Relic Weapons-Broken Promises

[DeadRiser]

No one likes speed runs. No one likes dismal drops rates. But it's the name of the game, at the moment, even if it's a horrible name. To say you "don't have the time for it" makes you sound like a pathetic whiner. Not having the patience for it would be more appropriate.

I said I don't have the time to join and endgame linkshell because of my school/work schedule, I didn't say I don't have the time to do speed runs because of school/work schedule. I gave my reasons why I don't like them and I'll stand by that. What you get out of what I said is you...

And don't tell me what's more appropriate when what little posts you do post don't even contribute to the thread.

[DarthTaru]

I just can't stand when people make the assumption that I'm a pathetic whiner lol. Sometimes I can't stand this community...

If you're skilled enough to clear the content but a full time college student with a part time job you should probably just get used to the idea that you won't be getting a relic for a few months.
You have to understand that if they build this game around people who can only play for 3 hours a week than the people who can play for 10, 20, 30 hours a week are just going to quit because it will become so ridiculously gimp to them.

Then you'll be logging in to an empty game shortly before the servers are shut down.

I thought "the community" already had this discussion. We were all happy and in agreement that there should exist content for casual players AND hardcore players. Hardcore players stopped whining about casuals getting stuff a long time ago (don't see any QQ over Skirmish) yet casuals still feel entitled to everything.

No NA PUG is going to clear Ifrit Extreme. It's not the most challenging thing ever devised but it is sufficiently difficult enough that it requires 7~8 players to go through a learning process together. If you think only speed runs are holding you back but you'll be able to roll into Ifrit with a bunch of random people from Ul'dah and clear it you're in for a lot of wipes. It's a lot more difficult than Garuda and one person screwing up at any given moment can wipe your party.

Get yourself a fancy new Skirmish weapon and start thinking about a relic weapon after you graduate and have time for a linkshell/effective static.

[Yucie]

No one likes speed runs. No one likes dismal drops rates. But it's the name of the game, at the moment, even if it's a horrible name. To say you "don't have the time for it" makes you sound like a pathetic whiner. Not having the patience for it would be more appropriate.

And no one likes Ashenspire.

[DarthTaru]

....Really wondering where these "I don't have time for a linkshell but want the stuff anyway" rants are going to go when we reach HNMs....

[Hyrist]

Try not to generalize too much, Darth.

There are plenty of Hardcore players still whining. And there will always be outliers on both camps.

I'm quite content to let the players with more free time camp/hunt/peruse a HNM endgame. Might even stop and watch them fight if I'm permitted to.

I think the issue here is people are equating the FFXIV Relic weapons to FFXI AF weapons, a distinction I have long ago corrected in terms of expectations.

[NefGP]

Haven't had much experience with this, though I know a few people who are trying to get one and are just agonizing over the hamlet defense bullshit.

I thought SE finally learned their lesson about relic-class weapons when they introduced Empyrean Weapons into FFXI - that was doing it right (mostly - the patch that added AF3 to the older Abyssea NMs made the process much more bearable). Making it a challenge that takes time and dedication, but is also accessible to anyone who wants to attempt. We don't need more Relic/Mythic Weapon BS where only the super rich elitists with entire linkshells of unwitting slaves can attain these things.

As far as the actual stats go for these, most of them are so-so when compared to the alternatives available on Mozk-Tabetai. The only ones that seem to really stand out (to me) are Bravura, Gugnir and Stardust Rod. Curtana is almost there, just needs some enmity on it to make it really stand out from Garuda's.

[dbrewer225]

what u just said right there nefgp, sums up all whats right and wrong about relic in this case. you have surpassed the knowlegde of whats really going on. i sir give u 1000000 thumbs up.

[Pyretta_Blaze]

I think if there had been a job specific weapon to go along with our other AF type gear and at the same level of difficulty as the other pieces there would be less bitching about the relic weapons.

My server is full of people still farming seals and many people I play with have like 2/9 and aren't in a super hurry to get their weapon done. I took the view that I will probably be able to obtain a relic weapon or two but it would probably be quite awhile down the road.

It would be nice if there was a little less RNG and more actual difficulty involved but right now I think it is fine for what it is.

If I can't manage to get one then it just isn't for me. There are many other completely acceptable weapons out there for every job to use while we are working towards our relics.

[DarthTaru]

Haven't had much experience with this, though I know a few people who are trying to get one and are just agonizing over the hamlet defense bullshit.

I thought SE finally learned their lesson about relic-class weapons when they introduced Empyrean Weapons into FFXI - that was doing it right (mostly - the patch that added AF3 to the older Abyssea NMs made the process much more bearable). Making it a challenge that takes time and dedication, but is also accessible to anyone who wants to attempt. We don't need more Relic/Mythic Weapon BS where only the super rich elitists with entire linkshells of unwitting slaves can attain these things.

Entire linkshells of unwitting slaves? Little dramatic, don't you think? We passed all seals to people one by one and now everyone in our linkshell has either a relic weapon or are at least 9/9 on seals with their double meld complete (unless they just joined the LS this week).

Sounds more like working together than having a linkshell based on slavery and exploitation to me.

Hamlet is horrible. No argument there. It's incredibly boring and tedious even if you ace it every time, nevermind if you're with a group who can't complete it effectively. The special conditions (NPC's having to be responsible for special mob deaths for zombie mage pop) killed it because that and pretty much that alone prevented parties from entering with battle classes and more diverse set ups. The entire event seems to me to be a prototype for something in 2.0.

They should have added grand company seals as individual rewards to make it more tolerable.
Right now it's an incredibly boring super-grind (I can't think of ANYTHING in XI I would rather do Hamlet over), but like i've said before, if your roadblock to a relic is the Hamlet seals I highly doubt you'll have much luck with anything else (the skill based content) further along in the quest.

[NefGP]

Entire linkshells of unwitting slaves? Little dramatic, don't you think?

Stopped reading right there.

Zilart's endgame as a whole was a badly designed, broken pile of trash. Sky was stupid, Kings were even worse, and Relics were just the epitome of bad game design (until Mythics came along which are still to this day the hardest freaking things to get and only really become good at 99).

Getting into Dynamis was easy, getting a relic weapon to drop from mobs was even easier (still don't know why they changed the drop rates and turned Dynamis into mini-abyssea but that's another topic.) but getting a good amount of currency?

Yeah, unless you had a horde of slaves willing to farm it for you under the premise that their turn would eventually come, or had 200+ million gil, you could just forget about getting a Relic Weapon. And again, most of them weren't even that amazing - Apocalypse was #1 until the haste nerf (and now the Souleater nerf making it even worse though it's still a good weapon), and then you had Gjallar & Aegis. The rest were all marginal improvements over the alternatives.

Hell, Hagun was just as good if not better for years because of how stupidly OP Tachi Y/G/K were. Oh yeah, and let's not forget about the attestations & fragments... even if you did have a willing army of people to farm a relic for you, it STILL TOOK AT LEAST A YEAR TO COMPLETE! A YEAR!!! FOR ONE IN-GAME ITEM! That doesn't strike anyone as even a bit little extreme? I'm willing to put money saying most people are looking for a challenge, not a second career.

Then they brought in Mythics, the majority of which were worse than their relic counterparts and took 10x more effort.
- Defeat Odin
- Defeat the 3 Beast Kings
- Collect 100,000 ampoules of therion ichor
- Obtain Captain Rank in Assault (Clear all 50 assaults and the ToAU storyline)
- Obtain a Runic Key, the base weapon & unlock the weaponskill from Nyzule Isle
- Collect 30,000 Alexandrites from Salvage (the only stage you could skip via money, though at 3k+ each that's hefty)
- Re-do all 50 assaults and record them in the book you're given
- Spam ZNMs until you get a full popset for Pandimonium Warden (which itself is extremely valuable to others...)
- Boss battle that if you screw up, requires another PW popset to retry (fun)

And to add one last bit of insult to injury, Naja gives you a measly 3 imperial silver... vs the x30 100 pieces you get for finishing a relic.


At least with empyreans it was mostly farming NMs that you could all do as a group up until the Abyssea NM stages, which as I said, after the later patches all dropped multiple AF3+2 trial items (among other goodies) so it wasn't terribly hard getting others to come along to help - unlike Relic & Mythic weapons where there was often very little to gain over the long run.

tl;dr - I'd really like to believe that these guys have learned some valuable lessons from past endeavors and can better construct genuine, rewarding challenges as opposed to stale grind-fests that rely largely on luck or obscene amounts of money for players to succeed. Also ideally they shouldn't take more than a few months to complete as opposed to a year or longer. If that's what it takes to keep people interested in your game, then you need to make a better game.