My feedback on the method of obtaining relics in Endwalker

[Heroman3003]

ARR books are not a currency you acquire, but they are a good example of how to progress a relic step. The only issue I ever had with the books were the specific FATEs you needed to clear while in possession of the book. Time is precious and no one should have to waste it camping a zone.

Specific roulettes, roulettes in general, and even tomes are all lackluster means to progress relic steps. A relic for the current expansion should have you doing content within that expansion. This is how having a separate currency works as doing things like the current dungeons, 24-man raids, trials, 8-man raids, deep dungeon, etc. can all award this currency upon completion assuming the quest is active. Relics are a poor, uninventive means to keep old content alive, or to incentivize players to run new content like the Variant Dungeons. All of these should be able to remain relevant by their own merit. Using relics in this manner has been disastrous for this dev team in terms of positive feedback.

Anyone who says relic progression in their current form is due to players complaining about everything removes all accountability from the devs, but this doesn't change the fact that a lot of the playerbase are whiney, entitled brats who you can't make happy no matter what you do. When you [try to] cater to these player types the way this dev team constantly does instead of drawing a line in the sand, this is exactly what happens.

Tbh relics make more sense to use older content than current content, because for current expansion, current content NORMALLY already has incentives to be played on account of being current, while old content is left behind in the dust. Hell, that's the only reason Eureka and Bozja are even somewhat populated nowadays, because if EW had expedition zone, theyd be near-dead even in peak hours.

[Kaurhz]

Uh...

It's OK tying them to field content, honestly... But the biggest mistake with this, was tying a step with Delubrum Reginae... At the time it was OK - but now? Nah.

I will also say on the point though... When you are farming relics via field content, there is a point where the novelty of it does die off, and where the content ceases to be evergreen. After a certain point it just becomes a chore, albeit with a different skin.

For some of the steps of the Bozja relic I found myself questioning a few of the ideas for how they put down the grind.

[Turtledeluxe]

I do not like the idea of anything being designed in the game strictly based on appeasing all players. Some content just isn't for you. If you want the Eureka relic but don't want to do Eureka, you're out of luck. Devs should not water down content for players. As far as longevity, you have the ability to DC hop. There is just no way Eureka and Bozja are dead constantly. While there are some elements of the game that do need to be accessible, ie dungeons, relics are not one of these things and the current model is a total mistake.

That said, it would be nice if they modified the field based relics so that after a certain time you can just tome in the DR step for Bozja or something like that.

[Mithron]

If you want the Eureka relic but don't want to do Eureka, you're out of luck.

It's not a Eureka Relic, it's the Stormblood relic. Go make Eureka give some other different reward so that I don't have to care about it instead.

[Turtledeluxe]

It's not a Eureka Relic, it's the Stormblood relic. Go make Eureka give some other different reward so that I don't have to care about it instead.

The game does not have sufficient rewards. Your options are items, currencies, mounts/glam, or bis gear. There's nothing Eureka can offer that isn't redundant unless devs go out of their way to design a unique reward. They don't do that for anything (look at Criterion Savage) so why would they do it for relics? Moreover we should kill these zones with redundancy because why? You want a shiny weapon? That is optional content. It would be nice if Ultimates were easier to get too, that's never going to happen.

For example I enjoy the exploratory zones, the old relic grinds, etc. But I do not have the time or motivation to slog through high end duty content given that in this game, BiS is not useful enough for me to care. The solution for me is not to beg devs to ruin those modes of play and just give me the rewards easily. The solution would be for me to prog. If you are not willing to ruin Ultimates because that's just too special, what makes exploratory zones worth it? Just because you feel like it? That does not work and it is this attitude which has made the game worse over time.

[Jeeqbit]

Yeah but the relic, IMO, should always be designed for solo play in mind. I shouldn't need to join a Discord and pray other people actually want their equivalent relics at the same time I do, while also being willing to commit a massive amount of time into dead content on specific roles we need.

As far as I remember, you don't need to beat BA or DRS for the relics. You do need to complete CLL and DR to progress through Bozja, but they grant The Echo now so you shouldn't need too many people. They are just a one-off as well.

I don't think the relic needs to be tied to completing the Field Operation content and its raids. Rather, its steps should be slightly more efficient to do in the Field Operation, but you should be able to avoid progressing the Field Operation through any CLL or DR style raids if you want to due to avoiding the social interaction and do old content instead.

Eureka is good in that you can do that whole thing solo, especially now NM spawning was nerfed and The Echo was added.

I can still go back and do ARR and HW relics without any of that

Technically, the most efficient way to farm light for HW relics involved getting a party for savage and that was the case for years before we could finally solo HW savage easily.

The ARR relic books, in particular, are very good because they have you do a variety and set different content like FATES and dungeons per book.

That's what I like about Field Operations. Different CEs, different Skirmishes each time I'm in there. And it's fresh content as opposed to yet more ARR and Heavensward.

[Gemina]

Tbh relics make more sense to use older content than current content, because for current expansion, current content NORMALLY already has incentives to be played on account of being current, while old content is left behind in the dust. Hell, that's the only reason Eureka and Bozja are even somewhat populated nowadays, because if EW had expedition zone, theyd be near-dead even in peak hours.

What incentives do you have to run standard versions of EW trials and 8-man raids? How about the dungeons that are not in expert roulette? Do you queue for any of them specifically? I can agree when it comes to content of the current patch, but even when it comes to lv90 content, anything outside the current patch cycle is already outdated and will place anyone trying to get these cleared into a long queue. Just because you can get these instances in a roulette doesn't mean players are actively running them.

Older content is kept afloat through the roulettes. There might be a small bundle of players chasing glamour or working on an older relic, but it's mainly the roulettes that shortens queue times when players want/need to do these duties specifically. If you weren't for roulettes, duties like CT which is ran nearly daily for most players would be dead content.

[Mithron]

The game does not have sufficient rewards. Your options are items, currencies, mounts/glam, or bis gear. There's nothing Eureka can offer that isn't redundant unless devs go out of their way to design a unique reward. They don't do that for anything (look at Criterion Savage) so why would they do it for relics? Moreover we should kill these zones with redundancy because why? You want a shiny weapon? That is optional content. It would be nice if Ultimates were easier to get too, that's never going to happen.

For example I enjoy the exploratory zones, the old relic grinds, etc. But I do not have the time or motivation to slog through high end duty content given that in this game, BiS is not useful enough for me to care. The solution for me is not to beg devs to ruin those modes of play and just give me the rewards easily. The solution would be for me to prog. If you are not willing to ruin Ultimates because that's just too special, what makes exploratory zones worth it? Just because you feel like it? That does not work and it is this attitude which has made the game worse over time.

I understand your view about not wanting to "water down content for the sake of lazy/bad players" and I do agree with that, but the problem is specifically the topic of relics. Relics and how they should be obtained was already established in ARR and HW. The SB and SHB relics were experiments and those experiments failed. So I would argue that your view applies to that point specifically: that relics shouldn't have been changed to fit Eureka and Bozja just to cater to lazy/bad players who didn't want to do the original content like ARR/HW did.

I'm happy not getting the rewards of Ultimate or Criterion Savage even if they're awesome if I'm not willing to do that content. The problem is that I didn't have to do Eureka or Bozja to get my ARR and HW relics, why should I have to now? Mind you, I did do Eureka and Bozja and fully completed several relics in each, and I absolutely hated and detested every single minute of it.

Go make up your own reward ideas for exploratory zones, but leave relics and their pre-established methods of obtaining out of it.

[TaleraRistain]

I don't want to see them tied to exploratory zones. The benefit of ARR and HW relics is they are much more accessible. You can jump in and start working on the questlines upon reaching certain levels and continue to the end without having to level at all. Eureka and Bozja both require progressing through an alternate leveling system. Eureka has updates that can only be done in a single zone that is heavily dependent on the whims of other players. Bozja updates can be done outside, but the questline is still hard gated at certain points of that alternate progression line. And while it is less dependent on other players, there is still an element of that.

But I also would like some sort of specific tasks and progression, so relics for tomes was a little too open for me even if it does fulfill the desire to choose from a variety of content to progress your relic. I'm hoping they go back more to ARR or HW style with some specific options but a good variety. Kind of like having WT for the steps. Exploratory zones could be utilized, as well as other older content.

One thing I enjoyed about ARR, HW, and some of ShB was seeing the same people in the content I may have been grinding and finding out they were fellow relic hunters. We ended up cheering each other on and having a camaraderie as we worked through our lists of requirements. So it's not just when SE forces us into exploratory zones that we can be social.

[Turtledeluxe]

I understand your view about not wanting to "water down content for the sake of lazy/bad players" and I do agree with that, but the problem is specifically the topic of relics. Relics and how they should be obtained was already established in ARR and HW. The SB and SHB relics were experiments and those experiments failed. So I would argue that your view applies to that point specifically: that relics shouldn't have been changed to fit Eureka and Bozja just to cater to lazy/bad players who didn't want to do the original content like ARR/HW did.

I'm happy not getting the rewards of Ultimate or Criterion Savage even if they're awesome if I'm not willing to do that content. The problem is that I didn't have to do Eureka or Bozja to get my ARR and HW relics, why should I have to now? Mind you, I did do Eureka and Bozja and fully completed several relics in each, and I absolutely hated and detested every single minute of it.

Go make up your own reward ideas for exploratory zones, but leave relics and their pre-established methods of obtaining out of it.

The original relic journeys aren't the official way. They're not even identical. None of the relics are exactly alike to get in fact. I would love for devs to offer zones, and journeys as a method per every relic, but they're probably going to say it's too resource intensive.

As for as zones, I see no evidence they failed..I did them last year and the zones were thriving. Maybe they are aren't right now..it's also very low subscriber count right now and we are coming off a holiday season.