Shadowbringers starting to feel like a budget expansion

[lolicon09]

Did you want a 30 hour grind for a 485 weapon?

Actually, yeah, that's exactly what i wanted. It's a ilvl 485 with room for 5 materia VIII, and we got one for free, while any other just requieres a minimal amount of effort (1000 poetics is a fucking joke). It's officially the lamest first step for a relic weapon ever. Eureka Pagos was way WAY better than this, because It gave us something to do

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Actually, yeah, that's exactly what i wanted. It's a ilvl 485 with room for 5 materia VIII, and we got one for free, while any other just requieres a minimal amount of effort (1000 poetics is a fucking joke). It's officially the lamest first step for a relic weapon ever. Eureka Pagos was way WAY better than this, because It gave us something to do

I mean, if you need something to do there's literally heaps of content to do.

AND if you say "well that's old content, I've done it already" why are people playing wow classic, which is literally only old content?

[lolicon09]

I mean, if you need something to do there's literally heaps of content to do.

AND if you say "well that's old content, I've done it already" why are people playing wow classic, which is literally only old content?

??? Why the hell should i know anything about what WoW players do?

[DevilsDontFly]

It's also worth mentioning that so far this expansion gave us more housing wards, gatherer content with Diadem, ocean fishing, more gold saucer attractions, the restoration of Ishgard, craft and gatherer revamp, lots of quality of life changes, new map dungeons and yet another crafter revamp that will be coming soon.

But I guess PVE is where it's at and the rest is irrelevant. Even though said PVE content is not even bad to begin with.

[ForteNightshade]

I mean, if you need something to do there's literally heaps of content to do.

AND if you say "well that's old content, I've done it already" why are people playing wow classic, which is literally only old content?

That's a really bad example considering Classic WoW is bringing back the original WoW and many mechanics associated with it. A significant reason for WoW Classic's success is people haven't liked the direction current WoW has gone in. If doing old content meant we were actually playing Heavensward again, then you'd have a better comparison. Instead, old content still involves us being laughably overpowered. And no, min ilvl doesn't change that. UCoB and UwU are permanently locked at i345 and i375 yet you can absolutely demolish their DPS checks far beyond what was possible in Stormblood.

I also have to disagree there is "heaps of content." There really isn't unless you're purposely stretching things out. People also want new things to tackle, not the same handful of activities they've been doing for the better part of a year. FFXIV's long time criticism is lackluster longevity. Shadowbringers has, sadly, highlighted that more so than previous expansions despite it having a very strong start.

[DevilsDontFly]

Actually, yeah, that's exactly what i wanted. It's a ilvl 485 with room for 5 materia VIII, and we got one for free, while any other just requieres a minimal amount of effort (1000 poetics is a fucking joke). It's officially the lamest first step for a relic weapon ever. Eureka Pagos was way WAY better than this, because It gave us something to do

To be fair ARR first step of the relic only required you to do a very basic quest, kill Hydra/Chimera and that was it. Then came chaos for the next steps.
HW you could completely bypass the first step if you already had your relic from ARR, or all you were required to do were FATEs and pray RNG was on your side.
Fast forward to SB and Eureka and, again, the actual tasks you had to perform weren't that challenging.
Apart from SB, we never had to do a quest chain or any sort of farm for relic armor on top of relic weapons, which is also worth being mentioned.

First steps of relics have never been "high effort high reward" sort of tasks, quite the opposite.
While I do agree with you that it could have been more time consuming, I think SE is also taking into consideration that back in ARR you had 10 jobs. HW that number went up to 13, then 15 in SB, and now it's up to 17 in Shadowbringers.
A lot of people like to do relics for more than one job, and I'm pretty sure it'll only get more and more difficult and time consuming on each step.

Step 1 being easy, simple or minimum effort is not a reflection of how the entire quest chain will end up being.