Why don't they change the way we earn Atma? (An honest question, not a rant.)

[Duelle]

End game grinds are supposed to be about encouraging people to come together in a positive way to accomplish a goal. This is just a long solo grind that's size-ably worse than any long term grind in FFXI just for that reason alone. We're revisiting stuff that has no relevance to us, making zero friends out of it because of totally random cross-server groups, and then doing it over and over.

The mechanic for Atma isn't new, because as I said when Atma was implemented, they basically took the "splinters of atiesh" approach but yes, made it a solo grind instead of something that happens while your guild is raiding.

I still say the whole system was aimed at the wrong demographic, as this system was originally designed to give hardcore players a reason to raid after getting gear. They instead tossed it at those who aren't raiding while creating a faster way of upgrading a weapon via UAT+Rowena Tokens+Sand. From a design perspective the decision to this day still doesn't make much sense.

Had I made the call, I would have made the high allagan weapons ilvl110 with the option to unlock the weapons' potential via what we call the Atma system; make it possible for the 20 upgrade items (I would raise the number of items required from 12 to 20) necessary to drop from FATEs while also dropping in dungeons and coil. I would have taken the Secret of Mana approach with relics by making the relic upgrade involve essences from content no one cares about at this moment: extreme primal fights. Granted, this would NOT work until Shiva is implemented, as I would have it require primal essences from the six elemental primals. Or do the upgrade in two phases. Phase 1 (Patch 2.2, Zenith => Novus) requiring Garuda, Titan and Ifrit extreme, while phase 2 (implemented in patch 2.4, Novus => whatever) would require Leviathan, Ramuh and Shiva extreme. That would have gotten me to care about extreme primals instead of seeing those fights as poorly-implemented hard modes. It would have also made the progression path very clear instead of the current RNGfest atma grinds are. And for the record, I'm still at 0.

[Madruck]

I felt accomplished every step of the way for my zodiac. The twelve hour atma grind, Brayflox Nonstop for thousands of myth, the fate camping for books, the alex grind, and finally the scream of joy when the last det4 was placed into my scroll, having spirit bonded all my own materia. My novus was complete. Days of in-game time was spent and millions of gil. I am proud of my zodiac

Congratulations on getting your Atma in 12 hours, please tell others who spent 100+ hours doing the same thing just for your stones from fates how its a good design? RNG is not only RNG, dozens of MMO's have this mechanic in game, but not at the rate SE designed it. 1% drop rate......From WoW, SWTOR, DDO, STO, Eve Online, PSO, just to name a few I have played.....have never had such poor and lazy game mechanics implemented into it! And for anyone who will name the drop rates from Conan, GW2 or some other game, Conan is now F2P and GW2 is dying quick......so we see what happened to those games with these mechanics and how they failed in time!

[Mogi]

I never had a sense of accomplishment, I was just glad it was over.

This and i'm never looking back

[Cyrus-Wallace]

Congratulations on getting your Atma in 12 hours, please tell others who spent 100+ hours doing the same thing just for your stones from fates how its a good design? RNG is not only RNG, dozens of MMO's have this mechanic in game, but not at the rate SE designed it. 1% drop rate......From WoW, SWTOR, DDO, STO, Eve Online, PSO, just to name a few I have played.....have never had such poor and lazy game mechanics implemented into it! And for anyone who will name the drop rates from Conan, GW2 or some other game, Conan is now F2P and GW2 is dying quick......so we see what happened to those games with these mechanics and how they failed in time!

Did you play Ragnarok Online?

[HeroSamson]

I got all my atma quickly on paladin.

I believe ones who have a low attention span who complain. You don't wanna keep doing fates over and over, you want it now your other options I have read AND here are some ive read.

Dungeons- Dumb idea take hours to win the dungeon and would be much worse imagine same drop rate.

Grand company- to easy and you are doing fates for grand company seals and leves not different if they stuck the atma at 50 GC points.

Treasure hunts - Man I could see treasure maps blowing up in prices after this.

Every way I have seen people asking its like they want hand outs, I found farming atma super easy not sure why its a problem.

[Mogi]

I got all my atma quickly on paladin.

I believe ones who have a low attention span who complain. You don't wanna keep doing fates over and over, you want it now your other options I have read AND here are some ive read.

Dungeons- Dumb idea take hours to win the dungeon and would be much worse imagine same drop rate.

Grand company- to easy and you are doing fates for grand company seals and leves not different if they stuck the atma at 50 GC points.

Treasure hunts - Man I could see treasure maps blowing up in prices after this.

Every way I have seen people asking its like they want hand outs, I found farming atma super easy not sure why its a problem.

I found mine easy too and i don't feel SE needs to make them super easy but come on lol it's not like how it is right now is that good

[ruskie]

with relics by making the relic upgrade involve essences from content no one cares about at this moment: extreme primal fights. Granted, this would NOT work until Shiva is implemented, as I would have it require primal essences from the six elemental primals.

I think you just shown us the next upgrade path for our relics...

[Madruck]

Did you play Ragnarok Online?

To compare Ragnorok Online to FF14, WoW or any hardline MMO as these is a poor argument as read about the game online. RO is F2P....and I promise that these mechanics that plagued those players lead to its downfall as well. If you are truly going to compare a game to this....try Diablo 2 or Diablo 3 which is based clearly on Low RNG.....but Diablo is not WoW or is it SWTOR or FF14 in styles of gameplay. SE dropped the ball on game design and numerous posts for the past 6 months in regards to the subject about people stating the same thing as I am is clear proof and thats all that needs to be said!

And for anyone who will name the drop rates from Conan, GW2 or some other game, Conan is now F2P and GW2 is dying quick......so we see what happened to those games with these mechanics and how they failed in time!

Clearly you didn't read the entire post to ask me this question.

[SDaemon]

I felt accomplished every step of the way for my zodiac. The twelve hour atma grind, Brayflox Nonstop for thousands of myth, the fate camping for books, the alex grind, and finally the scream of joy when the last det4 was placed into my scroll, having spirit bonded all my own materia. My novus was complete. Days of in-game time was spent and millions of gil. I am proud of my zodiac

O.o the only real thing I'd be proud of there was spirit bonding my own materia for Novus. That and maybe perhaps that the RNG God blessed me with superhuman luck to have gotten all 12 atma is such a short amount of time.

[HeroSamson]

I found mine easy too and i don't feel SE needs to make them super easy but come on lol it's not like how it is right now is that good

Yes because they don't want everyone getting all their relics for each job.

It would best to focus on one weapon, this is why there are other optional weapons to gather and people are just being greedy they want to get all the relics instead of just one.