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

[UBERHAXED]

No, what makes them valuable is that they're far and away the best weapon you can get without raiding and, in many cases, on par with or superior to the weapons you can get from raiding.

This in itself seems to be a problem they noticed and are now going to fix. From the OP:

Similar to Zodiac weapons, Anima weapons are based on the following concepts.

• Will not be the strongest weapon at the same time as the rewards for clearing the hardest difficulty content.
• Clearing the hardest difficulty content will not require you to obtain Zodiac/Anima weapons.
• Creating these weapons will require you to put in effort over a longer period of time.

[RiceisNice]

This in itself seems to be a problem they noticed and are now going to fix. From the OP:

Except that isn't a problem (or at least they are making it out to be a problem and making a big deal out of it when it shouldn't affect content release), and literally everything they've said in the bullet point is already in effect. All it really does is justify why they made it so grindy, and never touched in why they insist in utilizing existing, old 2.x content for 3.x progression, which doesn't really line up with how long they've delayed it for because it wasn't apparently ready.

[Alahra]

which doesn't really line up with how long they've delayed it for because it wasn't apparently ready.

Did they specifically state it was delayed because of development time? I don't remember seeing that. It seems like they delayed it in part because of Savage (and also probably to see what clear rates were like for Thordan, though that's just speculation on my part).

[MilesSaintboroguh]

Did they specifically state it was delayed because of development time? I don't remember seeing that. It seems like they delayed it in part because of Savage (and also probably to see what clear rates were like for Thordan, though that's just speculation on my part).

I thought the devs said the relic was delayed because they done goofed on Alexander Savage and they didn't want relic weapons to outclass raid weapons so soon,

[RiceisNice]

Did they specifically state it was delayed because of development time? I don't remember seeing that. It seems like they delayed it in part because of Savage (and also probably to see what clear rates were like for Thordan, though that's just speculation on my part).

All we get is that the relic quest was intended for a 3.0 release, and delayed to 3.1, and then it won't be "ready" until 3.15. I mean no matter how you slice at it, it really doesn't make sense in the perspective of what we have; there was really no point to delaying the i170 step for so long when even upgraded laws were available since release, i200 wouldn't have been a problem for a 3.1 release because we've long had eso weapons What I could think of is that they don't want the i210 weapons to overshine thordan, but why then why was thordan put in the same patch cycle as a i210 relic, and the former was delayed for a 3.15 release (to the point it almost feels like it was delayed for the sake of delaying it, because realistically, 3.15 doesn't add much to the game, at all compared to the other 2.XY patches)

I mean this is just my perspective, but the ilvl placement of Thordan seems to a reactionary addition in an attempt to improve clear rates (and the devlopers more ore less said this in a liveletter, they had hoped that thordan weapons would help with clear rates), and honestly feels like they had shoved in an i205 weapon after they had already laid out a progression route, see the (lack of) WD increase between i205 and 210 for BRD/MCH, even though it wasn't the case for their unupgraded law (160) and expanse weapon (165). All of that could also go back to how they changed how the weapon acquirement works too (the lack of unID tomestones required to purchase a weapon, which could have dropped in say A2s)

[Alahra]

-snip-

Right, that's sort of my point—I don't think it was really development time at all, I get the impression it was all tied into progression/weapon availability in various ways. They were reacting all over the place to try to curb the difficulty of Savage and things like that. They also mentioned wanting the first two relic steps to be sort of "catch up" steps for newer 60s, and while those two steps probably could have been in 3.1 proper as a result, it may have just been easier from a logistics standpoint to release the quest all in one chunk.

I'm by no means saying that they executed all this well—they blundered pretty badly, in my view (and seemingly in Yoshi's). But I think they just had misguided reasons that lead them to push it back to 3.15 (and I think your hunch that Thordan was originally meant to be i200 is probably correct), rather than their not really being done.

[UBERHAXED]

Except that isn't a problem (or at least they are making it out to be a problem and making a big deal out of it when it shouldn't affect content release), and literally everything they've said in the bullet point is already in effect. All it really does is justify why they made it so grindy, and never touched in why they insist in utilizing existing, old 2.x content for 3.x progression, which doesn't really line up with how long they've delayed it for because it wasn't apparently ready.

The top bullet point was a mistake they said they made, and it will be fixed future patches, so that the relic will never be the same as the max ilvl raid weapon at any time. Sure they can raise it to the new cap (e.g. 230) when the next tier (e.g. 250) get's released, just like what they did in 2.0, with the exception of the couple of weeks nexus was out before 2.4. They already showed how they were going to do this at launch, when they made the mistake of matching allagan and zenith (fixed in the next patch).

they also raised the ilvl of the titan weapons from 70 to 80 (you got the lvl 80 relic weapon after the fight, making the ilvl 70 titan weapons useless). so not sure if pointing to the early days is really that meaningfull :x

They raised the ilvl for the specific reason that immediately after completing titan you would get the relic weapon (which was 80), which made the weapon not have any use. They have a history of changing ilvl when they feel that the content does reward appropriately. Luckly, it happens to be the case that they always adjust upwards.