Yoshi - Players who "Like" Challenges would ALSO like to obtain a Relic Weapon

[Alahra]

I'm always in favor of additional options.

However, incorporating "challenging" content into the Relic Grind would not be without its share of issues. The developers currently operate under a philosophy that completing challenging content should be the fastest way to get maximum-item level gear for a patch cycle, which is a large part of why Relic stages are generally delayed--they want the "raiding" population to have their time in the sun (which I think is a good thing, as a player who mainly only goes after Relic-class weapons).

So, let's take the example given in the original post: Coil done with minimum item level gear. Where does this fit in to the paradigm? It's challenging content, right? In terms of difficulty, it's probably actually on par with clearing a top-level raid (current Alexander Savage's overtuned difficulty notwithstanding, anyway). Does that mean the Relic should be patched in earlier, without the arbitrary time delay, because there's a "challenging" means of acquiring it?

Let's say the answer is yes, and the altered Anima questline would have thus been available at the same time as Alexander Savage. Well, that poses problems all its own. Most of the "raiding" community in XIV is probably intimately familiar with Binding Coil, Second Coil, and Final Coil. Naturally, statics would be pushing to clear those fights to give them a leg up on clearing Alexander Savage. So it needs to be delayed at least somewhat.

The catch up patch is probably a good stage for it, then. 3.1. Savage has been out for awhile, and it's a patch designed to ease the difficulty of clearing the top raid. But that poses another, similar problem: what about Thordan EX? No one's going to learn a complicated fight for an alternative weapon if they can do fights they already know like the back of their hand.

All right. So let's make Thordan EX part of the alternative path, then. But wait--the weapons would still largely be meaningless, much as Titan's weapons were in 2.0. How then do you make Thordan relevant outside of the Anima weapons? This would actually have some answer, I think: go back to accessory drops, like the original EX primals. But this does lead back to the other problem of when the quest stage should be available, from another direction.

If the Anima questline had been available in 3.1, with the option to complete the 210 stage through completing Thordan EX, the accompanying "non-challenging" grind would also be available--and let's not kid ourselves, it *should* be, because the Relic questlines are meant for players that want to invest time into their progression, rather than tackling challenging content. So when it's available, it should be available to the primary audience first. But that means that the grind would need to be at least 4 weeks longer, roughly, so that the "casual" method of obtaining it would produce the weapon at roughly the same point in the patch cycle as it currently will (on average, probably about 8 weeks after the launch of the patch for most players tackling it, and 4-6 weeks after--so we should start seeing Anima weapons in larger numbers in mid-January through early February).

There is already substantial feedback on the forums that the grind is too long for the "casual" avenue. That feedback is somewhat misguided (as I've argued elsewhere, the Anima stage is no more onerous than the Animus, Novus, and Nexus stages from ARR--and is in fact more player friendly in a few ways). So putting the Relic in 3.1 would have resulted in a longer grind, likely turning off significant numbers of players from the questline who are otherwise its target audience.

My point with all of this is that it's complicated. 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).