Relic weapons situation post expansion

[Ooshima]

First we well need a 1.0 player to let us know how the relic quest looks like back in the days of 1.X before the server went down, then we can derive what are the possibilities.

[Asael]

First we well need a 1.0 player to let us know how the relic quest looks like back in the days of 1.X before the server went down, then we can derive what are the possibilities.

IIRC, for the relic reborn quest that came out back at 1.22b you had a long series of steps in order to get your relic.

First, you had to get three beastmen's seals from hamlet (which could take weeks to months to get).

Second, obtain 25,000 GC seals to buy a beastmen's book. Though back then GC seals were a lot harder to get than they are now. As they were only obtainable through battle wardens, and doing GC leves and the pay outs were very low (around 50-100 or so seals at a time). Although close to the end of 1.xx Atomos was a thing you and other players could group together to bring down, and if you spent a lot of time doing this you could cap pretty quickly.

Third, you would trade these things to Rowena in Ul'dah for a soiled promissory note that you would trade to a NPC to start your relic quest (yeah, all of this just to freaking start the thing).

Fourth, acquire all of your beastmen currency which you could go out and get or pay multi-millions to obtain.

Fifth, either buy or make your top tier craft able weapon (in my case for a PLD it was the Mailbreaker), and begin working on a double tier IV meld. The thing about melds at this time was if you failed a meld you lost both the item and all the materia it had on it, so it could end up being a massive money pit as high tier materia and darksteel weapons were very expensive.

Sixth, hand over the beastmen currency and the weapon to the quest NPC.

Seventh, running endgame dungeons for key items over and over and over and over and over... well you get the point.

Eighth, turn in the items that you got from the dungeons and get your unfinished [insert relic name here].

Ninth, Spirit bond with your weapon and do your primals (Ifirit Hard and Garuda Hard).

Done.

Now my question is, what does this have to do with deriving the possibilities of how relic weapons should work in the future of 2.x and onward? As 1.xx and 2.xx are different beasts anyways. /shrug

[Ooshima]

snipped

Thanks for the info.

To reply to your question, past trends gives us an insight on how future things might play out, which I have effectively used to to predict that the Nexus upgrade is done though "spritbinding", after looking through the lore and reasoning of the past Zodiac questline. I made that prediction on 25th Aug.

As we can see, the relic reborn quest in 1.22 was a huge monster compared to what new players have to do at 2.0. I strongly believe that the same will go for 3.0. There is absolutely no point, nor make any sense to enforce any new player in 3.0 to go through the entire original Zodiac questline which is designed to be a time sink for 2.X series.

I foresee that the whole Zodiac thing will be scraped in 3.0 - to be replaced with a more condensed questline to directly obtain the final form of the weapon, which Yoshida claimed that will bear a different name and a new design.

Given the level of predictability of Yoshida's team, I won't be surprised that you will start out and do some delivery boy job again to find some old junk, grind for a little to obtain some historic text, go kill some monsters, defeat a couple of the new expansions' after-the-new-level-cap bosses and tada you get that relic, just like how 1.22 and 2.0 asks you to.

[Asael]

Thanks for the info.

To reply to your question, past trends gives us an insight on how future things might play out, which I have effectively used to to predict that the Nexus upgrade is done though "spritbinding", after looking through the lore and reasoning of the past Zodiac questline. I made that prediction on 25th Aug.

Ah, okay I see.

Though honestly you don't have to look to the way they did things in the past to predict future trends in this game. Yoshi and friends became predictable the second they said they wanted to move towards a theme park style mmo. Ultra simplistic, very straight forward, and at times quite linear (especially concerning developmental progression).

As we can see, the relic reborn quest in 1.22 was a huge monster compared to what new players have to do at 2.0. I strongly believe that the same will go for 3.0. There is absolutely no point, nor make any sense to enforce any new player in 3.0 to go through the entire original Zodiac questline which is designed to be a time sink for 2.X series.

Yeah, that goes without saying though. It's a theme park mmo now so old content will always be toned down in order to soften the "catch-up" curve for future generations that come into the game later on. But as you approach the current day content of the time it will steepen.

I foresee that the whole Zodiac thing will be scraped in 3.0 - to be replaced with a more condensed questline to directly obtain the final form of the weapon, which Yoshida claimed that will bear a different name and a new design.

Given the level of predictability of Yoshida's team, I won't be surprised that you will start out and do some delivery boy job again to find some old junk, grind for a little to obtain some historic text, go kill some monsters, defeat a couple of the new expansions' after-the-new-level-cap bosses and tada you get that relic, just like how 1.22 and 2.0 asks you to.

Scraped? Not quite the word I would use but okay I get what you mean lol. I think it will be more like what you said with condensing the content. Essentially Relic weapon -----> Zodiac -----> whatever else is over the horizon. Where the old content (in this case relic) gets packaged together with a dampened difficulty (again, softening the catch-up curve). Same will eventually happen with the Zodiac when the next life cycle of the weapon comes along. But really it's still the same weapon; it's just being outdated by upcoming spiritual successors.

[Roris]

They'll most likely ease up on the grind just like they eased up on it from 1.x, though they also ended up simplifying the quest a bit too much and took out some interesting stuff like Hamlet, the relic levequests, arguably speedruns and the original Ifrit EX.

Currently the main purpose of the relic quest is to keep old content alive for new and returning players. Atma is designed so FATEs will mostly still be populated, after all it was conveniently implemented just as the PS4 version released to push people into low level areas and make it appear like they were always so populated, but that's another thing. Animus is designed to keep dungeons and certain specific FATEs populated. Novus is designed to promote Expert Roulette and SB content which is a big chunk of endgame dungeons and certain open world areas, and finally Nexus encompasses pretty much all endgame content especially trials, though its major flaw is most people are grinding that in premade full parties, so it doesn't really help players new to endgame using the DF.

The expansion's relic quest will most likely keep this same role for whatever new content is released and might also include old content for people going through the 2.0 storylines, they did mention they're considering making old content soloable at one point so we'll have to see how they adapt it.

[Felis]

The pre 3.0 grind can get nerved post 3.0, like higher drop rate, less books, more ways to get alexandrite, more light from content. Post 3.0 upgrade would be the same grind we have now.

Hmm, I hope next upgrade (2.5?) involve something like hamlet defense again ^^
To put some teamplay into the mix.

atma grinding is the bane of this game and forever will be ppl give up at that cuz of the shit drop rate they have for them plus the weapon dosent even have upgraded stats until you upgrade from atma to next part finished the first animus book so basically you get a ilvl 100 weapon with stats from ilvl 90 weapon that makes alot of ppl already quit that along with spending days/weeks just to farm atmas and ppl dont want to do that i quit atma grinding after i had 3 atmas 2 months ago but just over the weekend i forced myself to farm for the last 9 i needed and took me 2 days to get them

I fixed it a bit

[Sessurea]

Isn't the relic reaching the end of it's life? Please correct me if I'm wrong on that.

With UAT weapons and soon, the new revamped primal focus quest ( guessing ilvl 120-130 ), are people really going to to go through atma, animus, novus and nexus + w/e else?

I'm working on nexus myself atm, and in some ways would love to see it continued but when I think of new players starting this quest...ugh.

[Felis]

Isn't the relic reaching the end of it's life? Please correct me if I'm wrong on that.

With UAT weapons and soon, the new revamped primal focus quest ( guessing ilvl 120-130 ), are people really going to to go through atma, animus, novus and nexus + w/e else?

I'm working on nexus myself atm, and in some ways would love to see it continued but when I think of new players starting this quest...ugh.

Relict woul be always the 2nd best and sometimes the first best if the upgrades keep coming.

[JonBigwood]

I also think when new upgrades of the relic appear, the last ones will be a long grind while the initial ones will be made easier. I started to play at 2.1 and the relic quest took several weeks at that time. Now you do it in one or two days. Like it took many weeks to get a set of ilvl90 gear and now it is trivially easy to get.

Atmas and Novus are easier to nerf (just make atma and alexandrite drop rate very high and materia easier to get.) Animus might need some change to make it quicker. Nexus is also very easy to nerf increasing the light obtained by the duties.

Right now with the UAT and Sands and in 3 weeks of soldiery tomes you get an ilvl 110 weapon, it's much more worth it than doing a second Novus for an alt class. Zenith is quick to get, but from then on it becomes more practical to get the sodiery+UAT+sands.

I suppose we will have alternatives to the relic weapons (maybe not the best ilvl but just the second best) that need some time to get but not as long as the full relic available, like we have now the 110 UAT weapons, only just a bit worse than the 115 ones.

The more time passes, the more alternatives or choices there are to obtain gear and weapons, which is a great thing.

[Duuude007]

Animus might need some change to make it quicker.

To Animus future 'nerfs', they could allow players to buy as many books that they want. Targets & dungeons/fates overlap allowing fewer trips and a shorter overall process.