The Relic Grind: Replayability missed

[Vahlnir]

First step was 1000 tomestones of Poetics, the second step (where we are now) was 60 open world FATEs in Heavensward, and 6 leveling roulette / Level 60 dungeons. Alternatively, you could get them from CE and Skirms in Bozja.

I suppose they were more grindy, but there are fewer classes then, than there are now, and even then this grind only essentially took 3-5 hours, really. Not exactly what I would call a 'grind' either way, personally.

Yeah. Shadowbringers relics weren't a hard grind, but they were still something you had to put in a little effort for. What I want is for relics to feel like an actual goal again. To say I was disappointed by not just 1, but 2 steps in Endwalker so far would be a massive understatement.

[Avoidy]

the funny part is they literally had people crying about how alliance raids after CT take forever to pop. they could've solved this partially by just doing what they did in shb and making nier raids a part of the relic grind to get players running that content in the same way ivalice raids had to be spammed in shb. but nope, 1500 tomes please.
missed opportunity to actually revive content from last patch. hell, i'm surprised (but a bit relieved tbh) that they didn't implement criterion at all for this. they really went for the least inspired method possible.

[Kaurhz]

I guess compared to what comes a bit later in ShB, yeah it's not much of a grind. That being said, it's still more than doing your daily roulettes...

Comparing the latter stages of a relic to the earlier stages is quite a pointless thing anyway.

But this aside, I would disagree, the one-time-only quests gave a somewhat false sense of 'grind', but for any subsequent relic it was pretty tame, and the only part that I would have considered to be 'grindy' would probably have been the Augmented Law's Order, which required the Timeworn Artifacts, but the only reason this felt like it was because people practically refused to use any fragments whatsoever.

Yeah. Shadowbringers relics weren't a hard grind, but they were still something you had to put in a little effort for. What I want is for relics to feel like an actual goal again. To say I was disappointed by not just 1, but 2 steps in Endwalker so far would be a massive understatement.

Idk, maybe I'm apathetic, but ShB relics didn't exactly strike me as something I felt required even the most minuscule effort. Nor did I feel a sense of achievement from them, frankly. If you had classes to level, provided you picked up the quests, you would largely complete the relics naturally as part of the leveling grind.

Relics have hardly felt like a grind since Heavensward. I would include Eureka in this, but the simple fact that, if possible, you could alt-tab and do other things, watch Netflix, and/or play other games simultaneously was a pretty monumental disappointment in and of itself.

[yams88]

I'm so happy to finally see someone have a similar idea I have been feeling for awhile now and not just for tomes. EXP wise I wish 'do your daily leveling and spam dungeon' wasn't the only options.

However, I do not understand the discourse in this thread over this idea.

When one of the biggest complaints I hear about adding more content is the issue with budget and someone finally comes up with a way around this, but now people find a way to knock it down?

Just because someone can choose to run FATES for tomestones isn't going to affect the person that wants to log in for 30 min to do their daily expert and CT run. Those will still be options that do not and have not gone away in the last 10 years. The idea of adding other incentives isn't just about drawing people to other content but just getting a break from the monotony

If someone told me that the only way to progress this current relic grind was to run deep dungeon, despite this being on of my favorite content, I'd be pretty upset. But if you tell me that in a game that has been around for over 10 years is finding a way to make use of all that time and money it has spent to make its old content evergreen content, then that should be a positive.

Sure I would like a bigger budget and we just have new zones, but I know we got limitations here.

-edit-
Small edit here but didn't want to make it seem like I'm being rude. More that I kinda hope people might be open to the idea of better rewards or uses over other content so long as it doesn't mean reducing anything from the content most preferred. I do get it that for a lot there is nothing wrong with the relic step and more roulette is more than fine. But I think for some it may help open up some ideas and play time to make use of rewarding the other content in the game. Sure you could run fates for the sake of running it for no other reason than to run it, but its kinda nice to have the bonus.

[Kolaina]

Not necessarily. When it is extremely open ended you stretch out the playerbase. When its a tome grind, dailies are prevalent which is already the norm. Would you rather farm tomes doing Crystal tower once a day from your daily alliance raid, or Euphrosyne? The option is quite obvious. Funnel players into current content

Stretch it out into…. doing your roulettes as people do anyway? The horror

[Zeastria]

still early in the stages.. i remeber doing old relics too... they where easy the first 2-3 stages too...

[NekoMataMata]

But you can literally do any content you want that gives the required tomes.



So... Infinite replayability.

The problem with "doing any content you want" is most people will either find the easiest content to constantly replay and/or the fastest.

That means there's no variety at all, even if you have all the choices in the world. This means that content that people dislike or don't normally queue into is going to remain that way even if it's an option.

[Xelanar]

Using tomestones as currency rises another issue as well. Unless people are farming for multiple weapons, they most likely already had 1500 tomestones lying around.

For some, this is great. For those who were looking forward to grinding... not so much.

[Iyrnthota]

The problem with "doing any content you want" is most people will either find the easiest content to constantly replay and/or the fastest.

That means there's no variety at all, even if you have all the choices in the world. This means that content that people dislike or don't normally queue into is going to remain that way even if it's an option.

This happens anyway, people will always optimise the grind.

Remember last relic when one of the steps was to run six Level 60 dungeons, and literally the only one anyone ever did was Antitower.

[Kaurhz]

The problem with "doing any content you want" is most people will either find the easiest content to constantly replay and/or the fastest.

This is basically every relic ever. Every relic has always been a false sense of variety as players will always go for the fastest and most efficient route.