The Current Status of FFXIV Patch 3.1 and How to Address it Moving Forward

[Cilia]

I usually stick to the Lore forum, and as a casual player, do not care about Alexander Savage balancing. Never touched the Diadem either. So I'm just gonna share my thoughts on the Anima weapon comments.

The first stage? Kind of annoying, because I remember the Atma drop rates from 2.1. I thankfully finished my Zodiac Zeta shortly before this, but my brother is going through it in my place, and I feel for him. If even the producer doesn't want to do it (Yoshi-P said in an interview he would be glad to skip it if he could), why would you wish it on your players?

The second stage? Not so bad. It's an old-school dungeon tour, from Snowcloak through the Vault. A good way to help out newbies and revisit some old content. Doesn't take too long, not too much of a grind, and it helps out newbies.

As for the rest?

I don't know where this notion that "not enough players had Relics in 2.0 because they were behind the HM primals" comes from. The original Relic quest was, in my opinion, the best one: it took a little bit of everything. A high-end crafted weapon (which drove me to level ALC since I was playing SCH), a couple good materia, a current endgame 4-man, some tomestones, a couple unique fights, and the current most difficult trials. That was fun. Aside from being a little time-consuming, it forced you to learn to play your class in preparation for the Coil if you ever wanted to do it, and showed you a plethora of content (dungeons, trials, crafting) you were either relatively new to or had never touched before. The Zenith version (then known as [Relic] +1) just took saving up a few weeks' worth of tomestones... a little disappointing, but there was no quest behind it, so OK.

It was a challenge, and most everyone rose to it. Seriously. Most everyone I saw had their Relic / Zenith. The rest of the stages started to get ridiculous though, especially if you did them when they were current. As previously mentioned the Atma drop rates were absurdly low and all you got for them was a reskin; the Trials of the Braves weren't so bad, since despite being just a little time consuming you could hop on and make visible progress without spending too much time and would often need more tomestones instead of the book taking too long; the Novus stage wasn't so bad, since you could get a map from tomestones or your daily roulette (materia costs went through the roof, but that's not SE's fault) - again, you could see slow and steady daily progress; the Nexus stage I just could not stomach because of how much a grind it was (a lot like this one here) until they nerfed it to the ground; the Zodiac itself wasn't so bad to me but that's likely because I did it during 3.1; and the Zeta was not too bad (a lightened replay of the Nexus step).

The Anima weapons proper, though? Pure grind recycling old content, and this is the start of it. You can do just short of a week's worth of Vanu dailies, 4.3 days' worth of old world beast tribe dailies (assuming you can do the Lv48 ones), trade a boatload of tomestones, either grind 2.x Hunt targets (1000 Seals) or hope you get one from a 3.0 treasure map (~5-15% from what I heard), or do 10 runs of an Alexander sector. FOR ONE ITEM. OF WHICH YOU NEED EIGHTY. At this point, none of that content is new or even challenging. Casual players have gotten everything they want out of it, story players have likely already seen the tale, and hardcore raiders simply don't care. It's not interesting, and the time investment just isn't worth it to the point I don't feel like actively pursuing an Anima weapon. The original Relic quest showed you new content and forced you to learn to play if you wanted the weapon. It was a challenge to rise to, and not unreasonably difficult (until you hit Titan, but he's all about knowing how to dodge and a single, slightly annoying DPS check). This... isn't. Even doing 10 runs of an Alexander section a day on top of the Vanu and Kobold dailies, it will still take me over a month straight to get the items I need.

(That's not even getting into the HQ crafted merchant items, which is a whole 'nother bag of worms with the excessive jump from 2.0 to 3.0 crafting and gathering, overinflated market board prices, and the limitations of specialist crafting. Suffice to say that while I did get Builder of the Realm in 2.x, I've not kept up with 3.x crafting due to its excessive difficulty jump stemming primarily from the fact it was likely balanced around people having done endgame crafting / gathering in 2.x.)

... of course, since Yoshi-P all but outright stated raiders are having too hard a time with Alexander Savage and they don't want them to be butthurt over other "easily" obtainable i210 weapons, it's hardly surprising that the Anima weapon seems like an insurmountable goal for solo players. (Yes, Yoshi-P, I am a solo player and I vehemently dislike the difficulty and setup of obtaining an Anima weapon. Turn down FC invites all the time.) Even as a solo player, I will rise to the challenge and do HM (or rather EX, since HM primals are now the "normal" versions) trials to get a nice weapon. It's worth it, I see progress, and if I fail it's usually my own fault and I will overcome those faults.

This is just a grind to keep people busy, and people who recognize that probably won't bother with it. It's designed to be as "difficult" as getting an i210 weapon from Alexander Savage, but time + money =/= difficulty. I get it, you made Alexander Savage a smidge too hard and raiders will be butthurt if other i210 weapons are not as difficult to get. If the Anima weapons are designed with solo players in mind, though, they fell far short of the mark. Meanwhile I have over 1000 Esoterics in my inventory and nothing I really wanna spend them on...

EDIT
Merry Christmas everyone! Sorry for the salty rant(?)!

[Alahra]

I don't know where this notion that "not enough players had Relics in 2.0 because they were behind the HM primals" comes from.

It comes from data that the developers track regarding quest completion rates. They track similar data for things like raid clears and primal clears, which is how they also determined that too few people were clearing Alexander (Savage) or that less than 50% of the playerbase cleared Titan (Extreme) back when it was current content.

[Pence]

It comes from data that the developers track regarding quest completion rates. They track similar data for things like raid clears and primal clears, which is how they also determined that too few people were clearing Alexander (Savage) or that less than 50% of the playerbase cleared Titan (Extreme) back when it was current content.

I feel like Yoshi also said that T5 weapons were getting buffed because so many people were getting relics easily.

[Alahra]

I feel like Yoshi also said that T5 weapons were getting buffed because so many people were getting relics easily.

It wasn't because too many players were getting them.

It was because the time investment in learning the fights was so disparate. Titan HM was a much easier fight to learn and clear than Twintania was, and so people rightfully provided feedback that it should probably offer greater rewards than the option that took less effort, as there was no reason for players who theoretically *could* clear Twintania to do so for the weapons when they also probably had Relic weapons from Titan already.

They are two separate issues that might seem related and in conflict at first glance but aren't necessarily so.

[RiceisNice]

They are two separate issues that might seem related and in conflict at first glance but aren't necessarily so.

Yoshi certainly doesn't feel so about this, which is only causing more and more disparity with his design philosophy versus what's actually needed for the game.


A. The relic content is too easy/requires little investment for the reward
B. The the relic content had too hard of a gate initially, and thus they won't do it anymore.
C. The Raid content should always have the highest weapon ilvl to encourage players
D. The relic weapon that follows raid content would be the same Ilvl to the raid weapon

They're doing C and D now if zodiac and anima is anything to go by. Both Relic zenith and BCoB had also released at the same time so you can take what you will out of that.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post1587770 - Specifically mentions that the relic weapons are common (many people have it).

This on the other hand though, still leaves me to confused to their design approach for designing content. Even before they'd say the relic is incredibly accessible and there are a lot of people with it, but according to Yoshi titan was still a huge wall for progression for relic so they won't do that again (Points A and B).

[Alahra]

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post1587770 - Specifically mentions that the relic weapons are common (many people have it).

To be fair, the question mentions them being common, not the developer's answer.

The fights were not a huge barrier like we've been told. They were a barrier, but one that most players were able to overcome, so the "casual / solo players don't want challenging fights and we don't want to tie Relic / Zodiac / Anima weapons to them as a result" is nonsense.

They were for a lot of players though, or else Titan HM sells would not have been as lucrative as they were in 2.0.

And to be honest, even if the data the developers are referring to were in fact wrong in some way...telling them their data is wrong, without actually having access to it, isn't going to get them to change their minds.

I get that a lot of folks are dissatisfied with the way Anima right now, but so many of the posts about it aren't really constructive or helpful to the developers in any way. If you really want things to change, don't insinuate that they're lying or something--they're not going to respond to that. Take it in good faith that they do mean what they say--they have no good reasons to mislead the player base about their intentions and the reasons for the various design decisions that they make, so why not provide feedback that can work assuming that what they're saying is true. Remember, this whole game is nothing short of a miracle and they have every reason to feel indebted to the players that allowed it to happen.

Helpful feedback will be a lot more likely to result in the change so many players seem to want. And contrary to what some folks are probably starting to think, I'm not opposed to changes to the way the questline is structured (though I'm quite happy with it overall) and I honestly feel like SE made a lot of boneheaded mistakes this time around (that are the result of a lot of poorly thought out decisions), most of which Yoshi also seems to think were mistakes, judging by the content of his Letter.

I spent like an hour this morning typing all this out in the thread about challenging content, because I do think they can improve on the quest, and I wouldn't do that if I thought SE was some perfect little snowflake or something:

But I do think there would be a way to structure the questline that would potentially satisfy more players. I'll be using 3.0/3.1 content and the existing structure of the Anima Questline to illustrate the structure that I would suggest as a model for future raid tiers.

Anima Stage 1 (Animated Weapon)
This could have been released in 3.0, alongside the Law Weapons. Keep the first stage the same--FATEs were dead at launch for the most part anyway. This also gives Zeta players an immediate "connection" to their accomplishments in 2.xx by letting them get a fresh weapon right as they hit level 60. Given the available content, this stage probably could have been i180, rather than i170--not a top tier weapon (which was from Ravana EX at the time), but one step behind. One step behind is something that I think, for the most part, should always be maintained with the Relic quests. Leave the best weapons to the "challenge" crowd, until late in a raid tier's life cycle, as they generally have done so far.

Anima Stage 2 (Awoken Weapon)
This stage could have been introduced with the addition of Alexander Savage. But it would need something a bit more...time-focused to it, as it would also be competing with Esoterics weapons at the time. At minimum, we might expect a grind of some kind that would take perhaps 4-6 weeks of an average player's time--slightly longer than the time required to gather an Esoterics weapon. As a reward for their efforts, however, players would be rewarded with the ability to customize the weapon's stats at this stage, rather than sometime in the future (presumably in 3.25 or 3.3, if they follow the rough pattern established in ARR).

At this stage in the quest, we can perhaps imagine the inclusion of both Bismarck EX and Ravana EX as "midcore" options and ways to reduce the grinding time. They probably shouldn't allow the player to obtain a weapon faster than a one could do so with Esoterics, though--so some sort of grind (perhaps three clears of a weekly quest requiring an Expanse Totem and a Hive Totem, not unlike the old Primal Focus quest). That cuts down on the invested time while still gating the weapon in a fashion so as not to make the Anima option far superior to all other choices.

Anima Stage 3 (Anima Weapon)
Following from the inclusion of Bismarck and Ravana in stage 2, which were "slightly" outdated in 3.07, this stage could then keep its normal release schedule, coming in 3.15, but include Thordan EX. The current Anima grind would remain in place, but an additional option would be added as means by which to acquire the four items necessary for crafting the Anima weapon itself. A weekly quest is probably a good idea again (personally I thought Primal Focus was a brilliant incentive device back in the day and I'm still shocked they only did something like it one other time in ARR, with the CT/ST/WoD weekly). Since the Anima grind takes about 6 weeks of Daily Roulettes, make the weekly quest again take perhaps three or four weeks (four would make the most sense with the quest we have now, which requires 4 items, but three would probably feel better). Hardcore Alexander grinding would still be the fastest way to obtain the weapon, but for those looking to avoid mind-numbing grinds, they can instead work on Thordan EX at a more relaxed pace.

Future Stages
Following this structure, future stages would probably go something like this. Patch 3.2 introduces (let's say) i230 gear, available from the new tier of Alexander Savage. At this time, we also get Tomestone gear that's i220, including i220 weapons that take about 3 weeks worth of locked tomestones to gather. Upgrade items for the weapons and tomestone armor are locked in Alexander Savage as normal. Additionally available, probably in 3.25 would be a long grind (perhaps 6-8 weeks on average) to upgrade the Anima weapon to stage 2 (the glowy one!), at i220. The new Primal battle could serve, again, on a weekly quest structure, to shave some portion of the grind off for those that are interested.

Then, probably sometime in patch 3.3 (around the 3.35 mark), the next stage of the quest would allow for the Anima weapon to be upgraded to i230, with the primal introduced in Patch 3.3 also serving to reduce the severity of the grind. Around this time, we would expect the items used to upgrade Esoterics weapons to be made available, as they have been in the past.

That's about how I would structure the relic quest if it were to include more difficult content as an option. This example structure has the additional benefit of 1) using more 3.0 content, which is a common complaint against the current quest; and 2) giving "midcore" players some incentive to still engage with the "older" content (they could, for instance, farm up one of the 4 catalyst items through the "grind" method, shaving a week off of their acquisition time but also helping with queue times for Roulettes and the like).

What I always try to do when I'm dissatisfied is at least try to understand where the developers/Yoshi-P are coming from. Sometimes I don't completely get why they do what they do what they do, but even if I don't, the perspective is useful for constructing feedback. Sometimes, I can't fathom why they're doing stuff they do (I had a really hard time understanding many of the crafting changes in 3.0 and had a hard time providing constructive feedback as a result). But I still think trying is worth it.

[RiceisNice]

To be fair, the question mentions them being common, not the developer's answer.

I'm actually looking at the video right now. There actually have no specific mention of it being too common or easy in the live letter itself (only that there would be changes), while the bullet statements are usually a summary. Not to mention they usually pick out and reword the question anyway (they give answers to questions they want to be asked)

Take it in good faith that they do mean what they say--they have no good reasons to mislead the player base about their intentions and the reasons for the various design decisions that they make, so why not provide feedback that can work assuming that what they're saying is true..

Nowadays it's a lot easier said than done for a lot of people because they've blatantly went opposite of what they've said a handful of times. Housing, 2.0 warrior, 3.0 GB/WM, and "dps tax" on BRD/MCH just to name a few.

[Cilia]

What I always try to do when I'm dissatisfied is at least try to understand where the developers/Yoshi-P are coming from. Sometimes I don't completely get why they do what they do what they do, but even if I don't, the perspective is useful for constructing feedback. Sometimes, I can't fathom why they're doing stuff they do (I had a really hard time understanding many of the crafting changes in 3.0 and had a hard time providing constructive feedback as a result). But I still think trying is worth it.

I fully understand where the devs are coming from, but it's still ridiculous. The full comments on the Anima weapon can be summed up as such:

• The Anima weapon quest was tuned to be approximately as difficult as clearing Gordias Savage.
• Difficulty was exchanged for time.
• Due to Alexander Savage being (too) hard, the Anima weapon was designed to take a long time to get.
• Revisiting old content was a key component of the Anima weapon quest.

In short, they wanted it to be as "difficult" as obtaining a Gordias Savage weapon (when it's been well-established Gordias Savage is too hard) using time as a substitute for difficulty and using old content people aren't playing anymore. Put less favorably, they made a treadmill designed to recycle old content and seem insurmountable due to the difficulty of Gordias Savage. The problem is that time =/= difficulty, and even discounting the HQ merchant goods, doing 10x Gordias section runs a day and some of the Beast Tribe dailies, it will take an excess of a month to get just the token items. Never mind the merchant goods, which are unobtainable without crafting and/or extremely deep pockets, neither of which casual / solo players are likely to have due to the overinflation of the Market Boards and the difficulty of getting into 3.0 crafting and gathering (even for people who did 2.0 not-endgame crafting and gathering).

It was designed to be a casual / solo friendly way to get an i210 weapon. I feel it's failed in that regard in numerous ways, just as Gordias Savage failed because it was too hard. I mean, it's not like I don't understand why, but that doesn't make it any less ridiculous or seem any less insurmountable. I'm not a game developer, much less an MMO developer, but this is not fun to me (and countless other people) which goes against the stated design philosophy of the game. Given Gordias Savage was deemed too hard, and the Anima weapon was designed to take approximately as much effort as clearing A4S, they had to have known this was going to happen.

Gordias Savage was too hard even for the hardcore, and it's now having a ripple effect on casual / solo content, which is more than a bit irritating. It's OK for me to be understandably upset, is it not?

TL;DR
Due to Gordias Savage being (too) hard, Anima weapons were designed to be (too) hard to get. They had to have known this, but released them as they were anyway, and should have expected the reaction they got.

[Cilia]

It comes from data that the developers track regarding quest completion rates. They track similar data for things like raid clears and primal clears, which is how they also determined that too few people were clearing Alexander (Savage) or that less than 50% of the playerbase cleared Titan (Extreme) back when it was current content.

I know they have the data for these things, but what I'm saying is that it's BS. Everyone had the Relic Weapons in 2.0. Vanilla 2.0. There wasn't much to do as a casual / solo player after the MSQ, and special weapons are always cool, so you went and did it. The fights were not a huge barrier like we've been told. They were a barrier, but one that most players were able to overcome, so the "casual / solo players don't want challenging fights and we don't want to tie Relic / Zodiac / Anima weapons to them as a result" is nonsense.

The real reason the Anima weapons are so ridiculously grindy is because they don't want raiders to feel butthurt that "filthy casuls" got an i210 weapon without putting in the same tremendous effort they did. They pretty much said so verbatim. I understand that raiding (the most difficult content) should provide the greatest rewards, but this treadmill we've been given in exchange is not what casual / solo players want or enjoy. It's not.

They are two separate issues that might seem related and in conflict at first glance but aren't necessarily so.

Here's the kicker: Titan HM was a prerequisite for going into T1. So as long as you had half a brain and knew about the Relics, chances were you had one anyway before going to fight Twintania. Making the Relic Zenith be an equivalent iLv to the Allagan weapons from T5 was a mistake on their part, which was rectified. After the Zenith, all semblance of difficulty was removed in favor of just making it take longer. That'll keep people playing, but it's not enjoyable and it doesn't make them happy - it's a treadmill to give them something to do, and people who recognize that won't bother getting on it.

They're trying to compare the difficulty and sense of achievement of raiding with what drives casual / solo players, which is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. They made the last step of the Anima weapon try to be as difficult as clearing A4S, trading difficulty for time... which is utter BS in my opinion, especially when Alexander Savage was released months before the Anima weapon quest.