I suspect I'll have cleared it 1,000+ times before I ever get a mirror. What does it prove, making me fight the random number generator for so long?
People need reasonable goals, or eventually, they will quit. People won't put up with stupid grinding, waiting half a day for FATEs, or 1% drop rates forever. They'll eventually say to themselves one day "This game is awful, doesn't respect me or my time, and I need to stop playing it for the sake of my own sanity."
I understand if you're just trying to draw things out until the expansion or something when you can add a lot of content all at once, and hopefully give players a lot to do and make this a real game instead of just a grind fest, but the methods used to do so are simply too severe, and completely ignore the possibly greatest strength of the game: That you can play any job you want.
That's right! If you increased drop rates, and made things less of a boring grind, people would still be running through your content a lot, because they would then feel they have the time to gear out multiple jobs. The key difference being, they would feel like they were actually accomplishing something, and be happy instead of angry.
Think about that next time you decide to make the awful decision to force someone to wait 6+ hours for a FATE, or clear content 300+ times to maybe see a drop for the first time and then lose lot on it. It was terrible in 1.0 (the drop rate), and it's terrible now. Just stop doing it. Please. Please. Please. I want to love this game, but you seem intent on making it impossible for me to continue doing so.