Is this your first Final Fantasy? Or do you just not remember grinding in past games?

[Serah_Kerrigan]

Going on 20 hours of efficient fate grinding and got 2 atmas. No complaints. sure rng sucks but that is what rng is all about. the rest of my raid group gets annoyed at the drop rates of them but they don't think it was a problem. If you keep comparing your rng to others then you're gonna have a bad time. most things in this game contains rng. either deal with it or just don't do it. SUCK IT UP.

[Gilraen]

I don't know, every role playing game I've ever played (computer or console, digital or pen and paper) has had some manner of grind. Be it grinding levels running in circles to beat a particularly tough optional boss or not-so-optional boss, or collecting dozens or hundreds of McGuffin items to unlock a new weapon or ability. Grind is a part of the game. XIV alleviates alot of the grind, for good or for ill, making instances where there is grind stand out. Take the various logs that you can complete, those are grinds yet noone seems to be complaining about those. Or the earning of seals to go up in rank in the Companies. Until you can turn in dungeon drops it's quite the slog. And even in the case of the Companies, it was alot worse in 1.0 than it is now (you needed 25,000 seals in 1.0 to attain officer). This grind we have now, it's chicken scratch compared to... well, every other RPG, MMO or otherwise.

[Synra]

I am normally not one to play the "casual" card, but I think it's important here.

Personally, I see raid rewards as being goals for hardcore players who are able and willing to dedicate themselves to putting in the hours of effort for the best stuff. It's highly difficult and randomized, but potentially faster / better rewards.

However, I see things like Relic weapons and Myth / Soldiery armor as goals for the non-hardcore players to work toward. They may take longer, but are consistent rewards for the time investment.

For me, I have been very busy with RL stuff like work in recent weeks, so I have had to play Casually since 2.2 released. So far as a casual player, I find the Tomes of Soldiery to be just fine. However, I have been looking for these new Atma Fates for about a week now, and I have never caught one up. From the perspective of someone only able to put in a few hours a day, this new relic quest seems like an absurdly difficult, maybe even impossible task. I don't expect to get it done in a day or two, but I should have been able to make SOME progress by now.

And even then, I know that the first upgrade you get out of it has i90 stats, despite being an i100 weapon.

I just can't imagine how anyone could support such a ridiculous quest design.


It seems to me they should have done it more like this: Quest requires 12 Atmas, but they are NOT rewarded from FATEs. You can obtain 1 per day by clearing the Expert Roulette. That would make it time consuming, but consistent.

[Synra]

Okay, Nevermind my above post I guess.

With the way the quest was worded, I seem to have seriously misunderstood what it required.

I thought it was asking me to do a specific Atma FATE in each zone. So like where it says "Western La Noscea: Atma of the Crab" I thought it wanted me to clear a rare fate named "Atma of the Crab", and then we only had a random chance of getting the item drop from it. (which would certainly be insane)

But when I cleared the Sharknado fate for the daily quest, I suddenly got Atma of the Crab, and things started to make a lot more sense.

This isn't nearly as bad as I thought it was. When I get more free time I will try some fate grinding and see how it goes.

[skaterger]

snip

That's not being very fair, is it? Out of the 90 pages, it has not been all about complains but also a good deal of people supporting the way the quest is designed. My point isn't also about whether people like or hate grinding, but more to do with the magnitude of the grind in the second part of the quest and realising later that the first part is merely the appetiser and the second part the entrée.

snip

Don't assume that is the case for everyone. I am a casual but I have hardcore ideals due to playing mmos for a long time. I have spent more than 50 hours grinding Atmas and have only recently got my 9th. Not everyone that disagrees with you has great luck with rng.

rng is gambling, there is no question about that. But I would like to think it more as calculated risk and one with a very good chance at winning at that. I've posted the math before but in all probability you will spend more time farming the books than the Atmas. And here we have to assume that time is the only deciding factor and nothing else. Imagine someone putting 5 bowls in front of you and tells you that in 4 of those bowls are 20 dollars and the other is empty. You have one chance to open one bowl but to play the game you need to pay 10 dollars. Maybe you won't play the game but I definitely will.

Now you might ask where is the proof that the odds are not as bad as they seem and there is indeed more to gain than lose in this? Just the number of people already having their Atmas, some already farming for their second or third relic. And here you are only seeing the bad side of rng. You are forgetting the good side - the people who have got their drops. They are happily playing the game and not complaining mm the forums are they?

Calculated risk and the law of large numbers is not a theory, it's not a hypothesis it's a fact. You see it in everyday life from casinos to the stock market. Dealers might lose a million dollars to a lucky gambler but they will make up for it at the end of the day and make a profit.

So yes i definitely have sympathy for players who have farmed for hundreds of hours and not got a single drop. But I will still tell a new player that this is unlikely to happen to you while it is guaranteed you will spend a large amount of time on the second part of the quest.

to be continued

[skaterger]

snip

I'm sorry but I can't agree with this. Grinding is rng. I remember grinding for ap and materia in ff7 to cast knights of the round, I remember grinding drawing magic from enemies to junction to my gf in ff8. These are all grinds with measurable progress but whoever said these were the only types of grind? I remember grinding mvps in ragnarok online with a 3 hour respawn timer with 0.5% drop rate. I remember grinding for my blue screamer sword in maple on regular mobs with a 0.05% drop. In these cases it's either you get it or you don't. But these are undoubtedly still grinds.


Is this not rng and is this not a grind? Personally i prefer the second type. But rng is definitely synonymous with grinding. If every single bit of effort should yield some tangible reward as so many people seem to believe, maybe we should have coil bosses have a drop down list so we can select what loot we want at a 100% drop chance. After all, since we put forth effort to kill the boss, we MUST be rewarded for it right? I'll not be surprised that might be how mmos operate 10 years from now with these sort of thinking so prevalent among the generation of gamers today.


And finally one last caveat, to those people who have farmed for hours and hours. Are you doing just enough damage to the mobs to claim credit and move to the next? Are you teleporting to the nearest aetheryte or trying to save the measly 70 gil? so many times I have seen players walking from one end of the map to the other for a fate and it ending before they reach it. Are you using instant spells to target monsters instead of long cast time attacks? Are you targeting mobs with the highest hp to have the best chance of getting a hit in before other players zerg then down?

If you say you farmed for 4 hours, maybe in reality you only efficiently farmed for 2. Just some food for thought.

[Takeva]

snip

And you just explained how horrible this is. You're just one of the few who oddly enough is ok that an achievement was handed to others easily. I've spent already 100+ hours on this, with still only 8. People are going on their 5th day with 1 or zero to show their progress. Rng or not, this system is broken. I can see that the odds aren't as bad as they seem because that's what I'm complaining about. This was suppose to prolong progression but some people were able to get all their atma at day one. You can keep on repeating the same preach but I'll continue to repeat myself also. The system is broken. There should be no RNG. Everyone should have to grind their way to the weapon/gears they want equally.

The raiders have their raid stuff. The farmers have their farming stuff. Let us grinders have a real grind. Not a slot machine.

[skaterger]

snip

I'm curious, if you were one of the "lucky" ones, would you still be here complaining about it amd demand that they reset the quest so everyone has to grind 100 hours or take your luck with 8 hours and quietly walk away?

The ONLY reason I'm ok with it is that the median/average time needed to get the atmas does not seem to be that bad (somewhere within the scope of 3-4 hours per atma). I realize that if I farm 8 hours and don't get a drop, I just drew the short end of the stick. if you're unlucky, you're unlucky, there's nothing you can do about it. Why are some people born with a silver spoon in their mouth while others can't seem to catch a break in their lives? Studies have shown that an estimate of one in three of us will get cancer in our lifetime. It's a game of chance but should you demand that everyone else suffer the same fate as you?

[Takeva]

Snip

I started complaining about it, when I started the quest. There was a guy who told me he was there trying to get his atma for 3 days and I got mine only after being there for 1 hour. And the fact that I seriously hate RNGs after playing f2p crap for a while. Yes, I will still be here complaining.

Still trying to give the same silly real life examples. Which brings me to another reason they should get rid of it. Some people deal with enough of being unlucky in real life, it's extremely off-putting to have to deal with it in a game.

[Artiss2k]

If you want to be really powerful in any real RPG, you grind... especially JRPGs. If that's not your thing, then CoD is calling you.