Devs - Is the Zodiac questline going to be nerfed in the near future?

The Zodiac questline requires an enormous amount of time to complete. Some have finished and many are still working on it. Per the recent letter from the producer, the dev team is looking into the difficulty of the Zodiac questline. Does this signal that a nerf is on the horizon?

If the Zodiac questline is nerfed, it is going to upset many players whom slaved away to get their upgraded weapons. With the greater majority either still on the fence or currently working towards a zodiac weapon it is important that the community knows whether a nerf is coming. Every day that we don't receive an answer is just going to upset more people who might spend 30+ hours to obtain their atma only to find out that it is going to be made easier to obtain atma in the next update (same goes with myth).

So could we have more transparency? Could you let us know if you are leaning towards a nerf or not (to avoid unnecessary waste of our time)?

People who already have Animus: "Unfair i worked hard for my weapon and now you nerf it!?"
People without a Animus: "Finally i can get atma down without so much grind and time consumption!"
People who don't want easy content: "Great now the new zodiac quest is as easy as the previous relic quest gg SE catering to the casuals ofc..."

On a serious note, highly likely gonna get nerfed due to the sheer amount of people who are still collecting atma and its all based around RNG with super low rates and it seems people don't like that so expect a change of the zodiac quest in the future.

:P

What I took from the recent Letter was that they are taking this into consideration when making newer content for the Zodiac Weapons going forward. I didn't' get any impression it was to be retroactively nerfed. That's not to say they won't or can't. I just don't think it is necessary. Maybe if nobody has a animus weapon by patch 2.28 then we might want to show concern. However, seeing as players can achieve this upgrade overtime as it was announced I don't see a reason to change the entry to players at this time. We'll just have to see if SE does or not.

If they nerf it, I may rage a bit at the beginning but why not, I can get myself to work for another weapon.

13500 mythology for 9 books total. The Tidal Wave weapons are better for most peoples classes anyways so what's the point in spending 60+ hours getting a weapon that's honestly not worth it?

IMO the first relic quest was awesome. Because not everyone COULD do it. Titan HM was a HUGE milestone for many and they never could accomplish it. So yeah, that was the way to go. Having 9 book and needing to spend 60+ hours to grind them all out with the 20 things to do in each book isn't a challenge. It's a waste of time. Nothing exciting or thrilling in the books. It's just lame.

As for "many players getting upset" about a "possible" nerf... Should I be upset that I worked hard for my allagan gear? or my relic? or my myth gear? or my extreme primals gear now that they are just a faceroll and all the weeks and time spent on running the content just to get my gear just because they nerfed the fights and put coil in the DF and added Echo? No. I could care less. I did the content before nerf. I achieved the win with out needed the help. Huge playerbase is casual now. If you're gonna cry about a nerf, then wait until the nerf. If you're a true "hardcore" gamer, you should have this content completed already. None of this should affect you at all.

Look around you. You probably had allagan gear before coil went into the duty finder and it's all around you now. 1.0 was the game you're looking for. Difficult content. Not easy. Etc. Etc. That's not how they designed this game. That't not how they marketed this game. Its casual now. Keep the majority of the player base happy, the game can never fail.

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Originally Posted by KyteStones

13500 mythology for 9 books total.

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Any fool can farm 1500 myth for a book. IMHO this is 1000 times easier than trying to get a party together than can clear Titan (Hard).

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Originally Posted by KyteStones

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Oh but your forgetting, relic weapon improves over time so in the end relic will be better than tidal wave in time :P Also the first relic was awesome but was really easy too be honest, then they tried this and the grind bombed so what are they left with? increase atma drop rates where people will then most likely moan again about it being too easy and if they lower the amount of myth people will continuing moaning. There are always people who will moan with something that is added.

I for once don't find the ATMA books lame. Only lame element in the 1st stage is the FATE RNG where you depend on luck and the rare FATES in the 2nd part that make you wait too long for a 30 second FATE to pop. I hope they make adjustments to the entire quest. Although I am done with the ATMA grind and right now doing the 4th book, I would like to see whatever adjustments they come up with. Might raise the chance I upgrade another character with this quest. Right now, I do not see the slightest chance of ever wanting to do it again lol.

@KyteStones: imo it is too early to tell which way to go is better and which is not. We do not know yet what further upgrades will bring. The levi weapons might be better now, who knows if it will stay this way? If half a Year later people realize that the Relict is again BIS, they will have a hard time to go through all the updates they missed out on. Or doing the upgrades is really just a terrible waste of time lol. I do not know it yet. But I try to keep at least on par with my main char.

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Originally Posted by KyteStones

13500 mythology for 9 books total.

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The book portion isn't as bad if you think about it in individual books. You can get 500 myth a day just by doing your roulettes, so even if you did nothing but those and then logged out, you could get a book in 3 days. Given that you need 9 books, that's about 27 days, so a bit less than a month, and that's if you don't do any actual grinding on the side.

That's much better than the Atma system. Even if you split it up, you won't always get results. You can spend hours in the same zone and never see an Atma, whereas you can spend hours grinding Myth and make progress on your books. If anything needs a nerf (Or a buff, in this case), it's the Atma drop rate.

A relic that is too easy (and I don't mean time consuming) to get is not really worth to be called a relic.
To be fair, those relics are not powerful enough to be called a relic :(

I find it confusing that he straight out said not many would complete it by 2.25...and is shocked that not many have completed it by 2.25

Pretty much all other content is nerfed in following patches so why would this be any kind of surprise? Zenith originally took 3 weeks worth of myth, then myth limit rose and it would be done in 2 weeks. Coil/primals get nerfed. Darklight gear was once moderately difficult to get. The amount of myth tomes given for each duty will rise over time with new content, which will make it easier. Get over yourself, this doesn't invalidate your time spent. You got it before everyone else, that is your reward. I don't look at my coil gear like its trash now because it is so easily farmable. You still have a leg up as you will be grinding the next steps to Zodiac.

Atma rates will eventually rise, myth rates will as well. Stop worrying about what everyone else is doing and enjoy the game.

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Originally Posted by Pence

I find it confusing that he straight out said not many would complete it by 2.25...and is shocked that not many have completed it by 2.25

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That is the weird part about it that must mean there must have been a very small fraction of the population that has got animus. I think they expected more than there is now but not all having animus by 2.25.

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Originally Posted by Remus

People who already have Animus: "Unfair i worked hard for my weapon and now you nerf it!?"

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Sorry I have an animus and I'm all for this -> "We are working to increase the number of locations where materials for the next upgrade can be obtained".
What I ain't for is this -> "release of these new quests has been postponed. Our reasoning for this decision is, in brief: Many players still have yet to obtain an Animus weapon."

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Originally Posted by Gormogon

Sorry I have an animus and I'm all for this -> "We are working to increase the number of locations where materials for the next upgrade can be obtained".
What I ain't for is this -> "release of these new quests has been postponed. Our reasoning for this decision is, in brief: Many players still have yet to obtain an Animus weapon."

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like others have said. I'm baffled by this. They created this whole Atma RNG with the intent of keeping players from having an animus before 2.25 (and probably 2.3). Perhaps something was lost in translation? If not, then Yoshi is just looking for excuses..

I think atma drop rate should increase a little but with myth farming that should stay the same, I hated farming atma but I'm fine with myth farming and that shouldn't be nerfed.

I'll complete my animus tonight and I'm not going to shed a tear when it is nerfed. It needs to be fixed.

Yeah, I agree the RNG part needs tweaking as a few of the above posters have stated. Someone on my blog mentioned earlier that it is entirely possible for someone to never get their animus weapon because they never see the drops. :/ Losing out only because of bad luck (as opposed to skill) is no good (imo).

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Originally Posted by Gormogon

Sorry I have an animus and I'm all for this -> "We are working to increase the number of locations where materials for the next upgrade can be obtained".
What I ain't for is this -> "release of these new quests has been postponed. Our reasoning for this decision is, in brief: Many players still have yet to obtain an Animus weapon."

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I take it a different way, as its also a translation. Seems like the original planned route for Novus was extremely bottlenecked and that is why they are delaying it to readjust. They also have data on everyone's progress now which is valuable to rethink and readjust planned content as well as general feedback.

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Originally Posted by ReplicaX

I take it a different way, as its also a translation. Seems like the original planned route for Novus was extremely bottlenecked and that is why they are delaying it to readjust. They also have data on everyone's progress now which is valuable to rethink and readjust planned content as well as general feedback.

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Please enlighten me. How would it hurt releasing the bottlenecked version in 2.25 and the fixed version in 2.28 again?

the same can be said for people who beat twintania before all the nerfs to turn 5. Noone cares about the 1% of people who can finish content in a week. They're so few their screams can't be heard over the thousands of whispers. A nerf is not the same as a mechanical change. Echo buff is not a nerf, it's a mechanical change. Titan still dominates so there was no nerf of his ex primal fight. Just a buff to player stats, which doesn't equate to a nerf. If it did then everyone with full ilvl 100 would be nerfing titan if that was the case. (stats are kinda similar) With atma, It actually does NEED a mechanical change or at least some type of structure to make sure certain people don't sink 100 plus hours for no results while others get the same quality weapon after 12 hours.

ALSO!! stop claiming/saying/stating the first relic quest line is or was easy. It's only easy because you all are fairly close to ilvl 90 or above already and certain dungeons were infact nerfed (mechanics taken out for easier passage) or do you not remember all the FCs or groups who got rich off of the fact people couldn't down titan hm? do you not remember how happy you were when you finally downed him? or how much it cost to even get the materia for your weapon? I recall a lot of people stuck at garuda hm.

Most people didn't even have a relic the first month when they were available! We already have people with full animus so the skill is not there at all.
Just be happy they didn't require any of you to beat primals or T7 for your animus because i can promise most of you would be constantly failing with pugs or end up paying people for carries so you can keep up with the jones in mor dhona. (who only stand around with new items to show off a false sense of accomplishment)

To those baffled by the reasoning behind the delay, in total it was because

* Many players still have yet to obtain an Animus weapon.
* We would like to incorporate feedback regarding the difficulty of the Zodiac Weapon quests.
* We are working to increase the number of locations where materials for the next upgrade can be obtained.

The big thing probably being the second in regards to the first. Either the didn't expect RNG to screw people over that bad or they realized that maybe they could have made a system slightly better.

I think they should do be one of two things:
1. Make Atma drop somewhat more often and cost fewer myths. (Especially the myth cost IMO, 1500 is hilarious, how about 500?)
2. Make the Atma at least i95 with the resulting weapon damage increase (even if it keeps the same stats otherwise and still needs the books) and have the Animus be i115 or otherwise advantageous compared to the i100 drop weapons.

I've got 8 Atma but #1 certainly wouldn't make me mad.

I kind of like the idea of a hard->easy->hard->easy cycle of relic upgrades. You do a challenge to get an upgrade and the next one is just some tomestones, then a challenge, then something substantially easier.

I wouldn't mind a nerf, or better yet, an alternative to get the Atmas. I don't get it why they wont sell it for like 25k seals or something. That means if you dont get it through F.A.T.E.s you'd still need to grind some seals to buy them all.

People say "skill" when what really happened during the Relic and +1 days were people buying the pre-packaged weapon out right with materia, buying their way through the Primals and/or getting their FC to carry them while they lay dead on the ground sniffing dirt.

THAT is how the majority of the player base got their Relics. Please excuse SE for wanting to move away from "skill". Course now it was all in vain

The only part that needs nerfing is the Atma drop rate. I have my white mage Atma and may have enough tonight to buy my first book. I have no issues with the books (so far anyway), but I also love playing on my scholar, black mage and bard, and want the oppportunity to get Atma/Animus for those as well. The Atma drop rate is the only thing that could potentially make that extremely difficult for me.

As for Leviathan weapons, they might be slightly better for now, but I guarantee that won't always be the case. Look at the simple fact that even the upgraded Levi weapon (Tidal Wave version) is only a level 100. The Atma/Animus is also 100 and I'm very confident the next level will be higher, the next level possibly higher yet.

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Originally Posted by Rbstr

I think they should do be one of two things:
1. Make Atma drop somewhat more often and cost fewer myths. (Especially the myth cost IMO, 1500 is hilarious, how about 500?)
2. Make the Atma at least i95 with the resulting weapon damage increase (even if it keeps the same stats otherwise and still needs the books) and have the Animus be i115 or otherwise advantageous compared to the i100 drop weapons.

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They should in no way be that strong. Especially when it is considered the "easy" method.

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Originally Posted by TheUltimate3

They should in no way be that strong. Especially when it is considered the "easy" method.

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"Easy"? It takes a boatload more time. You can just farm Leviathan for an i95 weapon in an hour or two.
I'll give you i115 is probably too much for Animus. But the reality is that it takes a huge amount of time to get all that myth. Vastly longer than it takes to find some people to do the first couple turns of new coil.

My ONLY complain about Atma

Is FATES and RNG, the two do not mix at all.

The droprate is atrocious for many players, I'm now at 30 hrs total atma grind and only 1 Atma (Fish) to show for it, and I'm not even developing myself in any other way.

If SE gave some concession and maybe allowed me to somehow grind on my lower levels for Atma so I don't feel I just dumped 30 hrs of my precious video gaming time into the toilet I'd be happier about this.

Or maybe SE could attach some kinda extra reward for people who fate with Zenith. Better yet, maybe even make fates drop Atma Fragments so that 10/10 Atma Maiden Fragments=1 Maiden.

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the release of these new quests has been postponed. Our reasoning for this decision is, in brief:

Many players still have yet to obtain an Animus weapon.

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because ...

PEOPLE DO NOT WANT TO FATE GRIND FOR HOURS!

They already do enough of that taking second, third, forth jobs to 50. To add insult to injury the devs made some FATEs level sync to 49.



Giving something a 1% drop rate or doesn't make a a weapon harder to get and increasing a bosses HP doesn't make a fight "extreme mode" *cough*Garuda*cough*

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Originally Posted by Rbstr

"Easy"? It takes a boatload more time. You can just farm Leviathan for an i95 weapon in an hour or two.
I'll give you i115 is probably too much for Animus. But the reality is that it takes a huge amount of time to get all that myth. Vastly longer than it takes to find some people to do the first couple turns of new coil.

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Im guesing the "easy" is because you are 100% sure you'll get it, unlike fate farming. You can go days w/o seeing a single atma drop, but when you get to the books, its only a matter of time till you can buy a book. At least that's what I tought.....

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Originally Posted by Rbstr

"Easy"? It takes a boatload more time. You can just farm Leviathan for an i95 weapon in an hour or two.
I'll give you i115 is probably too much for Animus. But the reality is that it takes a huge amount of time to get all that myth. Vastly longer than it takes to find some people to do the first couple turns of new coil.

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Originally Posted by Xandim

Im guesing the "easy" is because you are 100% sure you'll get it, unlike fate farming. You can go days w/o seeing a single atma drop, but when you get to the books, its only a matter of time till you can buy a book. At least that's what I tought.....

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You are correct.

It seems a logical step to increase the drop rate of the atmas. It is, largely, the big problem with the patch. This is due to the perceived unfairness of the drop rate. People don't seem to mind the books because they can see exactly what they need to do in order to finish them. They can see progress being made. Currently, with the atma portion of the quest, you don't have that.

They can raise the atma drop % from 1% to 5% making it 5x quicker and people will still rage. Some believe RNG is the devil and here to ruin their lives.

I'm not sure if the drop rate will be increased for ATMA, but they never should have hooked it to FATES in the first place. Rather than RNG grind, I would have rather had very difficult fights against monsters that held the ATMA. I'm not talking about something you can drag 8 people into and roflstomp, but something along the lines of (And the other 2.0 beta players know what I'm talking about) the fight against the voidsent at level 16-20. I believe that level of difficulty juiced up and packaged as single player content would be a far better step with the ATMA... But then again, I don't work for SE. :D

To be clear, I don't mind RNG. What I mind is RNG that's hooked to a mechanic that is dull and I literally have to "distract myself" while doing it to not get bored. I'm sorry but I thought a video game was supposed to serve as a distraction from real life in exchange for entertainment. Not a second job I have to pay for.

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Originally Posted by Gormogon

Please enlighten me. How would it hurt releasing the bottlenecked version in 2.25 and the fixed version in 2.28 again?

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Yoshi already mentioned it. Obviously there are too many negatives for them to release it on schedule as it is unbalanced.

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We are working to ensure that the required materials can be obtained through various means, so we ask that you wait just a little longer until everything is properly balanced.

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Originally Posted by ReplicaX

Yoshi already mentioned it. Obviously there are too many negatives for them to release it on schedule as it is unbalanced.

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The only negative they mentioned is giving a justifiable reason for those that do not want to commit to a grind.

I don't know why you assume I did not read that statement because I did. I read all of it and overall it is nothing but a run around.

Bottom Line. They've seen a month's worth of feedback. They should be able to tell us if they are planning on increasing the atma drop rate. The faster they provide us with this information the better.

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Originally Posted by Ramzal

I'm not sure if the drop rate will be increased for ATMA, but they never should have hooked it to FATES in the first place. Rather than RNG grind, I would have rather had very difficult fights against monsters that held the ATMA. I'm not talking about something you can drag 8 people into and roflstomp, but something along the lines of (And the other 2.0 beta players know what I'm talking about) the fight against the voidsent at level 16-20. I believe that level of difficulty juiced up and packaged as single player content would be a far better step with the ATMA... But then again, I don't work for SE. :D

To be clear, I don't mind RNG. What I mind is RNG that's hooked to a mechanic that is dull and I literally have to "distract myself" while doing it to not get bored. I'm sorry but I thought a video game was supposed to serve as a distraction from real life in exchange for entertainment. Not a second job I have to pay for.

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I'm not sure that fighting extremely hard monsters with 8 people while retaining the current RNG (meaning you probably won't get the atma and if you get it, your others partners probably won't and I'm not sure people are nice enough to stay around to help for hours and hours) would improve people's mood.

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Originally Posted by MasamuneBranford

Bottom Line. They've seen a month's worth of feedback. They should be able to tell us if they are planning on increasing the atma drop rate. The faster they provide us with this information the better.

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Seems like there's been a decrease on communication. Wonder what happened.