At this rate it'll take ages for me to 200-210 my relic.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

Sorry, but purely for the sake of keeping my word, I'm giving this one a fair chance as I promised before Heavensward launched. I however have already twice seen reason to just drop it and never bother again with any relic.

[Cherie]

This relic grind is based on our desires. This is what happens when we get what we want. They will reduce the difficulty all we want. All we have to do is ask. After all, they do want you to keep playing.


One thing they won't change is how long it takes to get the one of the best items in the game. Would it do them (or you) any good if you got the relic the first day and stopped subscribing/playing?

Why does it take somewhere around 4 to 8 weeks to finish the relic you ask? Good question! Did you notice you can get a lore weapon of nearly equal quality in the same exact amount of time for a lot less effort?

Their equation I understood was based on a few factors (This is just what I glean to reading interviews and stuff. I could be wrong of course):
1)Using the home JP audience as the base for their equation. (I mean why not right? If the game was made in USA you can be darn sure we'd do the same.)
2)Assuming you had one person who raided(test group) and one person who didn't(control group) but both averaged to get a base amount of time played.
3)Figure out when the average serious raider in JP was getting the weapon.
4)Use the average time played between the two to figure out how many random relic tasks the non raider would have to do and how long they'd take each to get a similar weapon.

It makes sense when you figure in this is a subscription game doesn't it?

The only thing that will make the time it takes shorter is how easily people are clearing midias... At the moment it still looks like the relic grind is gonna take a while, for a while longer at least.

[Altanas]

If they only make one change, which won't completely undermine the grind, they should just add unidentified items to largescale leves.

[Colt47]

To Cherie,

The problem is that they don't need to make things so time consuming to keep people playing. If the only reason people are playing is to get a single item and not even care about the content they are doing anymore, they are not playing a game: They are showing symptoms of being on a mouse wheel and suffering from a compulsion. The entire point of the game is to have content we enjoy doing with the reward being something we get at the end as a pay off. Hence, it's about the journey, not the destination.

What you are stating is that the developers care nothing about the journey and just want to make the destination an irresistible mouse trap so people will inevitably waste hours of time burning themselves trying to get the highest powered item. Developers on FFXIV don't want that: they care about making an enjoyable game and want to hear positive feedback from the people playing. A major problem they are having is that the small hardcore audience doing hard content want to be the soul owners of the highest level gear. They are competing with the masses and want to stand over them with something to show for it. In turn, it is their own demands that are determining how those who can't join raids can get the same level of gear.

Ultimately, to make a better game the developers have to decide if they want to keep pleasing this smaller hardcore group of ground pounders or support the larger mid-core vanguard that played these games back in the early 2000s and want to keep enjoying the game on a more limited budget of time. They can't please both groups as that strategy has been tried before. It just doesn't work.

Edit: Also, the developers are in a situation where if they want to change Anima, they can't change the existing ones because then it invalidates all the time and hours people put into it already. The best the FFXIV Development team can do is move forward and have the next one be less demanding.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

Colt47, the issue with what you said - while valid and accurate to a degree - is that SE is trying to level a playing field that isn't level.

I'm sorry, this is not me being elitist or hardcore or anything when I say this but; if you're not raiding, then you don't need a raid-level or near raid level weapon. Even if it takes longer, even if it's grindier/pricier/etc. You don't need it. I mean, why? What are you going to use it for? With that in mind, trying to make relics match, if not edge out raid weapons is foolish design. I've used the metaphor many times, but if there was a million dollar prize for reaching the top of a mountain, and one man climbs the mountain while another leisurely walks the longer-but-easier trail, who really deserves the prize? I can only speak for myself, but I never enjoyed, nor felt validated receiving a participation award. And if a participation award held the same prestige/value as a first place one, then why bother at all?

This is NOT me saying "people who don't raid don't deserve good gear!" No. It IS me saying what would be the relevance of having top-notch gear if at best you simply run dailies/roulettes? If/when SE realizes that trying to play to the lowest common denominator doesn't really help, we may see not only a positive change, but it may in fact motivate some players. I said it before: why relic if the stats aren't that great and the requirements are more tedious than necessary? And as the other side of that coin, why challenge ourselves to raid or work any harder if sub-raid level gear will be on par with or even possibly better than raid rewards?

[Colt47]

That's the trap. Gear level is not about "What is needed to clear content", it's about having the best gear and reaching the exit condition for the activity of gear grinding. People want to achieve having the best gear for each patch, period. It's never been about getting gear to take down content.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

That's unfortunate, but true. However work/life is starting to make me a little more practical about it. I had to sit out this raid tier (awesome new job, but at the cost of time/normal-people sleep habits), so I've been satisfied with having just baseline i230 gear (mostly) and a Lore wep (better stats than the MCH relic, at least for now). Before that, I'd been breaking my neck to clear Seph Ex and gear up (plus melds *eyeroll*) to the point of near burn out.

It's good vs good enough, and as much as it pains me to say it, so long as SE keeps the current approach they do, unless I start raiding again, I'll be fine with "good enough". I have no shortage of skill to accommodate any lack of gear.

[SpringLeaf]

This is why I just farm the weapon that's "Not" relic. Faster and less dedication at; mind numbing, uncreative-relic gathering.
The team is out of ideas or they're just lazy.

[Yukiko]

The problem is that they don't need to make things so time consuming to keep people playing. If the only reason people are playing is to get a single item and not even care about the content they are doing anymore, they are not playing a game: They are showing symptoms of being on a mouse wheel and suffering from a compulsion. The entire point of the game is to have content we enjoy doing with the reward being something we get at the end as a pay off. Hence, it's about the journey, not the destination.

^
this!

The main Problem with how Square Enix currently designs timesink/gilsink is that you grind for a "single" piece of item. They have long before lost the global view and are missing in details...

[bass9020]

They have reduced this content to what it is because people couldn't handle titan HM and they weren't happy with the numbers of people who stopped the relic at that point. So now we have stupid long and pointless grinds instead of interesting and fun trials BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE BABIES and throw tantrums. Oh wait isn't that happening AGAIN NOW?