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

[Amenara]

I miss having a goal or something that I wanted to do in the game outside of my daily roulettes. I think it's fine if you didn't like Eureka or Bozja as they were never mandatory content but as someone else pointed out and there were a ton of reasons to do Eureka and Bozja outside of just relics. On the relic specific perspective, I guess I don't get why there was a problem with having to do side content to unlock them vs just getting them as a side effect of doing daily chores. There are already multiple other options for better weapons, so it's not like they were mandatory during the expansion for progging fights. I always saw them as something to work on throughout an expansion and give me some repeatable current content that encourages me to set a goal for myself and give me a more focused reason for playing.

[LianaThorne]

True, however you also can't read a book or watch a movie without actually doing that. The question is in regards to rewards. And on that front I don't like exclusives. Granted I understand the idea of difficult things having some sort of reward simply because they are hard. I do not value the notion that someone is special for having done the hard thing though. That gets into the territory of elitism which I consider toxic.

If we're going to be really honest, nothing in this game is special or exclusive since everything can be either botted or RMT'd for a clear.

Want an Ultimate or Savage clear but don't want to do the work? Take out your credit card.
Want all of your EW relics done without even needing to step into a roulette? Take out your credit card.
Want all of your gathering for the next year done for you? Take out your credit card.
Want to skip the entirety of the Pteranodon grind? Take out your credit card.

Nothing in this game is ultimately special or exclusive since you can just pay someone to do the work for you. This is why we have the thriving RMT market that we do and why people with Ultimate clears are often questionable as to how they got them. Not even housing is special since someone who bots can just be paid to buy your placard for you lol.

[Theodric]

I think one of the strangest aspects of FFXIV's community is the frequent inability for many players to simply accept that personal tastes differ. There's an awful lot of policing in regards to what characters and content players are 'supposed to' like and dislike. A problem that has unfortunately only increased over the years.

[NekoMataMata]

I think one of the strangest aspects of FFXIV's community is the frequent inability for many players to simply accept that personal tastes differ. There's an awful lot of policing in regards to what characters and content players are 'supposed to' like and dislike. A problem that has unfortunately only increased over the years.

Wouldn't say it's that strange regarding online communities in general. I do think that it's strange for this community in particular though.


This is supposed to be one of the nicest and more welcoming online communities. Yet I have seen more aggressive witch hunting, crusading, and brigading both with alts and without on the forums, on the two main subreddits, and even on twitter than I've seen in other places related to MOBAs or shooters games.

[Jojoya]

I think one of the strangest aspects of FFXIV's community is the frequent inability for many players to simply accept that personal tastes differ. There's an awful lot of policing in regards to what characters and content players are 'supposed to' like and dislike. A problem that has unfortunately only increased over the years.

That's true of any MMORPG community. FFXIV is not unique.

One set of players have content they enjoy. They want to see it preserved.

Another set of players don't enjoy that content but want the rewards gated behind it. They want to see the content changed.

What do developers do? Side with the first, side with the second, or decide to give both sets of players a way they enjoy to obtain the same reward. Do the third and they potentially upset subsets of the both groups who feel the reward should be exclusive to those doing things their way. Then another subset will determine a most efficient way to do it and players will feel forced into doing it that way (even if they would have picked that way left to their own devices).

I wonder what would have happened if SE had chosen to use Poetics instead of Astronomy/Causality. Those who enjoyed Eureka or Bozja could have still farmed the EW relics there while the rest could have still used hunts/roulettes or whatever else they wanted.

Wouldn't say it's that strange regarding online communities in general. I do think that it's strange for this community in particular though.


This is supposed to be one of the nicest and more welcoming online communities. Yet I have seen more aggressive witch hunting, crusading, and brigading both with alts and without on the forums, on the two main subreddits, and even on twitter than I've seen in other places related to MOBAs or shooters games.

Fortunately most players don't visit any of those places. They judge the community by what they experience in game.

Considering that it's usually people with an axe to grind that are posting in those places, the aggression shouldn't be surprising. Almost constant negativity is only going to breed those types of responses. Even a positive person is going to end up worn down in time.

[Astrahime]

For all we're saying about futureproofing relics, people are forgetting that HW's are the most futureproofed, and even ARR's are more so than Eureka if you get nothing but dead instances.

90% of it is a poetics dump, but that's fine because there's story to it beyond "godbert wants to figure out what happens when you throw 6000 causalities at gerolt". It has grinds other than that, and needs you to do dungeons.
ARR is an insane timesink and gil sink, and nothing's ever changing that. Other than QoL and Unsyncing being a thing, nothing's different.
Eureka now has Echo, and you can get a Kirin's Osode piece of gear off the market board if you aren't on the free trial to make everything easier. The only parts of Eureka that aren't "futureproofed" are being able to fight the top 4 NMs of each area due to level scaling, and the literal Baldesion Arsenal. BA is completely unscaled but that doesn't matter, people have made their own communities to be able to organise runs of it. And outside of Hydatos, you're able to get the final NM of the area's boss drops by trading in crystals.
Bozja is fun. Unfortunately CLL's first boss(es) are the worst-designed part about it. At the top, you've got a mechanic from SB EX3 that barely anyone would know about, and the bottom is a hot mess if you're trying to duo it even if you have defensive essences. Other than CLL's jank and needing enough people in the area to spawn CLL or DAL, it's possible to do everything for the Resistance Relics inside Bozja... Solo. Even DR if your party finder doesn't fill, other than the guard there isn't an enrage on normal difficulty.


But yeah, futureproofing means... paintsniffers being able to get progress towards a past expansion's relic by spamming Syrcus Tower when that was never an intended step for any part of it when any of it was current.
Endwalker is going to have 3 Variant Dungeons. If SE wanted to make the manderville relics actually engaging, and boost up the player count of the most unpopular content since Lord of Verminion, they could have made the relics' upgrade materials drop from doing Variant, with condererably more of the material dropping from doing Criterion.

[Astrahime]

wonder what would have happened if SE had chosen to use Poetics instead of Astronomy/Causality. Those who enjoyed Eureka or Bozja could have still farmed the EW relics there while the rest could have still used hunts/roulettes or whatever else they wanted.

Considerably more public outcry as soon as the second step of Poetics Skinnerbox Weapon was released.

[Raven2014]

This is supposed to be one of the nicest and more welcoming online communities. Yet I have seen more aggressive witch hunting, crusading, and brigading both with alts and without on the forums, on the two main subreddits, and even on twitter than I've seen in other places related to MOBAs or shooters games.

That's mostly the ingame community where the strict rule "be nice or else" are enforced. The forums is basically the lawless wild west.

If anyone ever want to conduct a social experiment on the necessity of law and order, they can just cite the contrast between ingame and the forum of FF14 as a source.


Also regarding the OP: not really.

- If they gonna bring back the grind of 2.0 and 3.0 for relic, then I prefer just the current method even it's as boring as it is.
- If they gonna bring back the grind of 4.0 and 5.0, then yes please.

[Xirean]

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?

I do. You can't unsync it. I know that the difficulty scales with the amount of people, but visually at the start, it's not clear that will be the case unless someone tells you.

[VerdeLuck]

I do. You can't unsync it. I know that the difficulty scales with the amount of people, but visually at the start, it's not clear that will be the case unless someone tells you.

I seriously think the people who say you can just solo CLL and DRN have never actually tried it at the power level a new player will have, I got that same response on it whenever I ran into the wall of DRN for the story and let me tell you. DRN with 2 first timers took a solid 25 minutes for us to get the first boss to less than half HP because the scaling was just not good.
Same with CLL, you can *technically* clear with 2-3 people IF, big if, you have people who know all the mechanics, have the right essences from farming the zones, and have a full 10/10/10 setup, you can do it, but none of these first timers are going to have it and expecting that level of farming just to then farm even more for a single relic step is pretty absurd.

The timepiece step should be a lesson of what not to ever do again, same with the ARR fates and book steps, or having it locked behind an exploration zone farm like eureka and bozja.