Manderville Relic Criticism

[Absurdity]

I have only one problem with the Reaper relic. We have "young" job who has trouble finding good glamour and you add a weapon with some colors never seen before. Why the colors of the weapons don't match with the jobs vfx colors?

Like what is this yellow/green fluo? On a job where the main color are red/black/purple/green? Who thought i was a good idea?



Please stop adding colors who don't match the jobs. It don't make any sense

One of the devs forgot what game they were working on and accidentally made a WoW demonhunter warglaive instead.

[Saraide]

I will never be able to take the people on this forum seriously as long as so many of them are like 'hello I would like more boring content please'.

[Atelier-Bagur]

I was just thinking, they could easily turn this relic grind around with the final step being the most grueling, long and god-awful series of objectives that would actually make you for how simple and easy the previous steps were.

This would troll the playerbase so hard and it would arguably fitting to the unpredictable nature of the Mandervilles.

It's so not gonna happen but imagine if they went with this idea

[Jojoya]

I still don't think it's the tomestone grind that is the problem with this relic series.

Sure, I might have had enough Causality this morning to buy my first upgrade immediately but I'll still need to grind it out for any other upgrades I want. I won't get them in the mail

I'm much happier being able to choose what content I do to get the tomestones instead of being forced into farming a specific piece of content that I might not enjoy and would get really tedious after running it for the 20th time in a row. No one is limited to roulettes. They can farm any of the level 90 dungeons, trials and raids, They can do Variant or Criterion. They can do hunts or EW treasure maps. There's a lot of different choices and we're free to mix and match so we don't get bored instead of sticking to one specific method for the sake of efficiency. Grinds do not have to forced and unenjoyable for the final reward to feel worthwhile.

The problem is not the tomestones. The problem is Manderville.

Where the relic quests of the past have had some rather serious themes that made the relics feel important, this time around we're stuck with a obscenely wealthy Syndicate member indulging a personal whim to reproduce some obscure historical family weaponry while once again we also help his spoiled and oblivious son in and out of mischief that has been a pure slapstick comedy routine throughout the game. The last minute attempt in the new quest chain to make the reproductions seem more serious doesn't really work (at least for me).

Don't get me wrong - I enjoy Hildibrand as comedy relief content but those quests need to be their own separate thing, isolated from other content. The relic series is not the place for him to be.

The development team needs to consider what relic weapons are supposed to represent in the eyes of the players and plan the associated quest lore with that in mind.

But one thing that will come out of this: for a change I will end up getting multiple relics weapons because I get to choose what content I do to earn them instead of being told I must do XYZ content that I may not like. No reward is worth investing dozens or hundreds of hours in content I don't enjoy. I'll move on to doing the content I do enjoy instead.

I will never be able to take the people on this forum seriously as long as so many of them are like 'hello I would like more boring content please'.

Why are you here if you find the content in the game boring? Surely there must be something you enjoy that will earn you the Causality tomestones.

[Atelier-Bagur]

I still don't think it's the tomestone grind that is the problem with this relic series.

Sure, I might have had enough Causality this morning to buy my first upgrade immediately but I'll still need to grind it out for any other upgrades I want. I won't get them in the mail

I'm much happier being able to choose what content I do to get the tomestones instead of being forced into farming a specific piece of content that I might not enjoy and would get really tedious after running it for the 20th time in a row. No one is limited to roulettes. They can farm any of the level 90 dungeons, trials and raids, They can do Variant or Criterion. They can do hunts or EW treasure maps. There's a lot of different choices and we're free to mix and match so we don't get bored instead of sticking to one specific method for the sake of efficiency. Grinds do not have to forced and unenjoyable for the final reward to feel worthwhile.

The problem is not the tomestones. The problem is Manderville.

Where the relic quests of the past have had some rather serious themes that made the relics feel important, this time around we're stuck with a obscenely wealthy Syndicate member indulging a personal whim to reproduce some obscure historical family weaponry while once again we also help his spoiled and oblivious son in and out of mischief that has been a pure slapstick comedy routine throughout the game. The last minute attempt in the new quest chain to make the reproductions seem more serious doesn't really work (at least for me).

Don't get me wrong - I enjoy Hildibrand as comedy relief content but those quests need to be their own separate thing, isolated from other content. The relic series is not the place for him to be.

The development team needs to consider what relic weapons are supposed to represent in the eyes of the players and plan the associated quest lore with that in mind.

But one thing that will come out of this: for a change I will end up getting multiple relics weapons because I get to choose what content I do to earn them instead of being told I must do XYZ content that I may not like. No reward is worth investing dozens or hundreds of hours in content I don't enjoy. I'll move on to doing the content I do enjoy instead.


Why are you here if you find the content in the game boring? Surely there must be something you enjoy that will earn you the Causality tomestones.

I would disagree on the questlines tone. I don't think anybody actually cares about the story in the relics, they've always just been a content grind that's the appeal

[Saraide]

Why are you here if you find the content in the game boring? Surely there must be something you enjoy that will earn you the Causality tomestones.

What do you mean why am I here? I am directly benefitting from the relic grind becoming smoother and shorter. I very much prefer this expansion's relic over the previous ones.

[Deo14]

So, instead you just want to farm some random old dungeon a couple dozen times, because that's somehow more fun or engaging? Personally, I like the freedom to do whatsoever whets my whistle and make progress on the relic at the same time. If it bugs you that much, just create your own specific grind. Let one class use Alliance Raids only, another one Expert Dungeons, another one Hunt Trains, etc.. What I find annoying is - for example - I'm up to the step in the Bozja chain where you need 15 of an item that drops specifically from Level 70 Dungeons or HOH. I have little interest in the Deep Dungeons, and running 15 level 70 dungeons on a now-level 90 class is boring. Doing what I find fun and making progress regardless? Thank you.

Sometimes I wonder if these kind of people ever played MMORPGs before early 10s.

This genre was built upon long term rewards. If you want short term dopamine shots, then you have so many games to pick from. Every single MOBA, FPS, BRs, nearly all popular games are like that.

Quite often, journey is more important than a destination. Relics have very "meh" destination, and now EW deleted even the journey. So what's left?

This dumb hyperbole that "It's better than running 999 old dungeons" is so cheap, nobody wants that. World isn't black and white, you can have a compromise, not just one side of an extreme. Even if you wanted to make a grind using only content old, you can still do it in a sensible way, just learn how to make fun grinds from GW2 devs.

Or ever better, you don't even need to make a grind using old content, IS, V&C and EO are all brand new content which have no meaningful rewards, it's all one and done, so just connect this content without rewards, to a rewards without progression system and voila, everything fits perfectly.

Before all the "acktushly, it would be worse because of X or Y strawman arguments", here's one of my suggestions/draft from a while back. It's not perfect, it could definitely be refined. It makes a grind more involved, gives freedom of choice, and isn't too grindy if you choose no to make it grindy. It's only an example of possible one step, another steps could follow similar path:

Material X - you get this either from:

IS - Buy it for blue Cowries. This is effectively passive income for this material. If you don't want any grind, you can get all of this material here, albeit at slow, time-gated pace

V&C - You get X amount of material in here, you also get daily bonus material. Harder versions give similar amounts so the casuals don't whine.

EO - Same as V&C. If you get bored of V&C, you can farm this material here or vice-versa. You get another bonus for finishing certain floor sets. No 21-30 spamming.

Now all three content which died 1 or 2 weeks after release have at least some meaning.

This could be expanded much further. Next step, for example, you need X amount of Y, so you can do current AR/NR and get amount which is balanced (as if neither AR or NR give significantly more for time invested, unlike Anima and A9S) and/or you can also buy this for some tomes.

This would give you wide variety of things you can do. It won't force you to spam same thing over and over. There should be daily bonuses, so that you can choose lesser grind, but with more time-gating if you wish so.

[Nebelheim]

I would like something similar to a ff11 relic grind but not take as long but at least have multiple objectives to complete them.

[Eastwall]

Yeah... I feel it should not be locked behind a side quest and the variant dungeon should be associated with it just like resistance weapon And bozja. Maybe you know, need 15 memory crystals from variant dungeon.

[Rikizza]

they are pretty tho