EW Relic Grind is just a streamlined version of ARR/HW Grind

[Jonnycbad]

Honestly, to me, the only good relic grind was the Stormblood's one, because it had 4 whole zones dedicated to it and you could only do there, and although it was just as grindy, it was a more interesting grind.

But even this is hindsight bias because people *HATED* Eureka when released.

[Silver-Strider]

To me, the relic has always been more about making the world feel more fleshed out than it actually was.

Say what you will about the past relics, making you tirelessly run X Dungeon or do Y Fate for a drop/book completion/light farm/whatever but at least you had a reason to do content. We all complain about getting nothing but CT raids all the damn time but there's virtually no reason to do any of the other raids. However, when the Bozja relic required doing Mhach and Ivalice raids, those started showing up much more frequently in Alliance roulette. It offered actual variety. For Fates, BLU mage actually got to be used for something outside of the 1 patch per expansion that people take it out of cold storage for to see the light of day again. Same thing with running old Dungeons like AV or the Antitower. While that was only true for the Bozja relic, it was a welcome change of pace to the normal day to day of roulette spam. It was nice seeing old content with the community being there alongside one other, doing the same fates and whatnot.

Now the most the community does together is Hunt Trains and while still a nice activity from time to time, right now, it feels like it's the ONLY activity because of being the far and away most effective means of getting tombstones, other than roulettes, which means there's hardly any reason to even leave whatever city you fancy. You could park yourself at Limsa or any other city, do your roulettes and then sign off again. You'll get your relic in 3-4 days, assuming you're doing even half of the Roulettes on a Level 90 character.

Would it have killed them to at least make the other EW content relevant to the Relic in some capacity? Let me trade in Potshards from Variant Dungeons for a Meteor, or some Island Scripts, or a random drop from Eureka Orthos bags as well as the Tombstone purchase.

I wonder if the people that actually like this relic are actually even playing the game. Hell, I saw someone say the reason they like this relic is because it gives them more time to play FIFA. That's the crowd this relic is for? People that don't even play the game? That doesn't really seem like a sustainable demographic to cater to for an MMO.

Idk, I just feel like the journey to getting the relic was just as important as the relic itself and that's been lost with this Tombstone weapon.

[Nav_Fae]

Hell, I saw someone say the reason they like this relic is because it gives them more time to play FIFA. That's the crowd this relic is for? People that don't even play the game? At doesn't really seem like a sustainable demographic to cater to for an MMO.

Idk, I just feel like the journey to getting the relic was just as important as the relic itself and that's been lost with this Tombstone weapon.

I would like to touch base on this a bit more as I don't think this is even an FFXIV or MMO exclusive problem. It dawned on me a while ago that many video games seem to be adapting to this pick up, play, and move on mentality. At the risk of possibly going off topic a bit, I noticed that the concept of unlockables in video games is dwindling. The reason you might ask, "People don't have time to play video games like they used to". So new games tend to just give most of it their meat at the start of the game or make the process relatively quick. How this relates to FFXIV and the relic weapon? Well, there is just no sense of journey in any of these games anymore. I mention this because it really feels like one of those, the rabbit hole extends beyond just the scoop of this game. I don't know when it happened, I don't know why it happened. Suddenly people are way more hyper casual, have a lower attention span, and just simply do not have the time to play video games. Doing anything that's considered a "Grind" people struggle to fit into their daily lives if they aren't living on the game. It probably doesn't help that this game has it's self-convinced that glamour is the true endgame so many more people don't tend to care about these grindy parts of the game as a result. Honestly, I don't even really know what demographic they are trying to aim towards anymore. Besides new players. But yeah, the feeling of community is basically absent unless you join one of the magnitude of community discords. Which are often discussing other games or topics instead of this game.

[Deo14]

I would like to touch base on this a bit more as I don't think this is even an FFXIV or MMO exclusive problem. It dawned on me a while ago that many video games seem to be adapting to this pick up, play, and move on mentality. At the risk of possibly going off topic a bit, I noticed that the concept of unlockables in video games is dwindling. The reason you might ask, "People don't have time to play video games like they used to". So new games tend to just give most of it their meat at the start of the game or make the process relatively quick. How this relates to FFXIV and the relic weapon? Well, there is just no sense of journey in any of these games anymore. I mention this because it really feels like one of those, the rabbit hole extends beyond just the scoop of this game. I don't know when it happened, I don't know why it happened. Suddenly people are way more hyper casual, have a lower attention span, and just simply do not have the time to play video games. Doing anything that's considered a "Grind" people struggle to fit into their daily lives if they aren't living on the game. It probably doesn't help that this game has it's self-convinced that glamour is the true endgame so many more people don't tend to care about these grindy parts of the game as a result. Honestly, I don't even really know what demographic they are trying to aim towards anymore. Besides new players. But yeah, the feeling of community is basically absent unless you join one of the magnitude of community discords. Which are often discussing other games or topics instead of this game.

This is unfortunately state of gaming nowadays. Short term rewards, cheap dopamine shots, and sense of accomplishment that can be only acquired by reaching high ranks in competitive modes. There are no long term goals anymore. You don't need to look further than Overwatch 2, which removed levels and progression for no reason whatsoever, which were present in Overwatch 1. Or other games which work on seasonal basis.

If you look at most popular games, nearly all of them are like that - you just queue in, have quick dopamine shot, end match, rinse and repeat. It's shallow entertainment. To be clear, this is fine and has been present since gaming started, but this doesn't mean you should put this in every game, especially not in MMORPGs, which are known for exact opposite.

It's so sad to see players advocating for this. There are 10s of extremely popular games like that, why won't people play those instead? They're all better at those short dopamine boosts anyway. Why can't MMORPGs stay true to it's roots? At the very least, let us keep the last bastion of this design, which were relics. You can already get most of the stuff you could possibly want in less than a day, why can't at least relics be something more worthy, grindy, and meaningful?

[Remish]

In the early days of gaming, arcades were purposely designed to be difficult to the gamer so that they kept injecting tokens into the machine. Nowadays, games are designed to be easy so you can go purchase another game entirely faster. Games aren't designed to last anymore. They want you to get bored so you can buy another game (preferably one of their products) sooner. If games are made to last, then it creates a backlog for the gamer, and they may not even buy those other games at all because they are still playing something else. Unlockables were removed in favor of DLC. It's the new marketing strategy. They WANT you to be bored so you spend your money on more games or DLC.

[SieyaM]

I did the ARR relic relatively recently and grinding light is not the only thing you do for that relic. There are the books which have you doing specific FATEs, dungeons, and killing overworld mobs which while the number of them is ridiculous the concept of I actually enjoy. There was also the step where you filled a scroll with materia, which if I remember right set the substats of the relic at that time, or that might have been another step, it was just before EW launched that I did this. Anyway the point being dungeon runs were not the only thing you did to complete that relic, and it wasn't during HW either.

[Shurrikhan]

You don't need to look further than Overwatch 2, which removed levels and progression for no reason whatsoever, which were present in Overwatch 1.

Progression in Overwatch 1, outside of Ranked mode SR, was solely cosmetic. One of the larger reasons for smurfing was literally just to shed the tacky/garish borders and avoid the stigma of "being a plat-border in plat" if playing the game casually.

In Overwatch 1, each time you "leveled up" you got 4 random rewards, with only the slimmest chance of them not being crap. Most of the best skins were also only available during seasonal events, available once per year, or occasionally during a specific other event that'd briefly unlock all seasonal skins, but such would also be horribly 'overpriced' if purchased outright instead of gained as random rewards.

In Overwatch 2, each time you "leveled up" your Battle Pass, you'd get an exact reward that you knew from the start you'd get at that level, with anything not crap being spaced out very infrequently and the majority of crap rewards (and a significant but not overwhelming number of the good ones) being available only to Battle Pass holders, which you could usually afford by having done the previous Battle Pass. If you don't get it during the Battle Pass, it's available only for ridiculous prices (relative to the grind during the BP that granted it).

Neither was/is good, but OW2 did not significantly remove a preexisting structure of progression. It merely traded out general levels and RNG rewards the size of the entire loot table (since you could and would get things you already owned for a pittance in exchange-value) and event-specific skins for BP-specific levels and known rewards among BP-specific skins (with BP seasons lasting far longer than any of the old events).

What was awful was simply the sudden price-inflation on anything from OW1 once the shift was made (RIP anyone who didn't spend all their in-game currency prior) and the new surplus of skins available only via direct purchase (previously limited just to the MVP skins).

I would like to touch base on this a bit more as I don't think this is even an FFXIV or MMO exclusive problem. It dawned on me a while ago that many video games seem to be adapting to this pick up, play, and move on mentality. At the risk of possibly going off topic a bit, I noticed that the concept of unlockables in video games is dwindling. The reason you might ask, "People don't have time to play video games like they used to". So new games tend to just give most of it their meat at the start of the game or make the process relatively quick. How this relates to FFXIV and the relic weapon? Well, there is just no sense of journey in any of these games anymore.

There's a significant difference between just making the fun of the game more immediately reachable (such as if each class/job were to reach what felt like a relatively complete kit by level 40, instead of only upon reaching 60 or 70)... and optional grinds, though.

It's not a bad thing, imo, that many MMOs aren't gating the core experience behind as arduous of grinds. Yes, there's a problem when the game lacks the longevity to feel like their sub is worth it, but that's almost always an unrelated issue faced only long after matters of making the game accessible to "hoppers".

Simply put, the first bolded part tends to be relevant only to early progress through a game, and the latter only relevant to optional components of endgame. They're mostly unrelated domains.

(Now, if your example was overly-accelerated leveling or the like making everything feel like a rush to endgame and a waste of everything in prior thereto, then yeah, they'd overlap. But that's a far cry from the likes of Relics.)

________

To be clear, I'm with you guys on that the current Relic grind feels lackluster and has some pretty fundamental issues (mostly due to imbalanced reward-efficiency overly trending the community towards only a very narrow band of content).

But, let's not conflate the likes of OW1 borders with an actual progression system (it was merely tangential, an indicator of the number of times one was able to pull the gacha machine lever, with luck still being at least as large a factor in getting one's favorite skins -- OW1's only "progression"), nor making it so a game can reveal its potential even within its first few or dozen hours of play (the end essential for catching those MMO-jumpers) with stifling the ability to have long-term optional goals at endgame.

[Gullis]

One reason I could think of, is that they assumed a lot of people hadn't done any hildi at all, so the entire "grind" was gonna be doing the entire questline from ARR to EW.

Imagine being a new player in a year, and then realizing the amount of quests you gotta do to get those relics. That's a lot of work already. I think making them based on Hildi was a big mistake to begin with tho

[Deo14]

Progression in Overwatch 1, outside of Ranked mode SR, was solely cosmetic. One of the larger reasons for smurfing was literally just to shed the tacky/garish borders and avoid the stigma of "being a plat-border in plat" if playing the game casually.

In Overwatch 1, each time you "leveled up" you got 4 random rewards, with only the slimmest chance of them not being crap. Most of the best skins were also only available during seasonal events, available once per year, or occasionally during a specific other event that'd briefly unlock all seasonal skins, but such would also be horribly 'overpriced' if purchased outright instead of gained as random rewards.

In Overwatch 2, each time you "leveled up" your Battle Pass, you'd get an exact reward that you knew from the start you'd get at that level, with anything not crap being spaced out very infrequently and the majority of crap rewards (and a significant but not overwhelming number of the good ones) being available only to Battle Pass holders, which you could usually afford by having done the previous Battle Pass. If you don't get it during the Battle Pass, it's available only for ridiculous prices (relative to the grind during the BP that granted it).

Neither was/is good, but OW2 did not significantly remove a preexisting structure of progression. It merely traded out general levels and RNG rewards the size of the entire loot table (since you could and would get things you already owned for a pittance in exchange-value) and event-specific skins for BP-specific levels and known rewards among BP-specific skins (with BP seasons lasting far longer than any of the old events).

What was awful was simply the sudden price-inflation on anything from OW1 once the shift was made (RIP anyone who didn't spend all their in-game currency prior) and the new surplus of skins available only via direct purchase (previously limited just to the MVP skins).

Yet even this simple progression is still missed today. I really don't care about some BP bullshit simply because you can buy levels, so you never know if someone actually achieved the level, or if he just outright bought it. I don't even know if you can see other's people levels, and it also resets every season, so it's whatever, it's really hard for me to care about this "progression".

I don't even care about the items in OW2 (or well, in those first 2 seasons that I tried to like that dumpster fire), I did somewhat care about skins in OW1, but having simple level up and being rewarded with a dumb lootbox every now and then still added nice flavour. It also made events interesting, it was simply fun to farm events. There was also bonus lootboxes for doing weekly arcades. Now you get like 60 credits for weeklies, but you need like 1800 for single legendary skin. None of these are some significant progression systems, but it's still nice to look at your account and see big numbers and how many cosmetics have you unlocked. Considering that you cannot just get better equipment in this kind of games, I would say that was somewhat solid system. And I don't know anyone who was actually buying lootboxes, you could get most of the stuff without any MTX, unlike OW2, where you cannot get nearly any skin without opening your wallet, legendary skin takes like half a year to get without paying.

And no, removing levels certainly does classify as significantly removing preexisting structure of progression, along with other major changes.

[Shurrikhan]

Yet even this simple progression is still missed today. I really don't care about some BP bullshit simply because you can buy levels, so you never know if someone actually achieved the level, or if he just outright bought it.

You... could also buy Lootboxes. Which was the sole thing the OW1 "levels" gave. It was literally a just counter of how many lootboxes you'd gotten in-game without weekly Endorsement rewards, but those Levels' reward was likewise purchasable with real money then, just like the result of BP "Levels" can be purchased with real money now.

I preferred the OW1 model, but they're identically illusory in terms of any indication of 'progression'. The main difference is simply that you tended to get drab generic rewards 85% of the time and cooler thematic FOMO event rewards 15% of the time before, and the availability of generalist skins has since declined far more than the event skins (BPs being those FOMO events now) have increased.

And no, removing levels certainly does classify as significantly removing preexisting structure of progression, along with other major changes.

Those levels still exist, though? They're just Season-specific.

Or does Savage progression not exist simply because it's effectively reset each new 'season' (Savage tier)?

They're the same. I say this as someone who played since Beta and preferred OW1. OW2 has the same degree of (or, maintains the same lack of) progression that OW1 had. It was purely cosmetic then, and it's purely cosmetic now; it was --if pure cosmetics could ever warrant the term-- just as 'pay to win' in terms that progression back in OW1 as it is now in OW2.