The Relic Grind: Replayability missed

The new relic step has created quite a bit of controversy within the community. The copy/paste from Step 1 to Step 2 of just "grab 1500 tomes" has left players extremely disappointed with the hope of a new relic grind! Some players contribute it to "Well players complained so this is what we got!" or "I hate grinds so this is great!", but in reality it is just lazy design.


I believe the concept of the relic should be to bring replayability back into the patch/expansion it is built for. This can be achieved with/or without a new exploratory zone. Funneling players into current content is, in my opinion, a vital piece this game has been missing. Give the player options, but not endless options like a simple tome grind (Which to some was login, turn in tomes already passively gathered in previous patch, done).


How can this be achieved? Lets take this step as an example with the hildabrand format.

Option #1: Since a new exploratory zone is not a thing, instead make this option GATEs from the Golden Saucer. This will give X amount of a particular token we need for the relic step. If this was an exploratory zone, make this option the most optimal to entice players to do the content. Since it is just the golden saucer, balance it around the other options normally.

Option #2: Unlock Savage tier in 6.3 for players to farm. Once 6.3.5 hits, also add an option in this relic step to grab X amount of tokens from the savage fights. Balance them around the other options and the fights themselves (give more tokens for the 4th floor as opposed to the first floor for instance).

Option #3: Current Alliance Raid (Euprhosyne and/or Aglaia) gives X amount of tokens toward the relic for completion. This gives players a reason to go into the raid more than once a week.

Option #4: Criterion/Criterion Savage gives X amount of tokens for completion (more from savage of course!) This gives a reason to go back in if you can do the content :)

Option #5: Deep Dungeon (for this patch specifically. Just depends on what comes out around the relic step) has a % chance to grant X amount of tokens per floor completed. Give players another incentive to try the new Deep dungeon!

Option #6: Zone X FATEs give % chance to grant X amount of tokens per FATE completed with a Gold rating. Bring players back out into specific zone(s) inbetween queues and PF fills for relic grinding!



All of these options are within the current expansions content, and all are accessible ways of grinding toward the next relic simultaneously. This allows for both replayability while also mixing things up for players who grind out multiple relics. Also, with multiple options outside of an expansion's exploratory zone (in this example swapped out for gold saucer), Relics are more future proofed as many of the options will be unsyncable/soloable/queueable.

Bring replayability to your content!!

But you can literally do any content you want that gives the required tomes.



So... Infinite replayability.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

But you can literally do any content you want that gives the required tomes.



So... Infinite replayability.

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Not necessarily. When it is extremely open ended you stretch out the playerbase. When its a tome grind, dailies are prevalent which is already the norm. Would you rather farm tomes doing Crystal tower once a day from your daily alliance raid, or Euphrosyne? The option is quite obvious. Funnel players into current content

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Originally Posted by TomsYoungerBro

Not necessarily. When it is extremely open ended you stretch out the playerbase. When its a tome grind, dailies are prevalent which is already the norm. Would you rather farm tomes doing Crystal tower once a day from your daily alliance raid, or Euphrosyne? The option is quite obvious. Funnel players into current content

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Well, I can just farm euphrosyne if I want. It's not in alliance raid anyway. And farming CT wouldn't get me the right tomes.

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Originally Posted by TomsYoungerBro

The new relic step has created quite a bit of controversy within the community. The copy/paste from Step 1 to Step 2 of just "grab 1500 tomes" has left players extremely disappointed with the hope of a new relic grind! Some players contribute it to "Well players complained so this is what we got!" or "I hate grinds so this is great!", but in reality it is just lazy design.

How can this be achieved? Lets take this step as an example with the hildabrand format.

Option #1: Since a new exploratory zone is not a thing, instead make this option GATEs from the Golden Saucer. This will give X amount of a particular token we need for the relic step. If this was an exploratory zone, make this option the most optimal to entice players to do the content. Since it is just the golden saucer, balance it around the other options normally.

Option #2: Unlock Savage tier in 6.3 for players to farm. Once 6.3.5 hits, also add an option in this relic step to grab X amount of tokens from the savage fights. Balance them around the other options and the fights themselves (give more tokens for the 4th floor as opposed to the first floor for instance).

Option #3: Current Alliance Raid (Euprhosyne and/or Aglaia) gives X amount of tokens toward the relic for completion. This gives players a reason to go into the raid more than once a week.

Option #4: Criterion/Criterion Savage gives X amount of tokens for completion (more from savage of course!) This gives a reason to go back in if you can do the content :)

Option #5: Deep Dungeon (for this patch specifically. Just depends on what comes out around the relic step) has a % chance to grant X amount of tokens per floor completed. Give players another incentive to try the new Deep dungeon!

Option #6: Zone X FATEs give % chance to grant X amount of tokens per FATE completed with a Gold rating. Bring players back out into specific zone(s) inbetween queues and PF fills for relic grinding!



All of these options are within the current expansions content, and all are accessible ways of grinding toward the next relic simultaneously. This allows for both replayability while also mixing things up for players who grind out multiple relics. Also, with multiple options outside of an expansion's exploratory zone (in this example swapped out for gold saucer), Relics are more future proofed as many of the options will be unsyncable/soloable/queueable.

Bring replayability to your content!!

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Before bursting your bubble new player... then they did the same in shadowbringers, first few steps easy... then you got to hit the wall more with the other content that came up, such as bozja and more to it... so you are not missing out on anything, and I assume they are doing the same road this time, as it worked rather well the previous expansion, without making it a too die hard grind.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Well, I can just farm euphrosyne if I want. It's not in alliance raid anyway. And farming CT wouldn't get me the right tomes.

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Read again. Doing your dailies would though. And doing your daily alliance raid gets you crystal tower almost 99% of the time. Dailies pick from a wide variety of content and you don't get to choose.

Again, it stretches the playerbase thin and does not funnel players into Endwalker content :)

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Originally Posted by Themarvin

Before bursting your bubble new player... then they did the same in shadowbringers, first few steps easy... then you got to hit the wall more with the other content that came up, such as bozja and more to it... so you are not missing out on anything, and I assume they are doing the same road this time, as it worked rather well the previous expansion, without making it a too die hard grind.

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I know my join date of the forums is rather recent, but I did play in ShB. They did not do something to this extent in ShB. If a step has a secondary outside of the exploratory zone, it was old content like Crystal tower :). The only step they had that put you in level 80 content outside of Bozja was the one time raid grind of Alexander, Omega, and Eden. The options for each step were not as vast as this proposal either

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Originally Posted by Themarvin

Before bursting your bubble new player... then they did the same in shadowbringers, first few steps easy... then you got to hit the wall more with the other content that came up, such as bozja and more to it... so you are not missing out on anything, and I assume they are doing the same road this time, as it worked rather well the previous expansion, without making it a too die hard grind.

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Am I crazy or was the first step poetics and the second step (where we are now) is where the grind started in ShB? Granted we had options in ShB for how to do the grind but I am pretty sure the second stage is when it actually started.

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Originally Posted by Amenara

Am I crazy or was the first step poetics and the second step (where we are now) is where the grind started in ShB? Granted we had options in ShB for how to do the grind but I am pretty sure the second stage is when it actually started.

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First step was 1000 tomestones of Poetics, the second step (where we are now) was 60 open world FATEs in Heavensward, and 6 leveling roulette / Level 60 dungeons. Alternatively, you could get them from CE and Skirms in Bozja.

I suppose they were more grindy, but there are fewer classes then, than there are now, and even then this grind only essentially took 3-5 hours, really. Not exactly what I would call a 'grind' either way, personally.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

First step was 1000 tomestones of Poetics, the second step (where we are now) was 60 open world FATEs in Heavensward, and 6 leveling roulette / Level 60 dungeons. Alternatively, you could get them from CE and Skirms in Bozja.

I suppose they were more grindy, but there are fewer classes then, than there are now, and even then this grind only essentially took 3-5 hours, really. Not exactly what I would call a 'grind' either way, personally.

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I guess compared to what comes a bit later in ShB, yeah it's not much of a grind. That being said, it's still more than doing your daily roulettes...

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

First step was 1000 tomestones of Poetics, the second step (where we are now) was 60 open world FATEs in Heavensward, and 6 leveling roulette / Level 60 dungeons. Alternatively, you could get them from CE and Skirms in Bozja.

I suppose they were more grindy, but there are fewer classes then, than there are now, and even then this grind only essentially took 3-5 hours, really. Not exactly what I would call a 'grind' either way, personally.

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Yeah. Shadowbringers relics weren't a hard grind, but they were still something you had to put in a little effort for. What I want is for relics to feel like an actual goal again. To say I was disappointed by not just 1, but 2 steps in Endwalker so far would be a massive understatement.

the funny part is they literally had people crying about how alliance raids after CT take forever to pop. they could've solved this partially by just doing what they did in shb and making nier raids a part of the relic grind to get players running that content in the same way ivalice raids had to be spammed in shb. but nope, 1500 tomes please.
missed opportunity to actually revive content from last patch. hell, i'm surprised (but a bit relieved tbh) that they didn't implement criterion at all for this. they really went for the least inspired method possible.

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Originally Posted by Amenara

I guess compared to what comes a bit later in ShB, yeah it's not much of a grind. That being said, it's still more than doing your daily roulettes...

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Comparing the latter stages of a relic to the earlier stages is quite a pointless thing anyway.

But this aside, I would disagree, the one-time-only quests gave a somewhat false sense of 'grind', but for any subsequent relic it was pretty tame, and the only part that I would have considered to be 'grindy' would probably have been the Augmented Law's Order, which required the Timeworn Artifacts, but the only reason this felt like it was because people practically refused to use any fragments whatsoever.

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Originally Posted by Vahlnir

Yeah. Shadowbringers relics weren't a hard grind, but they were still something you had to put in a little effort for. What I want is for relics to feel like an actual goal again. To say I was disappointed by not just 1, but 2 steps in Endwalker so far would be a massive understatement.

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Idk, maybe I'm apathetic, but ShB relics didn't exactly strike me as something I felt required even the most minuscule effort. Nor did I feel a sense of achievement from them, frankly. If you had classes to level, provided you picked up the quests, you would largely complete the relics naturally as part of the leveling grind.

Relics have hardly felt like a grind since Heavensward. I would include Eureka in this, but the simple fact that, if possible, you could alt-tab and do other things, watch Netflix, and/or play other games simultaneously was a pretty monumental disappointment in and of itself.

I'm so happy to finally see someone have a similar idea I have been feeling for awhile now and not just for tomes. EXP wise I wish 'do your daily leveling and spam dungeon' wasn't the only options.

However, I do not understand the discourse in this thread over this idea.

When one of the biggest complaints I hear about adding more content is the issue with budget and someone finally comes up with a way around this, but now people find a way to knock it down?

Just because someone can choose to run FATES for tomestones isn't going to affect the person that wants to log in for 30 min to do their daily expert and CT run. Those will still be options that do not and have not gone away in the last 10 years. The idea of adding other incentives isn't just about drawing people to other content but just getting a break from the monotony

If someone told me that the only way to progress this current relic grind was to run deep dungeon, despite this being on of my favorite content, I'd be pretty upset. But if you tell me that in a game that has been around for over 10 years is finding a way to make use of all that time and money it has spent to make its old content evergreen content, then that should be a positive.

Sure I would like a bigger budget and we just have new zones, but I know we got limitations here.

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Small edit here but didn't want to make it seem like I'm being rude. More that I kinda hope people might be open to the idea of better rewards or uses over other content so long as it doesn't mean reducing anything from the content most preferred. I do get it that for a lot there is nothing wrong with the relic step and more roulette is more than fine. But I think for some it may help open up some ideas and play time to make use of rewarding the other content in the game. Sure you could run fates for the sake of running it for no other reason than to run it, but its kinda nice to have the bonus.

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Originally Posted by TomsYoungerBro

Not necessarily. When it is extremely open ended you stretch out the playerbase. When its a tome grind, dailies are prevalent which is already the norm. Would you rather farm tomes doing Crystal tower once a day from your daily alliance raid, or Euphrosyne? The option is quite obvious. Funnel players into current content

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Stretch it out into…. doing your roulettes as people do anyway? The horror

still early in the stages.. i remeber doing old relics too... they where easy the first 2-3 stages too...

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

But you can literally do any content you want that gives the required tomes.



So... Infinite replayability.

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The problem with "doing any content you want" is most people will either find the easiest content to constantly replay and/or the fastest.

That means there's no variety at all, even if you have all the choices in the world. This means that content that people dislike or don't normally queue into is going to remain that way even if it's an option.

Using tomestones as currency rises another issue as well. Unless people are farming for multiple weapons, they most likely already had 1500 tomestones lying around.

For some, this is great. For those who were looking forward to grinding... not so much.

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Originally Posted by NekoMataMata

The problem with "doing any content you want" is most people will either find the easiest content to constantly replay and/or the fastest.

That means there's no variety at all, even if you have all the choices in the world. This means that content that people dislike or don't normally queue into is going to remain that way even if it's an option.

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This happens anyway, people will always optimise the grind.

Remember last relic when one of the steps was to run six Level 60 dungeons, and literally the only one anyone ever did was Antitower.

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Originally Posted by NekoMataMata

The problem with "doing any content you want" is most people will either find the easiest content to constantly replay and/or the fastest.

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This is basically every relic ever. Every relic has always been a false sense of variety as players will always go for the fastest and most efficient route.

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Originally Posted by Kolaina

Stretch it out into…. doing your roulettes as people do anyway? The horror

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More like pointless. People already have plenty of incentive to do roulettes. Why create content that incentivizes already flourishing content. Pretty sure without any statistics we can all agree the daily roulettes are one of the most active activities in the game. Imagine if the ShB relic had funneled the playerbase into its current content instead of secondaries being crystal tower XD. Maybe Nier Raids wouldn't be 20-30 minute queues

I would prefer to be made to grind some of the new content the expansion added, such as variant, dungeons, trials, deep dungeon, fates or anything like that. That is assuming we don’t have a new area entirely such as eureka or bozja.

A lot of people in the past have always preferred to be made to do old content for some reason, so it would be controversial either way.

The idea of a tomestone farm makes sense in theory because then people can choose their content, but what actually happens is they just do some hunts or whatever is most efficient and it ends up the same as the previous step.