[Opinion] Myth Expenditures are Absurd

[Vaer]

Backloading the myth and doubling the end boss clear is a bad idea. People would just fish for in progress queues and we would have withdraw mania again while people fish for in progress while doing FATEs. It's probably one of the reasons why they decided that the end boss doesn't give myth and are reluctant to change it.

[Roris]

The truth is Daily Hunts, the real meat of the Novus quest, aren't here yet for another month or so, another truth is the very first relic quest got a lot of steps right, and the 1.0 relic quest got a couple more steps even more right. These elements are group participation and a clear set of steps in a clear path of progression, with a clear reward including bits of lore for each time you complete a step, and progression depending only on how much time you were willing to spend on each step helped by your skill as a player.

Sure you can group up for FATEs for either Atma and Alexandrites and some book objectives which is great, but it's not on the same level of what the first relic quests presented. In the case of the 1.0 quest, sure it had its own share of grinds like Hamlet if you didn't supply, the melds and materia RNG in itself, farming beastmen currency and SBing your weapon, but other steps were a bit more balanced and even Hamlet required a good party and some sort of skill to get the required points, which also involved DoL and DoH, and beastmen strongholds themselves were more dangerous for both SB and currency farming, not to mention each step was unique. If you were good, you didn't have to repeat them over and over, you knew exactly when it would end and what it would take, with almost no luck element involved aside from the first three I mentioned.

In 2.0's case the steps are even more clear, the only feedback about it being too "easy" is because there aren't really that many steps compared to the 1.0 which is both good and bad, it took out some of the grind from 1.0, the only real grind being 900 philosophy tomes or I guess less than 300 myth nowadays, but it also took out more unique steps like beastmen NMs, levequests and a couple more dungeons, still the rest of the steps are clear and you also don't have to repeat them over and over if you're good. It also was only "hard" for some because there wasn't a proper Party Finder and both Chimera and Hydra weren't in the Duty Finder, and of course server latency because some regions still don't have proper servers.

Now of course the Novus quest has some sort of semblance of this, you know it takes exactly 75 Alexandrites to complete whether the meld fails or not because you don't lose them, and you get a free one a day from expert roulettes so that's 75 days to complete the quest if you choose to opt out of both FATEs and myth farming, if you opt in however that's potentially less time if you're really lucky or want to grind the same dungeon over and over which that's the main issue here. Once again, the first relic quests didn't have this level of repetition for a single step aside from the mentioned grinds, it had more unique steps that revolved around parties, and everyone involved in them helped progress go much faster, and in some steps it helped progress at all.

Sure feel free to throw in a "well if you want proper party content why not do Coil or Extremes?" that's not the point, people are already doing that for their alt classes or even their mains because it's just faster, also feel free to throw in a "well casuals don't do Coil or Extremes so the relic quest shifted to a casual focus for them, how is that bad?" at this point it'd be faster for so called casuals to look up videos, form learning parties and skip the grind. Even then, ignoring the grind still won't change its flawed design, it could be more balanced but the easy and lazy solution is to over inflate the requirements needed for a single step instead of designing more unique steps, I think they could look back on their previous quests and see what worked and just avoid this repetition and focus more on party content, especially because the game is lacking on real open world group content, FATEs and treasure hunts not needing much group coordination, and especially more because group synergy is a big element of Second Coil that's also a current issue. I think more party content for the relic quests would help people learn to work as a party, it's an MMO after all, just don't make the party coordination as unfun and super synced as in Second Coil because that'd be bad too.

[Gesser]

@Vaer, well I have created posts with regards to implementing withdrawal penalties... it needs to happen & they're far overdue on it.

That would solve in-progress issues, you'd just have to take what you get... and if you're lucky & draw a final boss queue, good for you. No harm off my back you were a Good Samaritan & desired to see a fail group finish strong, thus reaping the reward.

[AlrikRouge]

What would that accomplish in your guys' minds?

For me, I could get myth during the week, and work on books occassionally and/or on the weekend. As it stands, I have to go back and forth so I don't cap myth and then dailies go to waste.

[Gesser]

@Roris, I'm aware Daily Hunts are coming but the bigger meat of the issue is Myth bloat.

I'm glad they're adding more methods of obtaining Alexanderite, but I'm talking mostly about Myth expenses... I'd like ever to be able to collect some i90 AF gear, etc.

[Surian]

There's two things i dont like about the current system:

1) Just like the original topic starter, the myth costs. Already looking at 338 runs of Brayflox for Animus. It's just crazy. Could / should easily have been reduced by a factor of 4...

2) I spend my soldiery on my Paladin, but i have other jobs to gear up, which i usually spend Myths on for i90 gear... Which i now cannot do for the entire duration of the Animus and Novus grind... So alternative means of getting Books would be great, or alternative means of getting Darklight and/or Myth gear would be even better, excluding throwing them into dungeons... simply re-instating Philo tomes would help already...

[Enepttastic]

Which i now cannot do for the entire duration of the Animus and Novus grind...

A quick point here:
It is your decision to use myth during the Novus upgrade process. The ink buy-in aside, there is no required myth expenditure during the Novus line. I'm getting tired of people thinking that the map cost is inappropriate when it's absolutely fine as-is an optional method to speed up the process.

[CGMidlander]

No. Animus book should honestly have something BESIDES myth as its gating mechanic. Even then, removing a mere 300(1/5) of the cost per book isn't much of a change.

You're kidding, right?
300 myth * 9 = 2700 myth
2700 myth / 50 myth per run = 54 runs of Brayflox

Assuming you are in a farm group that can go for 54 runs straight with no bio breaks, member replacements, mistakes...etc. @ 7 minutes per run,
54 * 7 = 378 minutes / 60 minutes/hr = 6.3 hours

[Moqi]

I have myth coming out of my pockets and I've never done a speedrun. I don't know how you people spend yours, but tomes are already incredibly easy to get. You can get to 800 just by doing roulettes, beast tribes and a couple of more dungeon/maps. So there, you have 2 alexandrites already every day.

Go help out a friend, do your favourite dungeon, run Coil T1-5 a couple of times to gear your alt jobs! You'll be full of myth before you know it, too. If you're gonna look at everything in terms of Brayflox speedruns, of course it's sound boring, but that's your choice.

[Roris]

@Roris, I'm aware Daily Hunts are coming but the bigger meat of the issue is Myth bloat.

I'm glad they're adding more methods of obtaining Alexanderite, but I'm talking mostly about Myth expenses... I'd like ever to be able to collect some i90 AF gear, etc.

Oh I agree and that's kinda what I was saying, the game currently focuses way too much on both gathering myth and RNG for relic progression while the old relic quests focused on a set of unique steps. Personally I wouldn't mind if the relic quest doubled or even had ten times as many steps if they all were more involved and offered unique challenges instead of just boiling down to myth farming and RNG.

As it stands now Zenith is one step: 900 myth, Atma is one step: RNG, Animus is two steps: 1500x9 myth and the same core set of objectives per book x 9, Novus is two steps: 1.5k myth per scroll and 75 Alexandrites with daily, RNG and myth methods to obtain them, not mentioning RNG materia. It's all myth and RNG, that's why it just turns into a boring lazily designed grind instead of an interesting and engaging journey to obtain a cool weapon.