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]

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.

[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.

[RiceisNice]

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

[Alahra]

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.

I don't take Yoshi's statement to mean that they'll never made the Anima weapons equal to raid weapons again, to be honest. It's worded a bit strangely (as is just about everything he posts on the OF), but I suspect by "at the same time," he means they won't be released at the same time, but that they'll eventually be made up to par, as has generally been the case so far. That is, raids will continue to get top weapons first, with Anima weapons only being that powerful much later. Given that he said that first bullet point also applied to the Zodiac weapons, which did become as powerful as the raid weapons, that's the best way I can make sense of what he's getting at.

He didn't actually say he considered this aspect of Zodiac/Anima to be a mistake anywhere in the letter. What he did say was that Savage's item levels were too low, which affected the item level of everything that came after it, and that tomestone weapons will be a different item level from raid weapons moving forward. He doesn't mention future item levels for the Anima ones.

[RiceisNice]

My post was more of a reply to uber because I can't quote on phone, because what he said doesn't quite match up with what was actually happened, let alone what yoshi said

[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