Critical Analysis: Relic Weapon Seal Acquisition

[fusional]

I dont think OP was even remotely referring to the Ifrit Extreme fight. Which even without latency would kill general parties lol.

#3. The design of obtaining the relic weapon

his words, not mine.

[Platinumstorm]

Everything I'm referencing is explicitly with regards to seal acquisition. I've edited it for clarity despite emphasizing hamlet throughout the entire post.

[Shougun]

#3. The design of obtaining the relic weapon

his words, not mine.

If you want to isolate the sentence then yes, but he has set bounds throughout the post to mean it isnt the whole shabang.

You have to read the whole thing as one piece. Or I guess argue semantics (unless you were legitimately misunderstanding his point, then we now cleared it up :P )

[fusional]

Everything I'm referencing is explicitly with regards to seal acquisition. I've edited it for clarity despite emphasizing hamlet throughout the entire post.

fair enough. apologies, and thanks for clarifying.

[Sartori]

"#3. The design of obtaining the relic weapon seals focuses on time spent and not the skill level of the player. It doesn't define skilled players from unskilled players, it separates players who have varying amounts of time on their hands."

Couldn't agree more

[Raikki]

I think we can all agree that the whole hamlet seal thing is not terribly exciting, but I also think the issue is being heavily exaggerated. I have yet to hear of any highly skilled active players who are only being held back from obtaining a relic because of the time consuming nature of farming seals. Hopefully 2.0's remastered hamlets are more fun and rewarding, but for those of you who are far behind in endgame in general I recommend getting started on raids and Garuda and such before you worry about seals holding you up.

[Elexia]

No. Just no. Casualifying the game to the point that barely-capable-of-beating-Ifrit-level PUGs can do everything would absolutely destroy the game. You can PUG enough in the game already without demanding to be allowed to PUG relic weapons of all things. Let those of us who care about skill keep something to play for please.

How will SE get people to play their MMO then? Did you not see how easy all new MMOs have been the past quarter of a decade?

Really, Relic acquisition, especially Hamlet pre-req needs tuning and people can deny it all they want, it doesn't even take skill to do..it's not even a measure of your skill, just a measure of how much time you're willing to dump into nothing realistically which is all the Hamlet Def portion is. When you need the Beastmen KI and the seals you're pretty much told in a fancy way: "This is to waste your time, now you can actually start the quest you were looking for."

3x of each seal is flatout stating it's to waste your time, you only really need 1 of each, but that would kill the event too quickly, which if anyone here actually played FFXI you would know SE is the king of forcing people into events or buying items they didn't want to bother with, i.e There's 100% no reason to ever buy Balrahn's Eyepatch, ever....until you decide you want a Mythic weapon and pray you bought every other item you wanted or else you'll be blowing 100k ichor on something that serves no purpose.

So yes, no one truly wants it to be "easier" or "more casual" but most people want it to be logical and the Hamlet Def step is just to waste your time, much like the SB portion is designed to waste your time, especially if you ignore the reasoning for it.

[Zantetsuken]

The hamlet seals portion of the relic quest was intended as a pseudo-hard limit on the total amount of relics earned per server over time.

The devs realized that no matter how difficult battles are, FFXIV players are resourceful enough to master them (as proven with the Garuda fight). They also realized that no matter how much grinding is required, FFXIV players will just power through it -- almost 24/7 in some cases.

The rate of obtaining Seals is heavily regulated by: Provisioner ranking, Active Hamlet times, Hamlet level, and finally RNG.

Even so, the fact that Hamlets are instanced meant that they could be heavily spammed, which is exactly what players did. That and players pooling resources/seals/etc resulted in more relics entering the game than the Devs were anticipating.

Recent interviews point to Hamlet being non-instanced in ARR, and therefore the total rate of seals generated by the system will likely drop (If seals are still part of ARR relic quests).

I hate the system as much as anyone, and it's a pretty mean barrier-to-entry for those who don't belong to a big LS, but I also understand the reason behind it's design.

Hopefully they will have a better system in ARR

[Shougun]

Just get rid of the RNG and Provisoner, and supply a 100% token system or a exponential loot table - predictable, dependable, and less frustrating in the long run (less frustrating assume RNG % isnt at 90%, which it never is).

I'd rather have a slightly longer grind that rewards each attempt I make then a grind where every moment is a gamble on time wasted (even when successful in the event).

+Tokens, you get one for winning - makes number of runs very exact (some people dont like that)
+Exponential loot table, every fail increases item drop exponentially next time - you WILL have 100% if you fail enough times (so each attempt is not wasted, this creates a range of expectation, however it makes content less dependable on SE side as they now have a range of values)

From what I see here on the forums its not the time that really kills them as much as the fact that their time was wasted and meaningless.


So long as they are not "old" in the way they set up the open Hamlet event in 2.0 I think the LS required part may no longer as -big- of an issue. I just hope they realize they can make it challenging for any group of players and that "dynamic" content is actually pretty cool.

[Raikki]

So yes, no one truly wants it to be "easier" or "more casual" but most people want it to be logical and the Hamlet Def step is just to waste your time, much like the SB portion is designed to waste your time, especially if you ignore the reasoning for it.

It's no different an issue than the Darklight or primal weapon drop rate. There's too little content, so we have to spam it mindlessly to waste our time. We already know that's being changed in 2.0. Everything in 1.x is like this, it's nothing new. So what's so special about the hamlet grind?

The hamlet seals portion of the relic quest was intended as a pseudo-hard limit on the amount of relics that can be obtained over a certain span of time.

The devs realized that no matter how difficult battles are, FFXIV players are resourceful enough to master them (as proven with the Garuda fight). They also realized that no matter how much grinding is required, FFXIV players will just power through it -- almost 24/7 in some cases.

You know the hamlet step only has to be done once, right? If you had to re-do it for each relic it would be a limit, but once you do it once you can knock out 7/7 relics in short order (once you've done the quest once you can plow through subsequent relic cycles in 3-4 days each no problem).