Why is "It's something to do" apparently a valid defense?

[Blood-Aki]

I've only ever seen people who have the attitude of "You aren't allowed to complain about X because I enjoy it" get called White Knights, because that's what they are, the problem with White Knights is that they destroy constructive discussion, you are allowed to enjoy relic and put forward constructive discussion, and that doesn't make you you a white knight. The same goes for the opposite end of the spectrum with people who say "You aren't allowed to enjoy X because I don't like it" without any kind of constructive feedback.

Personally I see some issues with relic, but for the most part it is fine except for the crafting part (namely that it isn't a grind, it is a gate), and I respect anyone who disagrees, and invite anyone to challenge and discuss my points.

That's exactly it, like this entire thread is pretty much "if you like what i don't like, Something is wrong with you, white knight" etc.

As the old saying goes: Misery loves company.

[Nominous]

You do realize that the argument of "if you don't like it, then unsub" is probably one of the worst arguments there is in a P2P? Many of us have been struggling to find reasons to stay subscribed, because we realize what would happen if all of us just unsubbed. SE already has a skeleton crew running this game (considering it's size and scope) what do you think dropping profits would do? SE isn't the dev team; they won't care about the reasons, just the numbers. Your unsub argument is actually quite negative to the game's future longevity.

So I guess all of the people who did the same thing in 1.0 were negatively impacting the game too?

That was sarcasm. This isn't~

All of the complaining and speaking with wallets lead to ARR. There will always be the defenders and extreme supporters, which is why FFXI was around for so long. It certainly wouldn't have existed without the devout followers.

[Hellboy-sa]

[Thunda_Cat_SMASH]

What is that? It's so pretty! +-+

[Lambdafish]

They should make a new title just for this person that says <soul without life>

[Lambdafish]

If only that were true.

For the most part it is. Now I can't speak for everyone, because there are nasty people on both sides who will attack everyone, but the attitude on the forums does stink, and I don't think you fully realise how often the behavior that gets called out is justified, on this thread alone it has happened a lot. The problem is that people are in the mindset that anyone who disagrees with them is attacking them, which is simply not the case. If you like relic, then you should tell people WHY you like it, and let SE know the parts you like and the parts you don't, thats what the people complaining are doing, as they are justified in doing. Nobody is attacking your opinion (ok some people might be, but simply because a complaint thread exists doesnt mean that you should be offended) and we need to build a forum community where it is ok to express your opinion and debate said opinion without people being offended just because they disagree.

I'll even post some points that I have heard for and against:

For:
- Relic is relaxing and is easy to do at your own pace
- Promotes going back into old content
- Makes crafting relevant

Against:
- The grind is too much for the reward
- It is exactly the same as old relic
- On top of this it screams lazy design
- Everything about specialist crafting
- The grind is only fun if you make it fun (see lazy design)
- The fact that it was delayed (nothing against the design, but the quest suffered greatly from it)

If people want to add more then maybe we can have discussion, but don't get offended that someone thinks something different, because all of the points above are true for a lot of people

[TheCurls]

For the most part it is.

A quick forum search for the term "white knight" yields surprising results counter to your claim. Not that it ultimately matters. Someone, may have been you, pointed out that both sides are annoying in this argument. I just happen to find the ad hominem attacks from the negativity side of the debate to be far, far more annoying and relentless than people defending the game. These so-called white-knights are only being defensive because they're being attacked, ruthlessly and without reason.

There are only so many times people can hear "omg this game is DONE." "I quit!" "screw this SE sucks" before the inevitable "well, if you don't like it, don't do it" argument comes out. And whenever someone says that, they're instantly branded a white knight. Is the game perfect? Of course not. But it's still good enough for people to enjoy, even if some of you think it's utter trash and people who enjoy it are among the dumbest, bottom-feeding vermin life has to offer.

The fact of the matter is, this is a 3.15 patch. It is not a major content patch. That comes in a handful of weeks from now. It seems that an outspoken portion of this community can't understand this fact and have taken up arms to set fire to everything in their vicinity. They're trying to sow discord so they can point at the pile of ashes and say "Aha! I told you it was doomed!" while they're holding the smoldering torch in their hands.

[Lambdafish]

There are only so many times people can hear "omg this game is DONE." "I quit!" "screw this SE sucks" before the inevitable "well, if you don't like it, don't do it" argument comes out.

Have you wondered why people are upset? From what I have seen people are very vocal (albeit maybe too vocal) in the REASONS that they are upset. Saying "Don't like it, don't do it" is completely counterproductive to discussion and in a way invalidates their opinion (I have seen more people who are in defence of the game claiming to be a victim of this, even though I have seen those same people do this far more). I am just stating my observation, but, trying to be as unbiased as possible, that's the way that discussions seem to go.

The fact of the matter is, this is a 3.15 patch. It is not a major content patch. That comes in a handful of weeks from now. It seems that an outspoken portion of this community can't understand this fact and have taken up arms to set fire to everything in their vicinity. They're trying to sow discord so they can point at the pile of ashes and say "Aha! I told you it was doomed!" while they're holding the smoldering torch in their hands.

The problem is that those same people were also disappointed with the 3.1 patch (to be fair, so was I), and the fact of the matter is that we were supposed to get the relic months ago, but it has been delayed again and again. The REASON that people are upset is because this was a highly anticipated patch with content that should have been in a major patch and the fact that it is lackluster, and in places insulting (if you want reasons why, see above), on top of an already controversial 3.1 patch (diadem and LoV, while fun to a few, has done more harm than good) has left a bad taste in the mouths of a noticeable chunk of the player base. The fact that you don't know this goes to show that you haven't been reading and understanding what people have been saying, and perhaps the reason that you are being so defensive is that you don't want to hear what others have to say about a product that you personally enjoy.

[AzureFlare]

There are only so many times people can hear "omg this game is DONE." "I quit!" "screw this SE sucks" before the inevitable "well, if you don't like it, don't do it" argument comes out. And whenever someone says that, they're instantly branded a white knight. Is the game perfect? Of course not. But it's still good enough for people to enjoy, even if some of you think it's utter trash and people who enjoy it are among the dumbest, bottom-feeding vermin life has to offer.

I see this argument all the time. And yes, you are correct: if you don't like it, don't do it. But people seem to forget that 'If you don't like it, don't do it!' too much results into people getting bored completely because there will be nothing to do even faster. Then the inevitable 'Well you don't like the game anymore, maybe you should take a break!' comes. Why would anyone return to a game after their friends have arguably gone away from the game, the content remains of the same structure in a slightly different texture and there is no transparency on what the future holds?

And worst of all, this argument is solely customer-to-customer, or player-to-player. You're essentially telling people to stop playing the game and do something else. If I was a designer, I'd be pretty curious where I went wrong if straight after a content patch, regardless big or small, my own playerbase is telling each other to stop playing the game. And then have it happen a few times in a row too. Shouldn't you be advertising the game for me? Telling others how great it is and defending it with something stronger than 'you know, you can also just leave it be'? Did I make the content just for people to 'let it be'? Depends entirely on the target audience, but then if the audience is that small I'd put some very big question marks behind that.

Basically, yes, it is a valid argument. But it has no substance into it, at all. As a player, it doesn't tell me anything about what's to come and doesn't provide me with anything more, leaving it entirely up to the designers. As a designer, this argument is literally useless: it only provides the feedback that people are.. not doing the content. Well, could've done that with a stats tracker running on server data anyway. Oh, and that they are telling each other not to do content. Even someone saying 'It sucks!' is more valuable feedback at that point (and likewise, 'I like it!').

[Alahra]

Against:
- The grind is too much for the reward
- It is exactly the same as old relic
- On top of this it screams lazy design
- Everything about specialist crafting
- The grind is only fun if you make it fun (see lazy design)
- The fact that it was delayed (nothing against the design, but the quest suffered greatly from it)

I'd like to, as you request, discuss some of these.

The i200 to i210 Anima grind has a better time to reward ratio than several of the ARR Relic steps. The Atma stage was a several hours long grind not unlike the first stage of the Anima line, but it provided absolutely no benefit. All it did was change your weapon's appearance (generally very slightly, at that). While the item level of the weapon changed, its stats did not. Comparatively, the first step of the new quest does provide a usable weapon, which while it may not be of great use to players that have been on the game regularly since the launch of HW, is a great way to get a starter weapon for an alt job or for a fresh 60 without the investment of tomestones, letting people gear up a bit more rapidly.

The Animus stage required a similar number of content runs/tomestones, proportionally, to that required to get the Anima stage tokens because of the relative lack of tomestone rewards at the time. Given the original FATE respawn timers for the 27 FATEs required for this stage (which could range to anywhere from 2-8 hours for several of them), Animus weapons likely took more overall time logged into the game than the Anima weapon will.

The Novus stage required 6,900 *more* tomestones than the Anima stage does (800 per Mysterious Map, plus 1500 for the Superior Enchanted Ink), in addition to an extremely costly and RNG-crippled Materia Melding grind. While you could avoid some of the tomestone grind with the Daily Expert quest, sticking only to Daily Roulettes for tomestones on Novus resulted in a longer daily grind to get everything you needed (by perhaps 2 weeks, though I don't remember exact tomestone values on the roulettes in 2.3, so it's hard to be precise).

The Nexus grind didn't have a gigantic tomestone cost (and is one of my favorite stages as a result); however, to do it efficiently, you relied on a random window and were forced to grind within that window if one came up, greatly restricting playtime. For comparison, doing just Daily Roulettes for lights (which nets somewhere in the vicinity of 30 lights per day at original values), you're looking at about 65 days to complete the Nexus at a casual pace. Just with Roulettes on Anima, you're looking at approximately 40 days.

Zodiac also got a lot of hate for its heavy reliance on RNG, but without hard data on the drop rates, it's difficult to compare it directly to the investment required by the Anima stage. It's also worth noting that Zodiac required far more difficult 3-star tokens (which all but required Omnicrafting to have a decent HQ chance) to complete, with somewhat difficult to acquire materials (using the much-maligned desynthesis system). By contrast, while Anima requires more items (16 in total), they're easier to craft, as Specialists can reasonably HQ 1-star items at present so long as they have kept up with their Red Scrip gear. While prices are high on some servers right now, over time, they will come down, as the number of folks able to craft these will likely be larger than those that could craft all of the Perfect items for Zodiac.

There are also some significant ways that the Anima stage is structured to be more player friendly than previous stages, so it's not really "exactly like" the old relic at all. It uses similar concepts (it kind of has to, unless you expected them to create an entirely new type of content for it--the general types of content in the game allow for FATEs, Trials, Maps, Dungeons, Levequests, and Hunts). I do wonder why there wasn't more interaction with Diadem but they probably didn't want players having even more reason to run it when it's already fairly popular content because of the i210 drops (that has changed somewhat after the drop rate nerfs--but the Anima stage was likely nearly complete or complete before they made those changes which likely did not leave enough time to newly incorporate Diadem into the process).

Anima is more friendly to the player in a couple important ways. Primarily, it interacts with several avenues of content, all of varying dedication, to allow the player to tailor how arduous their grind will be. It's not the first stage to do this (both Nexus and Zeta worked in similar ways). Anima is superior to those stages, though, in that we can decide how to work on the Anima according to our own schedules, rather than the schedule of the shifting "bonus window." Additionally, this is one of the only stages that is very "daily friendly," allowing casual playtime to complete the relic in a reasonable amount of time (a little over a month). Anima also is one of the only Relic stages to have a "solo" avenue through the Beastmen quests, which works well for people that don't always want to be playing with others.

The questline as a whole is actually worth doing even if you don't intend or to or simply don't have the time to complete the Anima stage before 3.2, as steps 1 and 2 provide usable weapons *without tomestone costs.* Completing the Awoken weapon provides you with a weapon worth 990 Esoterics--just over two weeks if you cap tomes every week! That's pretty significant, and the first two stages are not particularly arduous (the first one is the worst, since it's an RNG-fest, but the second is like three hours worth of dungeons--far better than 13 or 14 Expert dungeons!). That was never really the case in ARR, as the "in between" stages were often just as long as the stages to push a weapon to "maximum" level.

The developers have also, it seems, listened to player feedback on another part of the questline. The original Atma grind required you to be on a job with a Zenith (or later, higher) Relic weapon, meaning that you couldn't level alt jobs on FATEs at the same time. It was a very common player request for this to be changed, and lo and behold, our new "Atma 2.0" grind allows you to be on any job you want to get the drops, regardless of level (well, not entirely regardless--you probably want to be at least level 50 :P).

It's also worth noting that, so far at least, we seem to be getting a more polished story experience--while the weapons (as of yet) don't seem to have unique stories, the addition of new "job-specific" quests suggests we could see something like that in the future. We're getting a new character and development of that character (and they've even teased that we might have some influence over our weapon's personality through in-quest dialogue choices, though that's just speculation at this point). While the overarching brushstrokes of the story are the same right now, we only have the first chapter, so it's probably a little too early to judge the story (though it's safe to say we've already got more of it than we really got for the whole of the Zodiac line).

So with a lot of these general changes in mind, I actually wouldn't describe the design as "lazy" at all, but rather "thoughtful." The Anima grind is currently structured in such a way that shows the developers have learned from some of the problems they created with the previous Relic/Zodiac grind from ARR. However--the backbone of the Relic quest still functioned, and functioned rather well, at what it was meant to do: give non-raiders a long-term goal to create a powerful weapon and reinvigorate content that's not had much engagement from the playerbase for whatever reason. As a result, the *foundation* of the Anima grind is the same, and they gave us no indication that it was going to really change.

Regarding Specialist crafting, I personally am not bothered by them, though I can understand why others are. I'd much rather have the recipes be Specialist only than have the recipes locked behind arduous Master book grinds and Desynthesis, as they were for the Zodiac stage.

When it comes to the grind, well: of course it's only as fun as you make it. It's a grind. And we were never told it would be anything *but* a grind. Yoshi-P did make a statement or two about the grind not being as tough as it has been in the past, and so far, that has been entirely the case, as the Anima grind is less time consuming than the worst stages of the ARR Relic grind. In fact, the only stage that was significantly shorter than it was the Zeta stage, but it was always my guess that the Zeta stage was less taxing precisely because anyone at that stage had already put in so much work--it was the Home Stretch, as it were.

I actually *do* agree that the delay on the questline as a whole was problematic, however. They probably could have given us the first section of it earlier on, perhaps a month or two after Alexander Savage was released, so the i200 weapons would have seen more use. The Anima stage, however, is positioned roughly as we should expect it would be, about 6 to 8 weeks from the expected release date for patch 3.2. Comparatively, it's positioned at about the same spot on the timeline as Nexus was and Zeta was (we did have Zeta for a lot longer because of the extended nature of patch 2.5, though).