JP interviews [pre-6.5]

[Theodric]

I think to believe they are worried by adding another Eureka/Bozja that future players, or those who tackle the relic after Dawntrail arrived, have a hard time getting their relics even more once the 'mainstream' moved on. We already get frequent complaints about those zones regarding their activity, bots and that there aren't enough for Delubrum.

Yeah but that's very easily solved by simply future proofing the content by planning ahead. Adding the required duties to the regular duty finder would be a good start. As would slowly adding fresh rewards to the Bozja vendors over time to encourage veteran players to go back and acquire them.

[AnotherPerson]

Looking forward to Zeromus fight being more physical-type than brain-training fight. Hope it doesn't get nerfed to oblivion with unbounded ilvl sync like every other fun trial that now feels like a shell of its former self.

Euphrosyne wasn't necessarily bad as a base foundation for new mechanics, but it was lackluster because of high ilvl sync that caused bosses to not show their unique gimmick (Althyk could die at times before he sped up time to create different mechanics, making Nymeia's mechanics feel like an absolute joke of a boss). Not to mention, mechanics gave way too much time between each other. You barely get to see mechanics or damage. With the increased ILVL, the only reason people die is because they die to one-shot mechanics or because they just don't do mechanics in general. That's not something ilvl sync can do anything about. It feels like artificial difficulty.

The lack of exploratory content really hurt the community as well by creating a lot more divisive topics. Players who find the current casual content too easy but don't like extremes because of how big the difficulty spike in mechanics are pretty much have nowhere to go. If I were to estimate content difficulty out of 100, dungeons would fall within a 10 to 20 range, trials would be 12 to 24, alliance raids can fall anywhere between 12 to 28, normal raids can fall anywhere between 12 to 28, exploratory content can be anywhere from 20 to 50, extremes can be 60 to 80, and savage would be 70 to 85.

Frontlines is okay. Imo, the real improvement would be to make stuff like guard react more responsively for players who don't think as much so they can make it up with reflexes but the overall gameplay is fine. I hope they don't kill this game mode by nerfing unique job interactions though. There's no point in making job uniqueness if you kill the uniqueness of the job. It would just feel as bland as PvE content after.

The Manderville Relics have the highest completion rate of any relic so far. The more elaborate they make the relic content/grind, the fewer people make one.

There is an inherent conflict between people that "enjoy weapon enhancement as content" and people that "want a system that makes it easy to obtain weapons". Satisfying both is very hard.

They will take feedback into account for 7.x's relic series.

Making a system that makes it easy to obtain weapons is not equivalent to removing weapon enhancement as content. Yes, of course the manderville relics is going to have the highest completion rate... that's literally what everyone does when they finish MSQ and go to the newly unlocked tomestone vendor to gear up.
There's nothing unique about that system when everyone in the game already does this. You could have easily just made the tomestone weapon not require savage to unlock and make Savage get its own trade-in for a higher ILV unique weapon instead. All that really happened is that you removed content for people who enjoyed weapon enhancement content and took the roundabout way to make tomestone gearing easier.

IMO, they could really just go back to using the old formula for a compromise. Decouple the need for doing exploratory content for people who don't want to do exploratory content and make obtaining the weapon still possible by passively doing content, but make incentives for running exploratory content to be much richer and quicker than doing without it.
Ex: Relic can still be obtained with tomestones, but will now use the 450 weekly capped tomestone as currency to purchase the dropped material. The total required amount is still 1500 but separated into 15 tokens costing 100 each, but doing exploratory content also gives the item token as a reward. After the currency changes and the new expansion is out, the relic becomes outdated so it requires poetics. The conversion of poetics is 500 per token, thus still incetivizing the use of Exploratory content -- but not required. This is under the assumption players don't do Extremes or Savage as difficult content for gearing up, because if they did, then obtaining a new weapon shouldn't be an issue when EX and Savage also drops a high ILV weapon..

[Arrius]

Yeah but that's very easily solved by simply future proofing the content by planning ahead. Adding the required duties to the regular duty finder would be a good start. As would slowly adding fresh rewards to the Bozja vendors over time to encourage veteran players to go back and acquire them.

You know they aren't good in that, and they are forced to adjust some of the other older content out of sheer gaps in logic at times, i.e. making Crystal Tower mandatory during Shadowbringer.

[Saraide]

There was nothing forcing you to do the grind but yourself. All the previous relic quests were optional side content so if you didn't want to do it then you could skip it and do something else. This relic process using outdated tomestones basically just took content away from people that enjoyed it while giving nothing back in return.

No it didnt, if you want a checklist to tick off from I literally have one ready. Since you very clearly dont care about how the relics look unlike me there will be no difference for you.

[Kaliesto]

I really wish the CBU3 Devs. would just come out to talk to us.

This feels so tiring at this point.

Just because the forum here has some bad apples...

[Iscah]

You know they aren't good in that, and they are forced to adjust some of the other older content out of sheer gaps in logic at times, i.e. making Crystal Tower mandatory during Shadowbringer.

What gap in logic was that?

The story moved on until the events of the Crystal Tower plotline, which previously could be kept optional, absolutely had to be integrated into the main story so they could write what they wanted to add next.

The circumstances changed, but there was nothing wrong with the raid being optional at the time they made it.

[Zairava]

No it didnt, if you want a checklist to tick off from I literally have one ready. Since you very clearly dont care about how the relics look unlike me there will be no difference for you.

You just care about how they look, and given you find the acquisition method okay for you, you'll go for it. We want the acquisition method to require effort, whether it's a field zone or a refined ARR method or otherwise. I want them to look good, but if they do look good it's mostly an added bonus for me.

It's two entirely separate preferences and we will continue to sit here going in circles. Proving YoshiP right when he said it's hard to appeal to both.

[TaleraRistain]

Whats frustrating about his statement is that I completely agree with him. I also think its bad that not many people complete multiple relics in previous expansions because yeah the grinds were too stupid with a lot of the steps, but the issue is that he went into the far other extreme were the relic grind is too simple, the exact same and boring. I understand the philosophy behind the tomestone idea because you can theoretically get them via multidud avenues but when all you have to do is your daily duty roulettes to get the 3 same materials at the same price in less than a single day the we have a problem.

Yeah that's my conflict on the subject, too. I love the relics. They were my favorite content in ARR and especially HW. But part of the draw was that you had specific things to do to accomplish them.

Maybe they could consider offering relics for tomes after the first one is completed through a variety of specific steps. And not that we completionists need a carrot, but maybe you only get the achievement if you do it through the grind route. That way those who want the glam can get the glam with tomes and others can go the route with more involved steps and get rewarded for their effort.

[Arrius]

What gap in logic was that?

The story moved on until the events of the Crystal Tower plotline, which previously could be kept optional, absolutely had to be integrated into the main story so they could write what they wanted to add next.

The circumstances changed, but there was nothing wrong with the raid being optional at the time they made it.

Which is exactly my point. They do not future-proof such things on the long run, and suddenly players need to perform mandatory extra jumps through hoops since it is in conflict with the Main Story.

For anything else that is not Main Story related, it's just - 'Eh, eventually. Maybe. Perhaps.' Like the mess with the Hrothgar and Viera they are still working on, years later.

[Aravell]

Maybe they could consider offering relics for tomes after the first one is completed through a variety of specific steps.

This is probably the best choice to appeal to both sides. People who want a proper relic grind so the first relic feels like an achievement will be satisfied and the people who just want glamour would also have an easier time collecting relics after they finish one.