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

[UBERHAXED]

This isn't exactly true. In the first step of the 2.x relic, you were required to beat hard content (Titan hard). By the 5th step to the 8th step, you were able to customize the weapon to the stats that you wanted.

What did beating titan have to do with raids? BCoB was out at launch. That was considered hard content, not titan. Even then, they realized that the ease of doing the relic quest (which ended with a fight with titan) didn't match the difficulty of doing BCoB and in 2.1 they raised allagan weapons to 95. Just to be clear, a lot of people seem to have misconceptions about the timings of updates (due to not playing the game maybe?). In 2.0 we had 90 relic (+1 it was called back then) and 90 Allagan. In 2.1 Allagan bumped 5 levels to 95, relic stayed the same (name got changed to zenith). 2.2 was new raid tier; high allagan at 115, and relic added atma and animus (100). 2.28 added Novus which was 110. Way later in 2.38, pretty close to the next raid tier being released (like weeks) we got Nexus at 115. 2.4 added dreadwyrm at 135 we still had nexus. 2.45 added the penultimate step (125) and we didn't get the zeta until 2.51, at the very end of ARR. At exactly zero points was the relic the same ilvl as the relic weapon except when the game launched (which they admitted as a mistake and fixed it in the next patch by bumping the allagan weapons) and ended (right before the expansion). Well I guess the couple of weeks between 2.38 and 2.4 Nexus was at high allagan level, a whopping 6 months later.

SE knows what crowd the intended the relic to be for and they make sure that you cannot replace hard content with grinding. It was quite amazing that they released a tome weapon at all that didn't require a raid drop and they held off the relic to make sure that it doesn't interfere with raid progression. They seem to however see that similar to 2.0, they simply cannot have the relic at the same level as the raid weapon. They could do the same thing as they did in 2.1, but inflation only treats the symptoms, rather than fixing the problem. It seems that their approach will be at the levels simply don't match and in exchange there will not be any difficult content to get the relic. But of course, we already knew that since they wrote in the the first post.

[Ibi]

Yes it could be better, but the big time investment for this stage will hopefully mean the future stages will require less time/money.

I find your lack of faith disturbing. This stage ended up being as convoluted and lengthy as it was due to factors that had nothing to do with the anima weapon itself. It certainly wasn't the logical solution to the problem SE created for themselves either, so even if it makes sense for the other stages to be easier/cheaper, that's no guarantee that they will be.

And after all- isn't that what makes the relics valuable in the first place? Not everyone will invest the time to complete it.

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.

The anima axe, for example, would be no less valuable right now even if every warrior in the game had one, because it's better than every alternative.

[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).

[Tint]

What did beating titan have to do with raids? BCoB was out at launch. That was considered hard content, not titan. Even then, they realized that the ease of doing the relic quest (which ended with a fight with titan) didn't match the difficulty of doing BCoB and in 2.1 they raised allagan weapons to 95.

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

[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.

[RiceisNice]

Right, that's sort of my point—I don't think it was really development time at all.

Even though they seem to imply it is the case when you're looking at steps 1 and 2, there can't be any good reason to delay that except for developmental time.

And well, their idea of catch up seems to be misplaced throughout the expansion; crafted recipes, diadem, or even making the first step lower Ilvl than what was already available on 3.0s release.