Are We Really At The Point We Consider The Classic Relic Steps Engaging And "Fun"?

[Atelier-Bagur]

I do not consider every old relic step to be solid but a few to be good and rewarding to do. I can cherry pick some of the ARR steps like the Atma step (I know this used to be bad during its release) but as of now, I dont mind having to collect only just one item per zone via rng. Or the Alexandrite phase where you acquire maps via multiple ways to go on a treasure hunt for an item that allows you to affix stats to your relic.

Or in Heavensward where you had that Umbrite/Crystal Sand phase where you could acquire them via tomes or crafting/gathering, or the Singing Cluster phase which had you use tomes again for acquiring a set number of an item, but they included daily and weekly quests to give you more so the process didnt feel AS stupid as the current EW one.

Or in Shadowbringers, where there was that step that had you once again collect an item via an exploratory zone where there was multiple avenues of collecting it but the genius design behind it was that you would obtain these items naturally by just doing Bozja content and killing 2 birds with one stone with working on your zone progression while getting the items needed for that relic. Talking about the Loathsome Memories phase btw, and the best thing was that you only needed 15 of the item, which you gained 5 by just doing the raid so the process was very quick.

The ones I truly despise are the obviously padded out grindy stupid steps like the Books steps in ARR (although if they toned down the amount of books you needed to complete, then it would've been great imo) or the lengthy chain of Dungeon farm step in Heavensward/doing a specific normal raid numerous times, or the dreaded FATE step where you had to collect 60 damn memories via each FATE or the timeworn artifact step where it had you run a 30 or an hour long raid depending on party group 5 times to gather the items you needed which ugh, WHHYYY, I actually liked DR until this step killed the fun out of it forcing me to run it numerous times where it made the run so boring because the mechanics are so piss easy once you know em.

anyway yeah.

[Nezerius]

If by "drop pretense" you mean not calling the a relic then sure. I don't care what they are called. I like that the are obtainable and future proofed without having to go into a specifically instanced "open world" map.

If only the game already had weapons that use uncapped tomestones, both in obtaining them and further augmenting them.





Oh wait, it does! They're called "crafted weapons", with materials that are bought with uncapped tomestones (or gil, multiple options!), and then further augmented using Rain items (bought with uncapped tomestones).

[Rolder50]

Premium Tomestone weapons

Hold up now, these are discount tomestone weapons, considering actual tomestone weapons require you to do the raid to get them.

[Boblawblah]

It's embarrassing how many people are saying this is actually Ren.

[Ririta]

I do not consider every old relic step to be solid but a few to be good and rewarding to do. I can cherry pick some of the ARR steps like the Atma step (I know this used to be bad during its release)

It took me like 1 week to get my first atma weapon, then like two more weeks for animus, it really wasn't that bad compared to light farming on Garuda. I think people exaggerate based on how much they hated FATEs.

Personally since the Awoken step I've never farmed another relic, I burned myself out on this stuff and the entire game became a lot less enjoyable as a result. I imagine this new relic is made for people like me, I'm an uber casual now, but I don't necessarily need it to be like this, either. Right now it's like "why not", but I think it would be a lot more fun if it had some battles made just for it and a more engaging questline, like doing dungeons to get materials instead of buying from Roweena, or maybe even make whole new trials just for it. Make us seek lost materials in the past, in the moon, and so on, I don't know, the shortness isn't the problem, I just don't feel satisfied at all by just spending my tomes and receiving the weapon.

[ChrysOCE]

If you can't find a DR group, you can't complete the ShB relic, at all. Can't be done. If you work odd hours that basically keeps it out of reach for you.

Same with Stormblood and Eureka. You can't kill those fate bosses by yourself.

I presume we are meaning if someone was to do the relics today.

For Shb you could also do PotD which is a secondary path that can be done solo, if need be. There was a way to do it, outside of Bozja.

Eureka, no, don't agree. You can absolutely solo Eureka. You get an echo buff now and you don't need to do the end FATEs of each zone, for final upgrade mats. You can farm the NMs and hand in the relevant crystals for the mat upgrade.

Edit for Shb Relic - I guess you could say that DRN was needed for story progression. But then, if someone's work schedule is so consistently out of kilter with a DC that they can get nothing done (and DRN runs are able to be done on Materia, with it's minimal population), you could probably question why are you on that DC and not one that is more aligned to your active hours.

[TaleraRistain]

For Shb you could also do PotD which is a secondary path that can be done solo, if need be. There was a way to do it, outside of Bozja.

For the timeworn step items, yes. But remember you had to do DR for the relic questline itself. Same with CLL. The only one not required is Dalriada.

[ChrysOCE]

For the timeworn step items, yes. But remember you had to do DR for the relic questline itself. Same with CLL. The only one not required is Dalriada.

Yea, I just thought of the actual story progression. Still, I don't know. I find it hard to believe that someone can't find 4 people to do a DRN run in PF?

[Xirean]

Yea, I just thought of the actual story progression. Still, I don't know. I find it hard to believe that someone can't find 4 people to do a DRN run in PF?

It has a bit more to do with the expectation that you would do it with 4. If I were new in that situation and had spent a good amount of time in PF and only got a handful of people I might just consider it a failure.

[ChrysOCE]

It has a bit more to do with the expectation that you would do it with 4. If I were new in that situation and had spent a good amount of time in PF and only got a handful of people I might just consider it a failure.

But that is pretty standard for any old content. Lets be real, either we are talking about relics in the sense of doing them on content or doing them for glam.
So, if you are talking about on content, you would have gotten full parties.
If you are talking about now, you wouldn't expect to queue directly and run DRN now. I don't see DRN undersized as any different to doing any other prior content undersized?