(Relics) What is the lowest-development-cost content we'd still find fun?

[Shurrikhan]

They could also throwback further to FFXI and the Relic/Mythic weapons there that involved acquiring special currency that could be sold between players to create a giant potential gil sink that could take a lot of the abundant gil out of circulation and slow economy inflation. Or deflate it in a best case scenario. Just a random thought. Building those things was actually super easy in that game when you played the game long enough farming HNMs that you had more gil than the RMT.

Given how concentrated wealth is already, I'm not sure most players would go for 5% being done within a couple days and 80% only after a few months, especially since that advantage would come from things largely considered arduous/unfun/auxiliary, and yet already quite rewarding at the start of each new tier....

[Xatsh]

They could also throwback further to FFXI and the Relic/Mythic weapons there that involved acquiring special currency that could be sold between players to create a giant potential gil sink that could take a lot of the abundant gil out of circulation and slow economy inflation. Or deflate it in a best case scenario. Just a random thought. Building those things was actually super easy in that game when you played the game long enough farming HNMs that you had more gil than the RMT.

That did not remove money it redistributed it. Only thing removing money was the entree fee to dynamis actually.

But honestly it should be something similar to this. It worked in FFXI because almost no one did dynamis for relic weapons they did it because it dropped AF2, usually at least some pieces for each class were considered upper tier endgame gear. The relic currency was more or less a side thing about 0.05%-0.1% of ppl actually worked on. (at least until they mega nerfed it post abysea and made it easy). If Dynamis was only for relics no one would of ever done it.

FFXIV should make content that progresses your character and you get a relic as a side thing if you do it long enough.

We have 5 job Archetypes. Tank, Range DPS, Healer, Magic DPS, and Melee DPS. Currently you can level all of jobs but only gear out 2 Archetypes. So if you level pld, rdm, and whm... 1 of them will be extremely gimp since you cannot gear them all until the patch is almost negated.

Make a 3rd progression that drops raid/tome equivalent gear and put relics into it as well. AND RELEASE IT AT THE SAME TIME AS SAVAGE RAIDING AND TOMES. AKA a 3rd progression path. If it takes the normal group 4-5 weeks of grinding at savage to get a weapon make it take 4-5 weeks to get a relic for that tier. Equivalent time investment.

Eureka was the right idea, content with tons of rewards and relics tied to it. If it launched at the start it would of been an alternative to raiding for primary progression (weapon and armor). Now it was implemented sorta meh (I enjoyed it but I see why alot did not) and released way to late into the patch cycle. So it should be fixed, no idea what part 2 of this current content will be but lets see. Hopefully it is alot more then part 1 and hopefully it is not a short solo only focused venture.

[kaynide]

Reply to OP, if I wanted to make relics low budget but hella Grindy , I’d make it so you require related drops from several dungeons.

So, want relic sword? Remember those green rarity swords you could get from dungeons? All the dungeons? Now you need them. All of them.

Maybe I’ll be nice and break them into sets. Or maybe just the level under level 50 ones. Who knows!

Fun? Well I enjoy running dungeons anyway..but I don’t think it would be counted as fun.
For fun I would probably tie it to regular activities that we already do, or recycle and improve eureka. Loved the map, hated the system!

[RitsukoSonoda]

I sponsored Dynamis every week out of my own pocket and used the currency to fund my own relics while also buying any I found for sale in player markets. The AF2 I didn't really care about at that point. I didn't farm Alexandrites nearly as much so nearly all of that came from cleaning out other people's inventory when they put them in their shop.

One of the issues IMO about the relics for stormblood was the delays in the content. We may see similar delays in this expansion thanks to COVID depending on their staff allocation for various areas of content.

As for the progression routes we have currently I feel like the tome weapons when added shouldn't have a tie in with the raid just to get the base version. Even if its just the normal mode of the raid and not the EX it just feels unneeded. I don't have an issue with the upgrade item to improve it being tied to the ex raid. Other than that I feel like the weekly Tome cap should be set to 900 normally due to the number of jobs in game now. Granted many usually share sets there have been instances in the past where every job has had their own specific set of armor from the tome vendor.

As for the raids it annoys me they feel the need to make different tokens for each gear slot. Make it just 1 token and adjust the number needed to redeem for a slot reflect the totals we have now of 1 for belt/accessory, 2 for helm, gloves, boots, 4 for chest and pants. The systems they been using just feel like unneeded inventory clutter. Then either get rid of that last token you need multiple of to get a token that lets you buy a tome weapon or make it so you can trade those for the consumable that upgrades the tome gear.

As for the relics if situations to arise causing a delay in implementation or addition of that content. Adjust the ilvl of the actual relics to reflect the time it was added so its comparable to the current content at that time rather than a step or more behind. I recall ARR relics being the top tier most of the time during their cycle and HW I think was the same. It started falling behind noticeably in stormblood because of eureka delays and I think they also delayed it on shadowbringers a little bit as well already.

[Maeka]

I get tired of the hate Eureka got. it was by far my favorite content ever in this game. It offered exploration though dangerous, open world area to explore. Can't say that about dungeons or raids. By the time I was finished I had the best summoner weapon in the game. I had some good gear, lots of fun items from mounts to minions, glamors. I got tomes far faster then grinding roulettes every day. Plus it had a good story behind it. Of course it was hard and had some grind to it but no more than any other grind in this game. Not to mention free materia. and I made many millions from it. And I made new friends.

The problem with Eureka, is that for every moment of fun you had, you had to endure hours of mindless grind of doing the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Yeah, exploring the lands was cool. There being some danger was a novelty that could be fun.

What wasn't fun, was the fact that you sat in huge FATE train groups and your individual contributions meant almost nothing and for some parts of Eureka, you were basically a one-shot affair where if anything looked in your direction because you accidentally pulled aggro, or you got hit by one of the tons of AoEs that you could hardly see with all the crap going on around you, you were dead in one shot. And/or if you're following one of these trains, sometimes you would aggro a mob the rest of the train wouldn't because the mob decided to turn and saw *you* and you died in 2 seconds and the train kept on going.

And of course, required grouped content is an instant "no" for me. I hate being forced to group outside of a Duty Finder system. IMO, Eureka could have been broken down into several duties you could Q for, or something, to make it easier to get groups. And/or I hate feeling useless and I hate feeling like I'm being carried which is what those FATE train groups always felt like. It was pretty much the only way to levelup, but yet you spent most of your time feeling useless because you were significantly lower level than the rest of the group and so your own contributions meant nothing unless you were a healer (and if you were a healer, you were in danger of drawing aggro and getting one-shot). Basically the only thing a lower level person was good for, was being a rez bot. Yaaaaaay. Your sole, singular purpose is to cast Raise. Awesome.

This is not fun gameplay.

I never got to find out if there was anything more fun, and more meaningful to Eureka after Anemos, because quite simply I couldn't stand the grinding. I think I got to about Elemental level.... 7? 8? something like that? And I was like "you know, this is just a terrible waste of my time. I'm going to stop wasting my time now, when there are other, more fun things to do either in FFXIV or outside of FFXIV. Nearly Anything, including a dentist visit, would be more fun than this."

I tried Eureka, I gave it several hours, and each time I sat in an FATE train, I found myself bored to tears waiting around while everybody killed junk around me and I just collected XP for doing nothing but waiting for the occasional time I could cast Raise. I could throw DPS spells.... oh wait, I did 10% of the DPS everybody else did because my level was low.

EDIT -- Onto the Topic at Hand (sorry for the digression, but I had to comment there):

What I would find fun content?

I think the Roulettes idea on the first page would be a great starting point. We have all kinds of content in the game, it'd be nice if we would have reason to revisit it. Especially a lot of the trials. I feel that Trials Roulette doesn't reward all that highly, especially and not very many people do it, because sometimes it can take awhile to get groups for it. At Level 79, you get maybe 2-3 million or so, and sometimes it takes upwards of 15 minutes to find a group if you try on off-hours. In that same 15minutes, I could have ground out FATEs for the same amount of XP to be honest. So I would support giving people more reason to run Trials and perhaps Normal Raids (something else that doesn't give a whole lot). Though Normal Raids have been better thanks to the Poetics needed for Scale Powder, though, so I feel the Relic Weapon system already buffs those.

Other than that idea... something more solo-able would be nice. As mentioned above, what I hated most about Eureka was the fact that it required groups to get anywhere.

Here's an idea.... what if there were some sort of... material on The First that was imbued with lots of light energy and you could buy these with gemstones, and so you could do lots of FATE grinding to buy these? Maybe there would be like... for the first step of a weapon you need 10 Purple Light Crystals and you can buy these from the FATE Vendor in Lakeland for 50 gemstones each. And then you need 10 Green Light Crystals from Rak'tika's Vendor, etc.

I know in past relics we had FATE grinding, but that was RNG, and nobody likes RNG. This system would not be RNG and it would give you reason to do more FATEs in ShB which would give you more reason to try and max out your Shared FATEs as well.

[Dyvid]

Why not just have a level up system to relic gear? That way you could do whatever you want in the game and still be working on your relic?

[Morningstar1337]

honestly What I'd do is make it possible to work on multiple relic types at once. If you're gonna do the biggest grind (Zodiac Weapons) and aren't gonna sumplify future relics to compesate for THAT, then the next best thing would be to ensure a way that progress on a different relic type would also count (as an optional path OFC). For example having development on the recetn roulette work in paraellel with progress on a Zodiac weapon (namely the Books)

The other option would be to just tie to Roulettes.

Either way it can't get any lower effort than not having to make new instances :P

Actually, would tying them to a Deep Dungeon work?

[Nedkel]

Making old dungeons, trials and raids playable on lvl 80

[RitsukoSonoda]

honestly What I'd do is make it possible to work on multiple relic types at once. If you're gonna do the biggest grind (Zodiac Weapons) and aren't gonna sumplify future relics to compesate for THAT, then the next best thing would be to ensure a way that progress on a different relic type would also count (as an optional path OFC). For example having development on the recetn roulette work in paraellel with progress on a Zodiac weapon (namely the Books)

The other option would be to just tie to Roulettes.

Either way it can't get any lower effort than not having to make new instances :P

Actually, would tying them to a Deep Dungeon work?

I actually didn't mind the relic steps too much that had steps to clear specific older content trials. I also didn't mind the books so much on the original ARR relics that had duties and fates in them. I just didn't like the light grind steps.

[Barraind]

The books were awful just due to the fates.

I could do light grinding steps of a different relic in the time it took a couple of those to finally spawn when I actually needed them to.