you guys went overboard with this new relic

[Rufalus]

When we were speculating on what the anima quests could be, the most cynical person's worst-case scenario turned out to be the reality. A monster grind of currency/tokens with the numbers set unreasonably high. I think people would have really really appreciated if there was some original content. The old relic weapons had chimera and hydra, two original battles that weren't available outside of the relic quest. I think people would want at least one original battle that must be conquered for their special weapon, even if it means one less new battle available outside of the weapon quest. I haven't polled everyone but from all the comments it looks like the community would support development time being spent on a weapon quest series that is more original and less tiresome than what anima turned out to be.

[Aarik]

Some people and myself personally enjoy working towards a goal, whether it becomes pointless or not. We're not "white knighting" anything. People want everything handed to them and to put as little effort in as possible. I am pleased this isn't handed to us on a silver plate.

Wow, you really don't see the big picture here, do you? This won't be handed to you on a plate....YET. It will be marginalized eventually, and all your hard work will be crapped on. This isn't something SE implemented so you can feel accomplished. This is something SE implemented because they know that patch 3.1 was an abysmal flop and they're trying to keep people from abandoning ship until 3.2. For some reason they believe that making the relic quests even more torturous than before will keep people in. The masochists, perhaps.

[Lexia]

Wow, you really don't see the big picture here, do you? This won't be handed to you on a plate....YET. It will be marginalized eventually, and all your hard work will be crapped on. This isn't something SE implemented so you can feel accomplished. This is something SE implemented because they know that patch 3.1 was an abysmal flop and they're trying to keep people from abandoning ship until 3.2. For some reason they believe that making the relic quests even more torturous than before will keep people in. The masochists, perhaps.

That like the entire game in general and been that way since launch. If a person unhappy with it why they still sticking around, some things could be changed yes but I don't see some radical change to game in the way they do stuff.

[Alexander_Dragonfang]

Unless you raid savage, them 10 item levels on the weapon are irrelevant anyway, b/c you do not do harshly tuned content.
If you raid savage you will get your 210 weapon from there.
I understand that they want you to work for a 210 item level weapon and I agree.
I just wonder what sort of player is the target demographic here.

-casuals: can't finish THAT kind of insanity within the entirety of Heavensward, so they are out.
-savage raiders: likely don't care because to them it would merely be another visual (grind is way overboard for a projection item)
-midcore players: most likely the ones to attempt this, but they won't finish the weapon in a timeframe that allows the item to be useful, since the next patch is due in 3 months already.

No matter from what angle you look at this: the grind is out of sync with the reward for all target groups.

To have a time-based reward is always a mistake. Give casual players casual challenges, give midcore players midcore challenges, give hardcore players midcore challenges. Trading skill x time is the mistake here. In this day and age, NO ONE, has time to do this. Its fun how yoshi-p itself once said "players don`t have time to play mmo`s like old anymore". I haven`t seen this level of mindnubbing grind since ragnarok online, and at least, in RO, the endless mob killing was fun if you pushed yourself to do trains of 40 instead of 30 mobs...

Casual Challenge - Hydra/Quimera level trials. ---> Relic i200 (Entry level raid alternative)
Midcore Challenge - Primal EX trials. ---> Relic i210 (alternative to past-patch BiS)
Hardcore Challenge - Savage difficulty raid/trials. ---> Relic i220 (BiS for the content patch)

All the same skin, just diferent ilvl and stats, maybe a diferent name or coloring, even aura to diferentiate them. Make a series of long challenges. Skill based. Beat X boss with certain conditions. In X ammount of time. Not using X method. Put each level of players to the test. Have them investing their time into planning how to beat the challenge instead of doing mindnumbbing content.

Idea. Ramuh EX -Anima Trial-.

Beat Ramuh EX with both healer under the permanent effect of the tether.
Beat Ramuh EX under 3 minutes.
Beat Ramuh EX without a single KO.
Beat Ramuh EX without the use of a LB.
Beat Ramuh EX ... You get the idea.

[Rath]

Wow, you really don't see the big picture here, do you? This won't be handed to you on a plate....YET. It will be marginalized eventually, and all your hard work will be crapped on. This isn't something SE implemented so you can feel accomplished. This is something SE implemented because they know that patch 3.1 was an abysmal flop and they're trying to keep people from abandoning ship until 3.2. For some reason they believe that making the relic quests even more torturous than before will keep people in. The masochists, perhaps.

The sheer amount of people in PF doing fates means they were right. These are not as torturous as before though. The drop rates from these fates is not nearly as bad as atma when they first came out.

[Madjames]

Alright seeing as I have no Beast Tribes at all done ever and I will not be doing anything regarding them, I need some answers here.

What are the steps from begining to end. What do I personally have to do to get this relic. Please note that I will NOT be doing any beast tribe content as it is totally outdated content.

[DragonSlayer45]

After thinking about it at work today and putting the numbers together on how long this would take to complete casually, I can definitely see where the problem is. At the very least, this entire relic quest screams that it should have been included in 3.0 and expanded over time. By the time anyone has one of these, Gobdips would be added to Void Ark and that is a free 210 weapon with minimal effort required on the players part.

On to the actual "content" of the quest, there are a lot of things they could have done to ease up the repetitiveness of the quest. Your choices either come down to:

Run Alexander until you're sick of metal for the rest of your life, and people are already tired of Alex due to Savage.
Grind an absurd amount of Law and Poetics.
Do a limited amount of beast tribe quests. And if you aren't rank 3 with any of them, forget about this step. Which leaves you with less options.
Grind...even more hunts and/or pray you get lucky with treasure maps.

Is this all they could have done with. They have tons of other content that are dead that could use reviving. How about a weekly CT and Coil quest that rewards 5-10 unidentified items of your choice? How about developing new content to mix things up? The last time we received trials unique to relic was back in 2.0.

I really want Yoshi to respond to these complaints on the live letter on the 23rd. If he doesn't, I'm going to be really disappointed.

[Aarik]

That like the entire game in general and been that way since launch. If a person unhappy with it why they still sticking around, some things could be changed yes but I don't see some radical change to game in the way they do stuff.

Yes it's been that way since launch, and relic quests have always been grindy....but this is beyond grindy. This is to the point where if people work at this NON-STOP, they most likely still won't have it by the time the next big patch comes in; their work will be marginalized before they even have the finished product!

[KaiKatzchen]

I am fine with this and how it is set up - I don't mind it, it doesn't bug me and gives me something to do. I don't understand how people can complain when it's been out less than one day - and chances are once people are done they will be complaining that they have nothing to do and the game's boring again. This always happens, and it looks like that hasn't changed.

Yes I don't mind something being easy - but please SE don't make the whole game a insta-get. Even if its just annoying/hard in the sense that it's so time consuming - at least it isn't 'oh yeah you talked to a npc, here have all the things'. Personally it's nice to have something annoying now and then to take up some time in this game.

[Instrumentality]

They forgot to bring the fun.

Like literally just forgot it. This really feels like "Please stay subbed for three more months" the weapon, and not "this is fun and engaging content that you can do at your own pace without committing ages of time". Did they hire the EQ/XI legendary quest designers for this step or something?