ATMA is AWESOME, more Content like it please

[Musashidon]

1 the forums are a small percentage of the actual playerbase and 2 how the hell you know what everyone in population thinks of the atma quest. I started it got 4 atmas and then started else the quest or the grind doesn't bother me.

Sincerely a so called causal player even though I play more then a so called hardcore player.

lol seems you don't know how to read, already gave my explanation this is a pointless arguement when the only thing people can say against me is you didn't poll everyone. lol

[Raxion]

FFXI had many grinds like the Atma. Mechanics like that are the reason I played and enjoyed it for so long. If FFXIV:ARR were to adopt more grind-like mechanics, it would increase the longevity of content by boatloads.

While I'm not the biggest fan of FATEs, I did thoroughly enjoy gathering my 12 Atma. While some people complain about the grind, I think mechanics like this are 100% healthy for the game overall. I sincerely hope the devs weren't deterred from putting more grind mechnics into the game based on the forum response.

[skaterger]

lol seems you don't know how to read, already gave my explanation this is a pointless arguement when the only thing people can say against me is you didn't poll everyone. lol

All i gathered from you and others who claim to speak for the majority are your pitiful beliefs that since i believe in something, the majority must believe the same as me. Anyone who dares to disagree is wrong and should be ridiculed

[Stanelis]

This game seriously lacks enough grindy content

Atma is no content. Contents are Fate, dungeons, leves, Coil, CT, etc.

You don't need to be on the Atma quest to do fates (though it is no wonder you don't grind them when you don't need xp/atma because it is plain boring). If you liked FATE (to be honest I've never meet someone who actually liked doing FATEs) you could grind them even before 2.2.

I can't even understand how people nowadays can consider something which make you grind content you were already farming to be new content (let alone interesting content...). I just cannot understand.

[Ddmk]

As far as I can tell alot don't mind grinding,its the fact that atmas are only obtainable from fates 95% of which you need to sync down for
It's boring/tedious/repetitive/unenjoyable content to a lot of people..
If it were a fixed target as stated above people would just get through it, as it stands with no set target people struggle to stay motivated

[Sessurea]

I There's no point in having 'Legendary' weapons if everyone can get them so easily. So I completely support you SE for adding this grindy content and hoping for more. Don't let the loud minority drown out the fact most people love it. Raiding fates reminded me of my FF11 days! Hope to see more content like it. I want to always feel the best gear I can get is always a distant goal, and not just 1 day away.

~ Koops

Ah one these FF11 ppl, always funny. "mind numbing depression inducing grind is a positive and good thing, I will spend money happily to roll rng dice, I am awesome. I hope every aspect of future ff14 progression involves whacking my head against a wall, I played ff11, im good at it =D"

[Stanelis]

Ah one these FF11 ppl, always funny. "mind numbing depression inducing grind is a positive and good thing, I will spend money happily to roll rng dice, I am awesome. I hope every aspect of future ff14 progression involves whacking my head against a wall, I played ff11, im good at it =D"

Even the legendary grind was more interesting in FF11, because you actually had to grind true meaningful content (dynamis was no cakewalk if unprepared at level 75). Plus the weapons were worth going through the trouble.

Which is not even the case in FFXIV.

[Sessurea]

I bet FF11 was indeed a good game, but I quiver away from it a little more with fear when I see people citing FF11 and saying atma is well designed in the same sentence.

[Bellybell]

because legendary weapons obtained through zerging amd luck is interesting

[Suellen]

snip

I appreciate the well thought out post. And I can understand your points and where you are coming from.

Even so I have to respectfully disagree on a few things. I don't think the zodiac quest chain was lazy/bad design. It was well thought out design based on the feedback that the player base had been given them. (or at least I can follow their thought processes). It was a design that ultimately was badly received by many though.

Two major feedback points the playerbase was giving SE was 1) relic’s are too easy to get and 2) there is a fundamental lack of open world content.

So they wanted to give relics a bit of a grind. There are two ways to add grind, RNG and token. You have pointed out the con in RNG systems which is a very valid con. But there are cons in token systems as well. I personally hate token grinds. Like I honestly HATE them.

So I guess I’ll just rant on why I hate token grinds. Firstly they make the game feel very monotonous. There is no anticipation no excitement no “did it drop?” moments. It’s just “God I have to do this 22 more times. Ugh.” Which leads to my second gripe. It makes the grind too transparent. When I’m not counting the grind in tokens I don’t notice it as much. I’m running dungeons or doing whatever gameplay without thinking about the long term time investment. I’m just playing. But with a token system the grand total is etched in Neon lights. It can make a task look far more daunting at the start which can be discouraging. You want me to do how many of these? Screw it.

So when it comes to token systems or RNG. I feel it’s very much a ymmv thing on which you prefer. There isn’t one is inherently better than the other. So imho the better design choice is to use a little of both. Which is exactly what we got in the zodiac weapon chain.

So back to the player feedback. The other major feedback point was lack of open world content. Well what is open world content. The game has established it as Fates/Leves/Mobs. And so that’s what the bulk of the zodiac quest entails. I know not everyone likes fates. But the game released with Fates being the core method of open world content. So it’s only logical that this would be the meat of the zodiac grind.

And so we have the Atma grind which everyone seems to hate. They thought ok the core component of our open world is fates. Let’s have the first stage be about fates. But we don’t want to overpopulate a zone so let’s spread it out and have them need to do fates in multiple zones. They then had to decide will this be the token grind or the RNG grind. Really they could have gone either way on this I guess but they went RNG. And I don’t see it as being that terrible of a choice.

To make an RNG grind take a significant length of time you need to have a low drop rate. But low drop rates also increase the con of RNG the large variability. To counter that some you have the collection of multiple items like say 12 in this case. This will shrink the standard deviation some lowering the variability. Now ultimate it didn’t lower it enough to prevent the rage on these forums apparently. I’d have to run the math to understand why but I haven’t done that nor will likely too as I just don’t have that much interest.

If they went the token route say do 100 fates per zone, then they’d want to do a more RNG route with the books. Maybe have them as rare drops in the new dungeons oh wait that’s not open world though. Well who knows but some kind of RNG drop either in dungeons or in the open world to collect. They likely made the choice they did as they wanted a nice sink for myth tomes with the books as phil tomes became pretty useless towards the end of its life span. And they wanted to counteract that happening with myth tomes some.

Sorry for the long winded post that many probably won’t read lol. But I honestly think SE did put a decent amount of thought into their Zodiac quest chain and the design had solid logic. It’s just hindsight is 20/20. Some tweaks may have made the design of the quests better received which is no doubt what they are discussing over right now as they delay the Novus update.