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

[Alahra]

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.

Given how badly they screwed up this patch cycle, I don't think they had many good reasons to make many of the decisions they did, and so arguing that there's no good reason for them to do X or Y doesn't help much since they don't seem to have been relying on good judgement for the entire raid tier. It was probably being too cautious about the availability of better weapons relative to Savage's difficulty, and also, potentially Thordan EX. If they had released the i200 step alongside it, it might have lessened interest in the fight, and given how content-lite the game has been the past half-year, that may have concerned them.

There's also just the fact that, if they *had* released the i200 steps in 3.1, players who already had Esoterics weapons likely would have been pretty disapointed. The questline at that point would have had absolutely no use to anyone except catch up content. Given that there was a lot of excitement and buildup surrounding the release of the quest, it would have likely resulted in its own wave of anger on the forums.

None of those things amount to good reasons for the delay of the quest. What they ultimately should have done in hindsight was have the Relic be available as an alternate means of progression as early as say, 3.0, with the 170 step being available alongside Law Weapons, and the i200 step being released alongside i200 weapons. But that's something of a departure from the way the Zodiac questline functioned, what with it always being delayed relative to other options. It's just that, since they positioned part of the quest as a catch up mechanism, they really should have moved to a different philosophy for the release schedule. They didn't, likely because they were overly cautious regarding the impact of Savage's difficulty on the game as a whole, and so on.

It's a complicated mess of factors, all of which pretty much come down to Savage.

Edit (responding here because post-cap x.x):

Releasing the 200 relic on esoteric launch would mess up progression. They intended for no one to have 200 weapons until the third week of esoterics.

My apologies for not going into more detail. The grind would naturally need to take a month or more to get the item if they released it immediately alongside i200 Esoterics weapons (ditto for 170 weapons alongside Law ones), or they would stagger the release in a minor patch, if they were to do something like that. I re-posted elsewhere in this thread (probably several pages back now) a sort of breakdown of the kind of thing I had in mind.

[UBERHAXED]

Given how badly they screwed up this patch cycle, I don't think they had many good reasons to make many of the decisions they did, and so arguing that there's no good reason for them to do X or Y doesn't help much since they don't seem to have been relying on good judgement for the entire raid tier. It was probably being too cautious about the availability of better weapons relative to Savage's difficulty, and also, potentially Thordan EX. If they had released the i200 step alongside it, it might have lessened interest in the fight, and given how content-lite the game has been the past half-year, that may have concerned them.

There's also just the fact that, if they *had* released the i200 steps in 3.1, players who already had Esoterics weapons likely would have been pretty disapointed. The questline at that point would have had absolutely no use to anyone except catch up content. Given that there was a lot of excitement and buildup surrounding the release of the quest, it would have likely resulted in its own wave of anger on the forums.

None of those things amount to good reasons for the delay of the quest. What they ultimately should have done in hindsight was have the Relic be available as an alternate means of progression as early as say, 3.0, with the 170 step being available alongside Law Weapons, and the i200 step being released alongside i200 weapons. But that's something of a departure from the way the Zodiac questline functioned, what with it always being delayed relative to other options. It's just that, since they positioned part of the quest as a catch up mechanism, they really should have moved to a different philosophy for the release schedule. They didn't, likely because they were overly cautious regarding the impact of Savage's difficulty on the game as a whole, and so on.

It's a complicated mess of factors, all of which pretty much come down to Savage.

Releasing the 200 relic on esoteric launch would mess up progression. They intended for no one to have 200 weapons until the third week of esoterics.

[UBERHAXED]

My apologies for not going into more detail. The grind would naturally need to take a month or more to get the item if they released it immediately alongside i200 Esoterics weapons (ditto for 170 weapons alongside Law ones), or they would stagger the release in a minor patch, if they were to do something like that. I re-posted elsewhere in this thread (probably several pages back now) a sort of breakdown of the kind of thing I had in mind.

Didn't know doing 6 dungeons less than the level cap took 3 weeks, rather than 3 hours. For people who have the zeta, the first step is skipped.

Yet they repeat it again with nexus and high allagan, as well zeta with dreadwyrm, not just zenith with allagan.

Nexus was out in 2.38, literally a couple weeks before iLvl increase in 2.4. Zeta (lol) was at the end of ARR, where nothing matters anymore. In fact way before Zeta got released in 2.51, they already uncapped final coil.

[Alahra]

Didn't know doing 6 dungeons less than the level cap took 3 weeks, rather than 3 hours. For people who have the zeta, the first step is skipped.

I was suggesting that they would need to make the grind longer not keep it exactly as it is.

Nexus was out in 2.38, literally a couple weeks before iLvl increase in 2.4. Zeta (lol) was at the end of ARR, where nothing matters anymore. In fact way before Zeta got released in 2.51, they already uncapped final coil.

Nexus was out on 9/16 and patch 2.4 released on 10/28, which isn't "literally" a couple weeks in any way. Zeta was released in 2.51 on 2/24, and Final Coil was moved to the Duty Finder in Path 2.56 on 4/20, almost two full months later, which isn't "way before Zeta" at all—it's actually a significant amount of time after it.

[UBERHAXED]

I was suggesting that they would need to make the grind longer not keep it exactly as it is.



Nexus was out on 9/16 and patch 2.4 released on 10/28, which isn't "literally" a couple weeks in any way. Zeta was released in 2.51 on 2/24, and Final Coil was moved to the Duty Finder in Path 2.56 on 4/20, almost two full months later, which isn't "way before Zeta" at all—it's actually a significant amount of time after it.

December 8th, patch 2.45:
http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...cf56b933b99601
Final coil was unlocked. Final coil was moved to the DF at this point to remove lockout. What you are referring to is when you can queue solo. I specifically stated uncapped. Yes, coil was uncapped more than 2 months before zeta was released.

[RiceisNice]

....

I don't get what you're trying to argue. I said that they had kept alternating between raid being the highest ilvl, then relic being the same ilvl as the raid gear, and they are doing just that. Unless you want to move the goal posts where it "didn't matter" (and at this point, I'm not even sure why we're having a debate), because it was apparently at the end of the game and that there was only 4 weeks of it to do so, even though said content at the time (SCoB) arguably had a low clear rate so people didn't have HA anyway.

You still have the zeta release on 2/24 when FCoB took off in 10/28. Here, we've had savage since 7/21, and anima released 12/6, and we're pending on 3.2 to drop sometime in Feburary

[Alahra]

December 8th, patch 2.45:
http://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodest...cf56b933b99601
Final coil was unlocked. Final coil was moved to the DF at this point to remove lockout. What you are referring to is when you can queue solo. I specifically stated uncapped. Yes, coil was uncapped more than 2 months before zeta was released.

That's still incorrect. The change in 2.45 was to allow players to enter FCOB more than once per week, in order to facilitate groups helping others and the like (Savage worked like this from the start, by the way). It wasn't added to the Duty Finder in 2.45. I was off by a patch, though: FCOB was added to the DF for full-party queuing on 3/31, in patch 2.55. That's still a full month after Zeta was released (and actually makes it line up basically just like Nexus did for SCOB).