Demiatma drop rates are unacceptable

[Supersnow845]

Yeah but bad RNG and “I spent 4 days getting to level 12” are different things

Like in a nice way that’s very inefficient in a way I don’t quite understand

[Jeeqbit]

That’s the thing about RNG… luck decides when you’re done, not effort. I got lucky so I’m done. Others are still trying, and that’s why it feels bad. Most who are already lucky enough to be done are praising it as a “great grind.” “It’s not supposed to be easy!” Those who aren’t done are rightfully miserable. RNG is a poor way to extend content.

I've been very, very casually grinding OC since it came out. I have typically spent 1-3 hours at a time there, and not even every day. I've even had week-long breaks from it due to being busy with other things. And yet, I have not only finished the atma grind, I have all but 1 phantom job leveled, and the last is nearly done. I also have a full set of +1 augmented gear except 2 pieces which I need to finish gold farming for.

There is no way that in the time we've had since it released that an ultra casual player, just doing it 1 hour per week, wouldn't have finished, when I've been almost that casual and finished so, so much more than that.

[Valence]

How SE designed it:

Get 3 demiatmas, of which there are 6 colours, by doing FATEs and CEs in OC, or by doing FATEs in Dawntrail Zones. Each colour correlates to a part of the map in OC, or a specific Zone in the DT map.
After completing the initial quest, a vendor opens up, who sells you a new kind of Ore for 500 tomes each.
Spend 1500 tomes on 3 of the new Ore, and use the 3 Ore to buy the Relic.

How SE should have designed it (additions/changes in bold):

Get 3 demiatmas, of which there are 6 colours, by doing FATEs and CEs in OC, or by doing FATEs in Dawntrail Zones. Each colour correlates to a part of the map in OC, or a specific Zone in the DT map.
Once you have done that, you buy the Relic by giving Gerolt another set of 1 of each of the 6 demiatmas.
Wow, now any duplicates you happen to get, you can use on other relics instead of them being useless after the initial quest!

After completing the initial quest, a vendor opens up, who sells you the demiatma types for 250 tomes each. (This is instead of the 3 ores, but results in the same overall tome cost of 1500 tomes per Relic)
Wow, now if you have a ton of one kind of Demiatma, and not enough of another type, you can use the vendor and tomes as 'bad luck protection' and target-buy the one you have less of, to re-equalize your demiatma count!
Additionally, getting duplicate Demiatmas while farming out in OC stops feeling like 'damn my RNG is in all the wrong places' and starts feeling like 'hell yeh I just saved 250 tomes!!!'

Upon starting the 'get Gerolt his materials' quest, Bicolor Gemstone vendors in each Dawntrail Zone start offering the Zone's Demiatma type upon reaching Rank 3 for the Zone (cost: 250 Gems)
Wow, now if you are farming in the DT zones for the Demiatmas, you have a form of 'bad luck protection'! It also gives players more reason to grind out the Shared FATE system (beyond the current reward structure it has).
Additionally, because you can earn Bicolor Gemstones from as low as 70ish (via SHB FATEs), players might take the opportunity to level alt Jobs, even Jobs that aren't in the Dawntrail level bracket!


The amount of missed opportunities to revitalize older content is staggering. SE's perception of 'keep old content relevant' seems to be 'tie it to tomes, that way people will do roulettes', but there's more to the game than Instances.

Heck, instead of 'Dawntrail Zones', we've now got six expansions: ARR, HW, SB, SHB, EW, DT. Why did they not have each of the Demiatmas be linked to an expansion (blue = HW, red = SB, purple = SHB, etc), and have FATEs in EVERY zone be revitalized, instead of having everyone cram into Shaaloani like sardines? That way, we'd also cause a revitalization of the boss FATEs, like The Eyes Have It in Coerthas Central, the Tarrasque one in Forelands, the FATE chains that grant achievements in SHB, allowing newer players a chance to get assistance with getting those achievements/rewards in a more organic way

B-but SE hates options, common sense, and player agency

[Flowerscody2]

This topic perfectly exemplifies why the state of the game is what it is. So many pages of whiners complaining something wasnt handed to them. You know relics are optional right? You know theyre mostly just glam right? God forbid sonething in this game require a little bit of effort. You can get all 15 atmas in like 7 or 8 hours total of grinding fates in the overworld and people are throwing fits. This is why endwalker relics were a joke. People like the ones here complaining are quite literally ruining the game for everyone else.

[RedLolly]

This type of relic step was part of the Zodiak and Anima relics, even down to the RNG numbers.
The difference is that the RNG was greatly buffed many patches later since it wasn't the best weapon per class anymore.

Anima's Fate grind could also be completely skipped if you traded in the top version of the Zodiak weapon. I did this, and the Lilith Rod Zeta Replica just sits in my glam chest with every other stage.

This exact issue was happening to players years ago. Sometimes RNG is trash. It sucks. It's life. But I do find it odd that the devs didn't add a skip for the first stage for those of us that grinded the older weapons.

With how low the rates have been for some, it genuinely might've been faster to make a whole Manderville weapon to burn instead.

[Atma]

The RNG is an issue because people are clearly having wildly different experiences. I did enough OC to get to 20, and then had to pop over and do a few fates to clean up the last ones I needed (no one was really spawning the CE's in the areas I needed them from, so I decided fating for them was just faster since I only needed two of one specific color) It took about... an hour of fates to finish it off. Helped a friend finish off a color they needed as well, also ended up being right about an hour.

Then I know people who are spending days in OC and getting like... 3. Why companies do not simply put an escalating probability of drop on things like this to ensure some level of consistency, I will never understand.

[ForsakenRoe]

This topic perfectly exemplifies why the state of the game is what it is. So many pages of whiners complaining something wasnt handed to them. You know relics are optional right? You know theyre mostly just glam right? God forbid sonething in this game require a little bit of effort. You can get all 15 atmas in like 7 or 8 hours total of grinding fates in the overworld and people are throwing fits. This is why endwalker relics were a joke. People like the ones here complaining are quite literally ruining the game for everyone else.

I play OSRS, I'm not afraid of a grind.

This isn't about 'I want things handed to me for free', it is (in my case/what I posted, at least) about 'I would like to see SE have a bit more foresight in their designs'. Say that someone gets unlucky, with what I wrote in the game, all the 'bad luck protection' elements implemented. Okay, so instead of grinding OC for an undetermined amount more time, they can instead grind tomes or FATE gems and have a deterministic goal to work towards to get their missing Atmas. It might be 'less grind' if you know how long the undetermined OC grind length would be (hindsight and all that), but without that, we have to take the average length of that grind, and hitting a 20% chance 3 times in OC CE's, versus 'do 53 DT FATEs to get enough Bicolor Gemstones to buy the 3 items' seems pretty comparable in 'grind' to me.

By the time I completed the first step of the quest and had 3 of each Atma, my Atma counts were 6/4/9/7/3/3. Those extras, like the SIX extra lightblue ones, had no further use to me and had to be simply thrown away, discarded. Rather than that, what I suggested in my post would have given those duplicates an actual use, as being the thing you trade in to buy the relic (instead of 'random ore you've never heard of until now which happens to cost the exact same amount of tomes as the EW relic steps). Was I not 'grinding' when I obtained those duplicate Atmas?

Part of what people appreciated about FFXIV when first coming over from other MMOs, was that FFXIV's 'grinds' were more deterministic in nature. That they 'respected the players' time'. You could see the light at the end of the tunnel, because even though getting 2000 Light Points in HW sucked to do, you could see that it was 2000, and you currently had 'some amount between 1600 and 1800', so you knew 'oh I'm pretty close to done'. The problem with this step isn't the rates (they felt very fair to me, even before knowing the actual numbers). The problem is that you can get duplicates that are completely useless after the quest, making it feel like you're 'wasting your RNG', which, yeh that's not how RNG works, but it is how players perceive it.

Plus, I've not been back into OC since reaching max rank on all the Phantom Jobs and finishing the Demiatma stage. I imagine the same applies to a lot of players: They complete their 'goal' in there, and then they stop going in there. The amount of Tomes you earn by doing Critical Engagements in there is pathetically low, compared to other options (mainly roulettes). If I could hand in 1 of each Demiatma to get a Relic (instead of 3 'ore I've only just learned exists'), then there'd be a lot more reason to be in OC beyond the original grind, and we'd have reason to hold onto duplicate Demiatmas (to use on other Relics)


Again, this is not 'players don't want to grind', this is 'SE keeps making content that has an incredibly short 'expiration date', and players are catching on that SE has little-to-zero foresight in their design process'

[ShirakoShinkai]

To drop my own experience here.... I spent about 4 days straight grinding fates for atmas, doing literally nothing else except a few hours break for raid. My bf finished in less than 2 days. The drop rate from fates is 5%, while CEs in OC are 20%. However, grinding in OC feels bad to me because you can't guarantee you don't overcap on one color, since the colors are based on location on the map. I'm fine with a grind, lord knows I've wasted some time grinding shit that doesn't matter, but this is just insanely punishing to people who like grinding things out quickly and efficiently. To everyone who says "just take it slow", some people just don't want to. That's their way of playing, and SE knows this. The fact that they made a horrible grind anyway is frustrating and honestly kind of insulting. I don't mind a long grind, I just wish it was fun. I'm pretty sure I lost brain cells doing this one. But I wanted to get it done as soon as possible so I didn't waste tomes by not being able to buy the next step material. Overall, my main issue about the atmas and OC is the inefficiency of it all. The only good that came out of this for me, I guess, is that I finished getting every unique bi-color gemstone item in the game.

Getting kind of tired of all the people saying "well I had good RNG therefore your opinions are wrong and there is nothing wrong with the system. Also you're not playing the game the same way as me therefore you're playing it wrong."

[ShirakoShinkai]

This topic perfectly exemplifies why the state of the game is what it is. So many pages of whiners complaining something wasnt handed to them. You know relics are optional right? You know theyre mostly just glam right? God forbid sonething in this game require a little bit of effort. You can get all 15 atmas in like 7 or 8 hours total of grinding fates in the overworld and people are throwing fits. This is why endwalker relics were a joke. People like the ones here complaining are quite literally ruining the game for everyone else.

For one, if you're a raider, they are BiS at the end of the expansion. Two, I spent 4 days straight doing nothing but fates in the overworld, minus a few hours break for raid. At least 8-12 hours a day. The drop rate for fates is 5%. You are INCREDIBLY lucky if you got it done that quickly. I'm not asking them to hand stuff to me for free, I like a bit of a grind. What I DON'T like is the inefficiency of it if you want to grind it quickly. It doesn't take "effort" to mindlessly throw yourself at fates for 4 days. They should have had a better system in OC at least if they were going to make fates so bad.

Also god forbid people WANT to do the optional content, then get upset when it isn't as fun as they would have liked. Comments like yours are why the game is being ruined for me - people blindly accepting everything the game puts out and then tell people they're wrong for having a different opinion.

[Exinias]

I find it so strange.

I'm a casual player. I don't grind. I don't have most of the achievements or trophies, I don't even have half of my jobs maximized. My WHM level is 15 for Twelve's sake!

I mostly go solo in OC and don't even take part of FATE trains, like ever.

Usually I participate of 3 CEs and leave to do something else, like trial or normal raid roulette, two or so society quests.

I'm saying this so you have a notion of how casually I play this game.

And yet, I got all demiatmas just doing some CEs, a few FATEs. Even before OC level 15 I already had all demiatmas.
Took maybe a week, maybe a little more.

I inclined to believe you guys saying you are having a hard time aren't really trying.

Well, I certainly wasn't and did it anyway...

That's cool but I have almost 5 phantom jobs leveled and still no relic. Some people really put in a ton of effort to get rewarded and don't, you put in minimal effort and got rewarded. Why you mad you had put in an 1/8 the effort of others just to think you put in the same effort?