Lazy Design

That's not a phrase I use lightly. I know how much work goes in to designing and developing a game, especially one this scale.

I was very much looking forward to this patch. I really was. I love the Loporrits, I love deep dungeons, and I actually enjoy relic grinds.

The Loporitts are great. I actually have no issues with them. They're funny and cute as always. The daily tribal quests are the standard fare but that's fine.

The new deep dungeon is.....sure a deep dungeon. I don't know what I was expecting here, but I did think they'd maybe try to innovate a little? The area design is top notch stuff, and what I've seen of the boss mechanics looks pretty good so far. It's just... this is the third one of these and they're all the same. I'm not saying they need to suddenly transition into being first-person shooters or something like that, but there really isn't anything to set Eureka Orthos apart from the other two deep dungeons we already have except that this one is at level 90. Ok. Great. But so what? There's too much resting on laurels going on here. Innovate a little. I promise it won't kill you.

And then... the relic. Hoo boy the relic. What do I even say that isn't in dozens or hundreds of threads across the Internet already?

Believe it or not I like working on relics. It gives me a goal I can work towards and see tangible progress over the long term. That feels good to me. As a result of this, I've become very familiar with the mechanisms we have for making progress on a relic weapon. My personal favorites are the anima weapons from Heavensward. There are actual options for how exactly you want to approach each step (well most of them) and you can do them at your leisure as you're just playing the game. Would you like to know how many relic steps for the anima line are straight tomestone dumps with no alternatives? Two. Two of them. Step 5 and step 9. Umbrites can only be obtained with poetics, and while you probably won't actually need 75 per weapon... you're going to need a fair few. And the archaic enchanted ink is poetics only; one per weapon.

Every other step has options. Do you know how many ways you can acquire unidentifiable materials for step three? SIX. SIX WAYS for each of them. They CAN be a poetics dump, or you can do hunts for allied seals, or you can do treasure maps, or you can do tribal quests from either ARR or HW, or you can do normal Alexander raids.

I'll be very honest. When I heard that Endwalker relics would proceed similarly to Heavensward relics (which is exactly what was said by Yoshi P) this is the kind of thing I was thinking of. Options. Play the game pretty much any way you want and you'll progress them. Instead we get tomestone dumps. Two of them back-to-back. The same tomestone dump I might add. They couldn't even be bothered to change the amount. Currently the EW relic progression path is 100% tomestone dumps.

I can't even begin to tell you how disappointing that was to see.

The first step being a tomestone dump is fine. The amount here might be a bit high, but it's whatever. It's a decent way to on-board someone and let them acquire a decent weapon without having to think too hard about what they're doing. But why is the second step another one? That doesn't make sense. It's not like we're hurting for content possibilities here. This could have been FATEs. It could have been a light farm encompassing any number of possible completion paths. It could've been dungeons, it could have been grand company nonsense, it could have been a repeatable quest chain in which you have to gather pies to hurl at Hildebrand's stupid face. Anything. But no, it's a tomestone dump.

Speaking as an amateur relic collector, this is extremely disappointing and demoralizing.

This is lazy design.

I enjoy Deep Dungeons, but 30 floors isn't really much for the average player. I think that they should have allowed for at least 20 more before forcing solo play or premade groups. The relic...yeah, I've made my opinions known in other threads. I'll just say that I agree with you and call it good there.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vahlnir

I enjoy Deep Dungeons, but 30 floors isn't really much for the average player. I think that they should have allowed for at least 20 more before forcing solo play or premade groups.

---

This right here is my issue. Just, WHY!?
50 would be MUCH better then 30, but just give us 100 floors like Palace of the dead did. What would also be awesome...but I know wont happen is, like Palace, they plan to expand it later.
Id love to be able to casually have fun with 100 floors instead of only 30

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zanarkand-Ronso

This right here is my issue. Just, WHY!?
50 would be MUCH better then 30, but just give us 100 floors like Palace of the dead did. What would also be awesome...but I know wont happen is, like Palace, they plan to expand it later.
Id love to be able to casually have fun with 100 floors instead of only 30

---

Nah, 200 floors was too many. 100 is a good number of floors. I don't really have a problem with the casual side ending at 30. It does feel a little short but it's fine. My problem was just lack of innovation.

The differences between Eureka Orthos and the other deep dungeons are as follows:
- It's at level 90
- It looks different
- The pomanders all got worse

That's it. Those are the only real differences.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zanarkand-Ronso

This right here is my issue. Just, WHY!?
50 would be MUCH better then 30, but just give us 100 floors like Palace of the dead did. What would also be awesome...but I know wont happen is, like Palace, they plan to expand it later.
Id love to be able to casually have fun with 100 floors instead of only 30

---

I hate to say this but there is almost 100% certainly no "expand later" for Deep dungeon, this is its final state. I don't believe HoH was every revisited by the devs either. Unless there is a bug, this is it. 30 floors like Hoh for story and exp, 70 floors for pre mades.

Take it with a grain of salt but floor 20-30 has some "extreme" mechanics baked into it, this might be neglectable by gear score later, but i've seen skills like Bomb explosion, Magnetism and Swinge one shot players, which is usually unique to 150-200 and 70-100. You are usually in a believe of false security "its just lv 30" when you get clapped. My first 30 run on Rdm has me cast no less then 10 raises.

https://clips.twitch.tv/FlaccidFlirt...aKCWvp7_LWazcP bonus clip to make my point.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Voidedge_Ragna

I hate to say this but there is almost 100% certainly no "expand later" for Deep dungeon, this is its final state. I don't believe HoH was every revisited by the devs either. Unless there is a bug, this is it. 30 floors like Hoh for story and exp, 70 floors for pre mades.

Take it with a grain of salt but floor 20-30 has some "extreme" mechanics baked into it, this might be neglectable by gear score later, but i've seen skills like Bomb explosion, Magnetism and Swinge one shot players, which is usually unique to 150-200 and 70-100. You are usually in a believe of false security "its just lv 30" when you get clapped. My first 30 run on Rdm has me cast no less then 10 raises.

https://clips.twitch.tv/FlaccidFlirt...aKCWvp7_LWazcP bonus clip to make my point.

---

Welp. Guess I'll be going in as RDM or SMN.

The relic step was the most disappointing thing to me. I don't really care about deep dungeons (PotD kinda gave me a bad taste of it), and beast tribes are perfectly fine for me. But... there's really nothing else to do except grind tomestones with daily roulettes and get the weapons. I guess Bozja and Eureka won't be as empty so that's gonna keep me occupied, but come on...

Idk I'm pretty happy with the direction relic is going. Easy catch up that I can dump my tombs into and grind any way I want instead of some specific method and location. Is it boring? Sure, but I'll take this any day of the week over the tedium that became literally every other relic to date.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Remish

Idk I'm pretty happy with the direction relic is going. Easy catch up that I can dump my tombs into and grind any way I want instead of some specific method and location. Is it boring? Sure, but I'll take this any day of the week over the tedium that became literally every other relic to date.

---

This is why we can't have nice things

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rehayem

This is why we can't have nice things

---

Exactly why and tbh it is what it is atp...7.0 or bust as far as im concerned

Either they are focusing all their guns on 7.0 or we are just seeing the results of SE draining all the cash from FFXIV into other projects (lousy ones) and not making the effort to return the investment to this what I call their golden goose given how their other projects went so far.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Takamorisan

Either they are focusing all their guns on 7.0 or we are just seeing the results of SE draining all the cash from FFXIV into other projects (lousy ones) and not making the effort to return the investment to this what I call their golden goose given how their projects went so far.

---

Either way is starting to feel like a slap in the face to my bank account monthly...especially when they been charging it for over 10 years

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by MonteCristo

Either way is starting to feel like a slap in the face to my bank account monthly...especially when they been charging it for over 10 years

---

They will only change their pattern if sub numbers take hit and/or people stop consuming the Mogstore. Because they will only see the USD. You can spam the forums and this won't change at all, their financials always dictate if change is required.

They're basically going down the same path that Trion Worlds did: They made a hit (Rift) and then just diverted all the money into other failures which became money vacuums. It makes me concerned because one day, there may come a time to where they run out of money and then this game goes into maintenance mode.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by GhostZukin

They're basically going down the same path that Trion Worlds did: They made a hit (Rift) and then just diverted all the money into other failures which became money vacuums. It makes me concerned because one day, there may come a time to where they run out of money and then this game goes into maintenance mode.

---

Currently what makes me concerned the guy who gonna replace Matsuda its another NFTard so business direction gonna be probably all the same.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Remish

Idk I'm pretty happy with the direction relic is going. Easy catch up that I can dump my tombs into and grind any way I want instead of some specific method and location. Is it boring? Sure, but I'll take this any day of the week over the tedium that became literally every other relic to date.

---

Fully agreed. Let's face it, we all have a lot on our plate these days. I myself have been enjoying other games. Why should we be forced to grind some useless trinkets? I just want to get my shit and leave so I can resume playing my other games. You know what else forces you to play? World of Warcraft. We don't want to be like that game, do we? Didn't think so. Being forced to play video games is tantamount to modern-day slavery.

So thank you, Yoshida, for letting us play other games. We all thank you. My Steam library thanks you.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by caffe_macchiato

Fully agreed. Let's face it, we all have a lot on our plate these days. I myself have been enjoying other games. Why should we be forced to grind some useless trinkets? I just want to get my shit and leave so I can resume playing my other games. You know what else forces you to play? World of Warcraft. We don't want to be like that game, do we? Didn't think so. Being forced to play video games is tantamount to modern-day slavery.

So thank you, Yoshida, for letting us play other games. We all thank you. My Steam library thanks you.

---

Have you ever considered if you don’t want to grind that you just shouldn’t do the relics

The relics have always been grinds designed to populate old content the roulettes don’t do a good job of populating, it’s not like completing a relic is mandatory for progression to the next expansion

Just leave them Grindy then people can choose whether to do them or not

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Callinon

Nah, 200 floors was too many. 100 is a good number of floors. I don't really have a problem with the casual side ending at 30. It does feel a little short but it's fine.

---

I dont care about 200 floors, I just want 100.
Maybe they could have just done 10-50 floors for harder content, or make it a separate EX / Savage instance with 100 floors or so. That my idea of how they could have done it.
30 floors...I did that on HoH and just....its over WAY to quick. Making or joining PFs were just miserable, people would either flake: leaving partway through, or just be super sweaty with a boatload of requirements to even get in sometimes and just make it unfun.

-Sigh-
Ah well....I was looking foreword to a Deep Dungeon to. Just something else to do on the side when I catch up on everything else.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Voidedge_Ragna

I hate to say this but there is almost 100% certainly no "expand later" for Deep dungeon, this is its final state. I don't believe HoH was every revisited by the devs either. Unless there is a bug, this is it. 30 floors like Hoh for story and exp, 70 floors for pre mades.

Take it with a grain of salt but floor 20-30 has some "extreme" mechanics baked into it, this might be neglectable by gear score later, but i've seen skills like Bomb explosion, Magnetism and Swinge one shot players, which is usually unique to 150-200 and 70-100. You are usually in a believe of false security "its just lv 30" when you get clapped. My first 30 run on Rdm has me cast no less then 10 raises.

---

Just like Heaven on High ( HoH )
Not surprising, which makes the 30 floors even worse :/
But hey, honestly I havent tried it yet...maybe my attitude will change when I play it later.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Supersnow845

The relics have always been grinds designed to populate old content the roulettes don’t do a good job of populating, it’s not like completing a relic is mandatory for progression to the next expansion

---

More like current content at the time when they were current. And whenever an older instance shows up also unsync option can pop up which isn't for roulette.

IMHO the problem is with the definition. If it's all about cosmetics and not player power then it can be detached from gearing progression and can be slow. If it's attached to ilvl and gearing progression then it can't be slower than said progression or people get angry their relic weapon is useless for a month or two when they have to switch to crafted or EX weapon. The first step of current relics was quick and easy and for some jobs with better stats than a normally available weapon - so people got a lot of them, even for all jobs. In that case, it's rather obvious it will be just an alternative to EX/tome weapon of a given tier.

And like what would be the point to have 25 current alliance raid runs to "charge" the weapon? or 100 runs of level 90 roulettes? For an awesome cosmetic look for main/selected job where Savage would be the only similar alternative it's fine. For relic as a generic progression weapon with somewhat better looks that are used en-mass as a progression item not really.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Remish

Idk I'm pretty happy with the direction relic is going. Easy catch up that I can dump my tombs into and grind any way I want instead of some specific method and location. Is it boring? Sure, but I'll take this any day of the week over the tedium that became literally every other relic to date.

---

See ... what you describe is the tome weapon ... which we already have. If relic just becomes the new tome weapon get rid of either. We don't need the same thing twice.

I feel like if anything, people should just start advocating for relic weapons to have their own dedicated activities and prerequisites. Not just trite "farm this thing over and over again until you reach the arbitrary number" or "give me some currency." Make it feel personalized. But even then, I bet people would complain that it's not dragged out enough and that they therefore can't use it to justify staying subbed or something.

Um what? I couldn't believe it. A second, hey just give me ummm... 1500 tombstones. Did they hire blizzard devs to do this or something?

Unpopular opinion but I feel like deep dungeons were always badly designed and players have just accepted it because they're straightforward, mildly fun and were "new" on release.

The save system is extremely restrictive and unnecessary, makes playing with different friends or FC a pain and going back to the start after a wipe on a high floor is punishing in a way that doesn't feel good because it means you have to chew through all the easy floors just to get back to the engaging part. The leveling floors are so easy they put you to sleep and become boring very fast.

There's a good base idea that's spoiled by clinging to restrictive systems and gimmicks.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Vahlnir

I enjoy Deep Dungeons, but 30 floors isn't really much for the average player. I think that they should have allowed for at least 20 more before forcing solo play or premade groups. The relic...yeah, I've made my opinions known in other threads. I'll just say that I agree with you and call it good there.

---

I havent really done HoH really so im not sure how many floors it has, but i was suprised that i was done with it in like an hour, now im already at the point where its "do 21-30 on repeat for glam weapons" or try myself solo past 30.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Bsrking5

Um what? I couldn't believe it. A second, hey just give me ummm... 1500 tombstones. Did they hire blizzard devs to do this or something?

---

i wonder if we could ever criticize the game without trying to take shot at others, especially cause blizzard likes to give their "special weapons" really fun or grindy way to get them. Like the artifact weapons in legion, fun questline to unlock them - then various grind or minigames or questlines to unlock the skins. Well... outside of hunter which really had a "just hand me some gold for this skin" option lol

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Have you ever considered if you don’t want to grind that you just shouldn’t do the relics

The relics have always been grinds designed to populate old content the roulettes don’t do a good job of populating, it’s not like completing a relic is mandatory for progression to the next expansion

Just leave them Grindy then people can choose whether to do them or not

---

The person you replied to is not serious by the way, they make fun of the "dae its not wow?" crowd, one of the other posts they made was pretty clear about it cause they attached a meme image to the text ^^

Have you actually tried going to the floors beyond floor 30 ? There are are quite a few changes there (like the new demi mobs), the mobs are way more dangerous, the bosses have actual mechanics you need to do (like twister) and the pomanders were nerfed (the HoH pomanders were way to potent for a deep dungeon).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by TalithaSolarien

Have you actually tried going to the floors beyond floor 30 ? There are are quite a few changes there (like the new demi mobs), the mobs are way more dangerous, the bosses have actual mechanics you need to do (like twister) and the pomanders were nerfed (the HoH pomanders were way to potent for a deep dungeon).

---

Sadly they made that fixed party only.. or solo, and the game is already very single-player that i prefer to do some content with people

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Voidedge_Ragna

See ... what you describe is the tome weapon ... which we already have. If relic just becomes the new tome weapon get rid of either. We don't need the same thing twice.

---

By that definition relic has always been a tomb weapon. See ARR and HW relics for example. The difference is, instead of collecting 1500 tombs for 3 rocks, it was 10000 tombs for some rocks or sands and you have to talk to several different NPCs then take it through a series of old dungeons to "bond" with it. Which we have unsync now so it's hardly a grind and just artificial padding. With around 19 jobs I'm glad that getting relics for every job seems somewhat reasonable atm instead of an insane achievement.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

Unpopular opinion but I feel like deep dungeons were always badly designed and players have just accepted it because they're straightforward, mildly fun and were "new" on release.

The save system is extremely restrictive and unnecessary, makes playing with different friends or FC a pain and going back to the start after a wipe on a high floor is punishing in a way that doesn't feel good because it means you have to chew through all the easy floors just to get back to the engaging part. The leveling floors are so easy they put you to sleep and become boring very fast.

There's a good base idea that's spoiled by clinging to restrictive systems and gimmicks.

---

From my perspective new players accepted it because with the original Palace of the Dead, they were always conditioned that deep dungeon was the place to go to "get a feel for new jobs" without having to level them and that mentality had never went away. Infact it continued to get promoted with the likes of HoH and slightly Bozja. You always saw people queuing on jobs they don't know how to play to test them out and some of these jobs play a bit differently in Deep Dungeon than actual dungeons.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Remish

Idk I'm pretty happy with the direction relic is going. Easy catch up that I can dump my tombs into and grind any way I want instead of some specific method and location. Is it boring? Sure, but I'll take this any day of the week over the tedium that became literally every other relic to date.

---

what are you even catching up for
MSQ and Alliance raid ilevel restrictions are pretty low and even then most the content in this game doesn't even require any item level
eureka,deep dungeons etc etc