[Feedback Relic Weapon] SE needs to change their method with Relics.

Hi everyone, before I start this is not really a "complaint" that grinding etc. it's more that I feel like, Stormblood showed a face of mmorpg, which technically isn't really that amazing for our current time.


Now if we think back to the start of ffxiv, or even other games such as WoW vanilla, it is true that you could play day in and day night, raiding could take... hours.. Yes. those were the times you could grind grind and grind, but these days companies tend to make it very simple to make it user-friendly so a bigger crowd can join the game.

With this mind at hand, we need to realize that Grinding, is the old ways,and 1 thing is certain Final Fantasy has always been an amazing Story focused mmorpg. It is litterally what differs it from mmo's like WoW. The story itself is amazing.

So please,- future relics, is it possible that it can simple be a quest line that follows a lore/story. Now i'm not saying it should just be 3-4 quest and that part is done, no, feel free to make challenging contents, or limit it behind several tasks, but do not make us grind for it.

A weapon that grows stronger on us by time and question is the most satisfying feeling when you follow a story, where each step takes you closer to the ultima weapon of choice.

Thank you for reading my feedback. I really hope that "Shadowbringers" will have a new approach of Relic Completion.

The thing is, unless they make it that much of a grind, one of two things will happen. One, it will be just a meh weapon. Otherwise, option #2 happens - no other weapon can even come close.
The relic weapons, until the Eureka questline, did have a storyline attached to them through which the weapon grows. And they were introduced as an alternative to raid weapons, where the grinding is the alternative to pitting yourself against Savage.

Unless they overhaul the entire gear system - which they're unlikely to do - relics won't be locked behind any less of a grind than they are already (at least, not while they're relevant). Hopefully we'll never see anything the likes of Eureka again, at least not in relation to the relic.

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Originally Posted by Ayumi_Sandara

Hi everyone, before I start this is not really a "complaint" that grinding etc. it's more that I feel like, Stormblood showed a face of mmorpg, which technically isn't really that amazing for our current time.


Now if we think back to the start of ffxiv, or even other games such as WoW vanilla, it is true that you could play day in and day night, raiding could take... hours.. Yes. those were the times you could grind grind and grind, but these days companies tend to make it very simple to make it user-friendly so a bigger crowd can join the game.

With this mind at hand, we need to realize that Grinding, is the old ways,and 1 thing is certain Final Fantasy has always been an amazing Story focused mmorpg. It is litterally what differs it from mmo's like WoW. The story itself is amazing.

So please,- future relics, is it possible that it can simple be a quest line that follows a lore/story. Now i'm not saying it should just be 3-4 quest and that part is done, no, feel free to make challenging contents, or limit it behind several tasks, but do not make us grind for it.

A weapon that grows stronger on us by time and question is the most satisfying feeling when you follow a story, where each step takes you closer to the ultima weapon of choice.

Thank you for reading my feedback. I really hope that "Shadowbringers" will have a new approach of Relic Completion.

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In 2.0, it actually started like you said, with a quest line that had some tasks but not really grindy - and had some "trials" - somewhat mildly difficult fights for their time (Chimera, Hydra, Ifrit/Garuda HM). Then people hit Titan HM and I'm assuming they analyzed the amount of people that got through that and decided to change it.

SE then changed the relic steps after that to just be an assortment of easy repetitive grinds (FATE atma, books, alexandrite, 2000 lights, dungeon rng items, mahatma lights, etc) and some amount of gil/crafting stuff since then they have reused that for anima as well. Some combination of tome grinding or tasks that everyone could do but just took a while.

People said after anima they were tired of doing repetitive tome grinding and whatever, so they tried this Eureka thing. The current light grinding is basically the same IMO, you're just doing repetitive grinding in a new zone instead with less variety.

AFAIK the concept of the weapon is that it takes long to get, (exchanging time for power) but will be comparable to other weapons as it is being upgraded.

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Originally Posted by Ayumi_Sandara

So please,- future relics, is it possible that it can simple be a quest line that follows a lore/story. Now i'm not saying it should just be 3-4 quest and that part is done, no, feel free to make challenging contents, or limit it behind several tasks, but do not make us grind for it.

A weapon that grows stronger on us by time and question is the most satisfying feeling when you follow a story, where each step takes you closer to the ultima weapon of choice.

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I understand that you want a weapon wich grows stronger over time,

but when you want a non-grind weapon we already have weapons from Ex-Primals, Savage Raids and Ultimate Raids. These are rewards for challenging content. The relic grind is an alternative wich doesn't involve challenging content. Please don't take away that alternative.

I actually like grind and I hate raiding. And the relic grind is one of my favorite things to do in this game.

What you are requesting here is comparable to a request from me to remove raids from the game, because I don't like them. There is different content for different kinds of players. And some players actually like grinding, even in this age.

Or you can just start raiding and get the best weapon and gear the game has to offer at the start of every raid tier.

Nothing says they need to have only one relic weapon per expansion. Or that it has to be called "Relic." There's room for a solo created and enhanced weapon, too. It could give some life to the open world.

Thanks for the offer, but I'll have to pass.

You're asking to take away the grind? The relic is the reward for all the grinding. So you pretty much just want it given to you? There's no point gating it behind challenging content because Savage already awards BiS gear. You also don't want to gate it behind numerous walls of RNG as this will frustrate players to no end and make acquiring a relic based more on luck than will power.

So if you can think of another way other than grinding to make relic questlines a journey then I am all ears. However, I rather enjoy the grind. The ARR and HW relic questlines are so drawn out, and thrusts you into so many dungeons that they are a great way to get more practice playing the job you're getting a relic for. I haven't started on any SB relics yet, but both ARR and HW relics have a lore/story behind it - Anima is actually a separate, living entity, and the weapons do gain in strength as you progress them so I am not sure what you are asking for here?

If grinding is a thing of the past, why are mmos like BDO still popular?

Just say you don't like grinding or you don't have time. Grinding isn't all that bad, it's just in this mmo the combat is stale and boring.

We should go back to the FFXI relic system, you want to talk about a grind? Would make obtaining a relic more valuable.

I rather prefer the 2.x/3.X iterations of the relic over 4.X, since I have some friends who actually have decent comps, but they can't handle being in eureka before their coms freak the hell out, so they have to forego the relic altogether this expansion.

Being in an MMO means you WILL grind in just about everything, but Eureka was the wrong kind of grind I believe.

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Originally Posted by Unmitigated

We should go back to the FFXI relic system, you want to talk about a grind? Would make obtaining a relic more valuable.

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I think by today's gaming standards, that type of relic grind won't work. I'd wager most players wouldn't even think about going through that nonsense even if they knew they would never have to get another weapon for that job ever again. I could be wrong though.

However, I like constantly upgrading. If something I'm using has a look a like, then I just glam it over the next piece and call it a day.

This expansion Relic was introduced late and following steps of course as well. Not even worth an ounce of effort to do Relic and it is the first time i am not bothering in the 5 or so years i have been playing.
ARR Relic was much more enjoyable and had some relevance for more then a month at least, this Relic is a pure glam piece.

It was nice they tried to do something different but the implementation + how late it was introduced well...
Make Relic good once again ~

Did they even include the option to sacrifice your Anima to speed the process up even a little bit this time around?
Honest question, I gave up on Eureka after taking over an hour to get one crystal and then being allowed to see that I'd need thousands of them.

No, since it was a new expansion and a entirely new and different concept there was no desire to make having the old relic be able to skip a step for the 4.0 relic.

I miss the old relic. You could no life it and wrap it up pretty quickly. Or you could casually play the game and you would get credit just doing stuff you normally do to eventually finish your relic.

Eureka is trash.

A weapon that grows stronger as you use it should be the ideal, and in many ways, that's what we got as the relic for Heavensward. Yes certain steps were grinding, and a couple were just outright ridiculous with how much effort they took, but in general the weapon has what was asked for here. The anima weapon grew over time from barely being able to manifest itself to being able to have an entire consciousness, and a story that actually made me feel guilty that now it's just sitting in my retainer inventory considering it's a conscious being.

The nice thing there was that for many of the steps, you were able to get the weapon to grow on most steps simply by running the content you would be running anyway. You needed the previous tomestones, and occasionally poetics, but those you got from doing your roulettes. You needed to get light, which again you could get from FATEs and roulettes, or you could CHOOSE to grind it out (I got most my light from just using my weapon on weekly Alexander clears and roulettes, so it wasn't really a grind for me)

The anima weapon and relic weapon weren't perfect, and Square is trying something new, which I can appreciate. However, I do think they're just being stubborn here attaching the relic to Eureka. When Diadem failed to catch player's attention twice, it seemed like they decided to force the player base to utilize that style of content this expansion by putting the relic weapon exclusively into that content, and that's not great for the player base at large as it takes players out of doing roulettes, raids, trials, etc and puts them all into content separate from everyone else. It's bad for those who are stuck in there and hate it, and it's bad for those who aren't in there and are trying to queue in for other content. I'd say this was a fail on all points, except that it so far hasn't required crafted items.

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Originally Posted by OurMom

If grinding is a thing of the past, why are mmos like BDO still popular?

Just say you don't like grinding or you don't have time. Grinding isn't all that bad, it's just in this mmo the combat is stale and boring.

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Because BDO is centered around PvP with a LOT of progression through automation with hardly any content other than PvP. It rewards active grind, yes, but you can literally AFK and pull in millions a day (or hours). You can essentially skip a good chunk of grinding in that game and are left with leveling to 60 and then enchanting (or skip enchanting completely and just pre-order/snipe enchanted gear from the market board).

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Originally Posted by Unmitigated

We should go back to the FFXI relic system, you want to talk about a grind? Would make obtaining a relic more valuable.

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People dont want to put effort into things they just want it asap

I’ve said this before in a few threads. 2.x and 3.x where grinds also, but it was fine.
Obviously players would always complain of certain steps but overall it was fine.

Eureka is completely different system that for me, personally, I don’t like. What I don’t like I don’t play.

So like others for me relics in Stormblood is NONcontent.

:(

I think you miss what OP was saying. We have discussions on what we want, and mostly don't want in a relic quest, what OP was saying is, could we have a story again that is tied to the relic itself?
2.0 and 3.0 relic felt like I'm doing these quests -for- a relic. I especially liked 3.0 with how you interacted with the anima, got to chose if it's male or female voice, I wish they did more with it but it still made the whole process feel all the more personal.

FF14's strongest point is story and lately that's been lacking imo.
4.0 relic to me felt like, I'm helping Krile solving the isle of Val mystery cause I'm the WoL and I'm getting shiny weapon on the way as a bonus. The two stories don't feel tied together, maybe they will connect at the end, who knows. The relic just doesn't feel like a relic.

At this point I would rather have had an ARR style grind to get the weapons. The only thing I like about Eureka is that I don't have to play a job to get that jobs weapon. I can do it all as healer and/or tank.

I don't enjoy most DPS classes but I kinda want a few of the weapons because they look cool.

The relic system should be and always should have been expanding upon your current relic. I totally understand that this is not fair for newcomers, and new jobs have to be factored in, which is why I think relics shouldn't be a questline woven between all jobs, but rather tied to each specific job. This would also grant unique storylines for each job's relic. This equates to more resource time from the devs, but is it not worth it in this case?

Players asked for a changeup when it came to relics, and now here we are thinking that keeping things the same would've been better, or at least made things to keep old content relevant. But had SE kept everything exactly the same, we would be hearing those complaints as well. When I think about it deeply though, all players were really asking for is to take away the damn RNG element out of the relic questline, and make things unique for each job. It honestly is not a whole lot to ask for, and in the time it took the devs to develop Eureka, they could have accomplished this and much more; but they chose to over complicate things as usual.

Gonna grab my popcorn for the upcoming 4.4 patch ^^

Making things job specific is tricky because it's going to get more and more investment as time passes and more jobs are introduced. That said, I would like to see more personal flavors like there was for the Zodiac weapons, where while you didn't get a truly unique quest, there was a lot of lore and flavor that differed depending on what job you were getting the weapon for. Not all jobs had to kill the same adds, and the story told about the original weapon was different. As much as I liked the Anima storyline, that sort of uniqueness was missing. It would've been interesting to see the Anima change based on what job you were running, with an Anima housing a battleaxe differing greatly in personality from one housing a WHM's cane, or even that one differing from the Anima in the BLM's staff.

personally I would rather a combo of ARR and Heavensward for Relic grind. It encourages players grinding out the Relic to do older content which helps new players. Eureka dosn't...and once Stormblood is past no one will do Eureka its like diadem there is zero need to go in. The biggest nwgative effect I have seen is people not having an insentive to do early stormblood content like omegascape. my friend just reach 70 so we taught we get him some gear on omega scape normal and then unlock stigmascape....no one was doing it an hour wait for omegascape 1..... least with arr and hw relic people did older content for the grind....

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Originally Posted by OurMom

If grinding is a thing of the past, why are mmos like BDO still popular?

Just say you don't like grinding or you don't have time. Grinding isn't all that bad, it's just in this mmo the combat is stale and boring.

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Not so much anymore. Much P2W

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Originally Posted by Kogekigami

The biggest nwgative effect I have seen is people not having an insentive to do early stormblood content like omegascape. my friend just reach 70 so we taught we get him some gear on omega scape normal and then unlock stigmascape....no one was doing it an hour wait for omegascape 1..... least with arr and hw relic people did older content for the grind....

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That is a general problem the game has with older content (this not only exclusive to Stormblood). Unless said content is in one of the more popular roulettes newcomers fact Duty Finder times of 60 minutes+. This affects most HW/SW trials and the older normal raids in SB. This is a problem that SE needs to address, maybe by creating new roulettes with incentives to run them ? Because it's really off-putting for new players to be stuck in hour long queues on their story progression.

The whole gearing progression we have since ARR is out of place since the decision to have the difficulty curve aliviated during Creator. Some of the additions we have gotten since were nice, but the core of it just fell apart long ago and made it all meaningless. If you raid you've no reason to do casual stuff. If you're ok with doing casual stuff and getting gear late, you've no reason to raid. Crafted sets are an abomination that make racers have no need for gear drops and turn clear races into crafting racing.

Then we get to relics, if you're raiding why get them? If you aren't raiding.... why get them? If the end goal is a strong piece of gear, you can get better stuff with less effort on raids lately, if not, it is just a massive grind for tidbits of story and glamour, and a promisse of the best gear when all the game's content is long gone and old and we prepare to the expansion when the relic becomes leveling gear.

At least later relics made players populate older content for new players, had stages you could progress by just playing regular content. But now its all in its own content zones.

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Originally Posted by TalithaSolarien

That is a general problem the game has with older content (this not only exclusive to Stormblood). Unless said content is in one of the more popular roulettes newcomers fact Duty Finder times of 60 minutes+. This affects most HW/SW trials and the older normal raids in SB. This is a problem that SE needs to address, maybe by creating new roulettes with incentives to run them ? Because it's really off-putting for new players to be stuck in hour long queues on their story progression.

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indeed but the hw relic espically once a few nerfs were added had great insentives to do older content. example the dreeded crafting sage you could get those items with drops from alexander.

me and my partner spent ages working out a great relic path which gave multiple options to each stage utilizing content in the game. there so many ways to do the relic wkthout handing it to players but not making it feel to grindy by using variation.

The issue I have with the Pagos section of the relic is that this time around, the light grind is not 100%. You can be in a party that has all the original members, none have left, and everyone started at the same time that's solely farming light and you maybe fill one bar while someone else in the party hit the rng jackpot and filled three. Top that off with each weapon needs 31 crystals. I would like to get the weapons, but with it currently as it is now, I'm limiting myself to three jobs I play the most until they nerf the crystals needed or increase the light gain chance way down the line. It is what it is and I expected it to not be easy, but it's still disheartening all the same. All I can do at the moment is just wait until then.

If anything Eureka destroyed the duty finder queue for new players.

In the past the relic was used to put old players back in older content to help new players get through via roulettes and specific leveling dungeons. However now that is not the case. You have casuals who have given up on the relic because lets be honest here. Eureka is not casual friendly content.

I agree and they should go back to the old formula.

IMO the only reason Eureka has the relic in it is so the content doesnt die. Otherwise it would have been a bigger fail than diadem, and IMO diadem is better than Eureka.

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Originally Posted by Unmitigated

We should go back to the FFXI relic system, you want to talk about a grind? Would make obtaining a relic more valuable.

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Only difference ffxi relic were the best weapons in the game for years and years even after recent update i believe ffxi relic are still the best weapons for most jobs (not 100% of cause) so if did the ffxi relic stile grind here then the raid weapons and ex trial weapons would be worthless

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Originally Posted by Latarma

Only difference ffxi relic were the best weapons in the game for years and years even after recent update i believe ffxi relic are still the best weapons for most jobs (not 100% of cause) so if did the ffxi relic stile grind here then the raid weapons and ex trial weapons would be worthless

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You make an interesting point, with the whole item level system; all gear is basically trash after 6 months. Unlike Xi where people were stuck at the same place for years and years level wise where a relic weapon that offered an awesome attack were far more valuable that anything else out there and gear was carried over from new content to new content with only slight changes to setups every so often.

Relics in Eureka now better have some major purpose later on -.- for the old relics. I love the fact that your Zodiac wep could be used to skip a step, hopefully the Anima weapon will be one to pass a really grinding step in the future. Now a days seems relics is more of a pass time and really have lost it's purpose. I for one enjoyed the Anima story line and have been waiting to see how SE will proceed with it. As for Eureka the grind is even worse now. The fact that you have to be minimum lvl 34 to get Items needed makes sense to an extend. However seriously though at the very least SE should give some type of FC perk as well. Seriously 3% using a potion for XP is just sad -.-. Could we get perhaps a FC option or Gear option that will allow us to collect more Aether in the Kettle? Literally you have to do 5-6 fates to just get one full bar. Over 100 mobs over 5 levels to get somewhat decent lights, and having to wait for mutations is a pain. Sure most player raped Anemos during the first week, myself included, Got max weps and armor...yet this new grind is just as annoying as any light farming previously. Most of us don't mind doing it but at least throw us a bone. IF we are using a completed one make it easier to gather lights.

With that being said Relics where meant to be evolving weapons that would be on par with raid weps for those who really don't raid. While everyone is entitled to their own opinion, at the very least SE should be fair with relic system as well and release something along with raids. I'm sure most players can agree having to wait almost 4-10 patches is just awful.

Id prefer smt where we could use the raid/tome AND most important the primal wepons, smt like you need to clear all the ex primals or you either grind very long or gotta wait. The worst thing with eureka is ppl dont need to do anything else, so DF is basically dead. Lol my wife is leveling a healer and she has to wait 10 min smt... All the old wepons had the side effect to fill ques, it was always smt new, not all the time the same - OR you could burn AS12 till youre done, it was your choice. Now we do Eureka, only eureka, while not even needing EX roulett since tome are caped anyways...

@Derio

Well many players myself included were absolutely tired of running the same old dungeons over and over that we have already done many times so SE wanted to change it up.
I honestly blame a large portion of how late Eureka was implemented and they should have not bothered with Relic at that point as it was obsolete and will continue to be the remainder of the expansion. ARR and moreso Heavansward we were much further into Relic by this time and it had some relevance, SB it does not.
So i am not so sure that having Relic is what is keeping Eureka on life support

I don't think people in this game can really be faulted for wanting things "asap" when everything becomes obsolete in 3/6 months.

I would not mind a FFXI-tier relic grind, but it would need to produce something that actually lasts, not something that's good for like a month and then needs another, possibly even more difficult, step to catch it up.

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Originally Posted by Fynlar

I don't think people in this game can really be faulted for wanting things "asap" when everything becomes obsolete in 3/6 months.

I would not mind a FFXI-tier relic grind, but it would need to produce something that actually lasts, not something that's good for like a month and then needs another, possibly even more difficult, step to catch it up.

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Last or at a minimum make it worth it. No point in having Relic if other weapons may surpass it. FFXI relics were a real grind, and still are.

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Originally Posted by zuzu-bq

Then we get to relics, if you're raiding why get them? If you aren't raiding.... why get them? If the end goal is a strong piece of gear, you can get better stuff with less effort on raids lately, if not, it is just a massive grind for tidbits of story and glamour, and a promisse of the best gear when all the game's content is long gone and old and we prepare to the expansion when the relic becomes leveling gear.

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Relics require patience and persistence. Raid weapons, alongside personal gaming skills that not everyone has, require a DIFFERENT and, in my opinion, MUCH more frustrating sort of patience and persistence. Not only do you have to be a skilled enough player to handle the raids' content, you ALSO need to find seven other players who ALSO have enough skill to handle the raids' content. If you pug it, you have to find those seven people every time you queue. If you form or join a static, that's a whole different sort of frustration - what do you do if someone in your static is not up to the task? Heartlessly cast them aside? Try to polish a turd 'til it shines? Neither option is attractive.

And any raider that claims that even the current tier of raids are "so easy anyone can do them" clearly hasn't the foggiest idea of what the actual skill level of the general playerbase is. No, "easy" as the current raids are, they are WELL beyond the capabilities of most players who play this game. If you don't have a solid static at your back, or the luck of the gods with pick-up members, getting the Raid weapon is at LEAST as aggravating as getting a Relic weapon.

It reminds me of the whole "just skip Soar, it's not hard" fiasco during Zurvan. I joined Zurvan prog relatively late in the cycle, and even after I was getting wins regularly, I never once saw Soar skipped. Not. One. Single. Time. And that wasn't even a raid!

I work on both the relic and the raid weapon, and I much prefer the mindless grind of the former to the endless parade of DPS who can't move out of aoes in the latter.

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Originally Posted by LineageRazor

Relics require patience and persistence. Raid weapons, alongside personal gaming skills that not everyone has, require a DIFFERENT and, in my opinion, MUCH more frustrating sort of patience and persistence. Not only do you have to be a skilled enough player to handle the raids' content, you ALSO need to find seven other players who ALSO have enough skill to handle the raids' content. If you pug it, you have to find those seven people every time you queue. If you form or join a static, that's a whole different sort of frustration - what do you do if someone in your static is not up to the task? Heartlessly cast them aside? Try to polish a turd 'til it shines? Neither option is attractive.

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In fairness, Relics aren't appreciably more powerful than upgraded Tomestone gear or the latest EX Primal weapons. Look at Stormblood's iteration of the Relic:

Stage 1: Eureka Anemos
iLevel: 355
Some previously available gear: i350 Crafted (HQ version featured matching damage); i355 Byakko EX weapon; i360 upgraded Tomestone gear (normal-mode Raids)
Summary: A significant grind for a weapon that barely surpassed a weapon easily acquired from Byakko EX for the previous 6-8 weeks (I forget how long after 4.2 Anemos landed). In fact, it arguably provided only Gil-savings and a few stat points over an even more-easily-acquired HQ crafted weapon, available for the same 6-8 weeks. Not a good look.

Stage 2: Eureka Pagos
iLevel: 370
Some previously available gear: i360 upgraded Crafted gear; i365 Tsukuyomi weapons; i365 HoH weapon (released at the same time); i370 upgraded Tomestone weapons (NQ Sigmascape raiding)
Summary: Better than the first stage, but still not a good look, due to the imminent arrival of 4.4 and the across-the-board iLevel boost that will accompany it. Roughly one month after Pagos reached a pseudo-playable state, there'll be HQ crafted gear that blows the weapon cleanly out of the water.

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All this to say, I don't find the 'patience vs. skill' argument to hold much water here. If Relic weapons were consistently at the same iLevel as Savage / Ultimate gear, fine. One's a time check, the other's a skill check. Simple enough. When they're roughly comparable to HQ crafted gear, though? Or weapons upgraded via normal-mode Raids? Then people are just doing it for the Glamour, or a sense of completion, or out of boredom. There is absolutely no argument to make from a return-on-investment standpoint that Relics are worth acquiring.

Incidentally, I think this is why the Relic grind is such a problem. Bland grinds work if the reward they gate is worthwhile. When the reward isn't so worthwhile, well... why do them?