Relic weapons situation post expansion

[Prototype909]

This is something I've been wondering for awhile, and that's how do you think SE intends to handle the Relic Questline 3.0 and beyond? Note that I'm not talking about current players, but rather -new- players.

Does it really make sense to forever lock the relic behind this massive grind (Which is obviously targeted at current level 50s who have been playing at least since Atma was implemented)? This grind is already too much for some of the players it's basically targeted at, doesn't it just become more and more overwhelming as time goes on for new players to the point where it will just be ignored altogether in favor of tome weapon equivalents (First EX token primal + Leviathan Weapon set serving as alternative to both Relic Zenith and Allagan, Gerolt Masterwork Weapons serving as alternative to Animus/Novus and High Allagan)?

So for a new player in a post 3.0 or so world you'd be asking them to -

Hit 50 -> Acquire Relic -> Relic +1 (Likely cheaper once Myth becomes a defunct currency like Philosophy) -> Atma Grind -> Animus Books (Will those dungeons even be relevant at that point in the game's lifespan?) -> Meld out your Novus -> Nexus Grind -> Even more steps probably at this point requiring varying degrees of time and money

Or you could just do something like

Hit 50 -> Acquire Soldiery (Likely uncapped at this point) -> Sand + Tome from ST (Likely uncapped at this point) -> Acquire Soldiery Weapon -> Use Soldiery Weapon to footstool into the next tier of content/weapon

Doesn't that seem more appealing and reasonable? Probably like 1/100th of the time without any monetary expenditure other than teleports to Mor'Dhona to trade your currency in.

Putting all the effort in for these weapons makes sense now because as of right now they are literally pushing at the boundaries of what we have access to in other content, but far down the line when things like Novus and Nexus are obsolete what will be the motivation to even bother with these steps for newer players? Not sure if SE has ever mentioned their plans in regards to this.

[Wobble]

I have gotten Novus on SMN and probably as far as it's going. I went for the yagrush on WHM which I'm maining at the moment. I would love to go the nexus route on WHM but after what I went through on SMN, no thanks.... I don't understand how some have multiple jobs equipped with atma, animus, novus and now some already have nexus and working on another. It's just way to grindy for me right now. IF they fixed the rate atma dropped which was the most time consuming part for me I might consider another one, I actually enjoyed after atma stones through novus phase.

[corticarte]

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 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

[ZhycranaDranix]

2 atma weapon user here...animus SCH , atma WHM

working on my ninja atma atm and I can tell you.....fml .......the countless hours spent and not even adding on the annoying animus myth farm x dungeon queing (I can only imagine what you dps went through)

But the grind will be tough for new players especially trying to catch up not only relic wise but content and gear wise as well....

[Musashidon]

it won't be. atma will be nerfed the devs have said this just not yet. (they will later)

the rest keep getting more and more nerfed. look at the philo item it use to be 600 philo's now its 200 something myth.

when soldiery becomes the new myth all myth items will be converted down to soldiery cost basically making the 1500 book less the 800 myth maps less and the 3 300 items less.

this is how the grind will get easier and easier.

[Prototype909]

it won't be. atma will be nerfed the devs have said this just not yet. (they will later)

the rest keep getting more and more nerfed. look at the philo item it use to be 600 philo's now its 200 something myth.

when soldiery becomes the new myth all myth items will be converted down to soldiery cost basically making the 1500 book less the 800 myth maps less and the 3 300 items less.

this is how the grind will get easier and easier.

How do you mitigate the cost of Novus though, which is arguably the biggest hurdle for most players? Unless you're asking people to just accept gimping themselves if they can't pay up which defeats the purpose of pursuing the weapon to begin with. There is no way a new player is going to have the few mil necessary to buy into the materia market.

[MasamuneBranford]

Atma is bad. I won't disagree. But people seem to underplay how bad actually completing the books is. How will they ever nerf that without there being an uproar? I think a lot of people are simply not familiar with the books:

Kill 100 enemies (10 groups of 10 where many of the enemies only have a maximum of 3 spawn locations buried deep in an enemy stronghold). - Believe it or not - but when all is said and done - the average player is going to average 2 hours to 2.5 hours on this step (longer than I thought until I started timing these runs).

Leves - complete 3 assigned leves. Easy - half hour.

Fates - complete 3 assigned fates. Some of these can take 3 hours to spawn. You could obviously have bad luck - but I think an estimate of 5 hours is fair.

Dungeons - if you're an average player - you'll be using duty finder. The older, level sync dungeons can be time consuming. Let's say 2 and a half hours for this step.

Thus - you are looking at aprox. 10 hours per book for a total of 90 hours for all of them. So even if they nerfed the animus step to where you could get the books for free...you're still in for a ridiculous amount of grind. For those complaining about atma - I highly highly doubt you have hit 90 hours (unless you're extremely extremely unlucky). Animus is bad. Where is the animus complaining?

[Musashidon]

How do you mitigate the cost of Novus though, which is arguably the biggest hurdle for most players? Unless you're asking people to just accept gimping themselves if they can't pay up which defeats the purpose of pursuing the weapon to begin with. There is no way a new player is going to have the few mil necessary to buy into the materia market.

lvl increase. with lvl increase and higher lvl items we will get say materia V and VI making novus pretty much a joke. (this is talking expansion and not say 2.4 or 2.5)

i assume we won't see a nerf to atma till prolly the expansion. (but that is just a guess)

[silentwindfr]

a way to make the novus more easy without kill it, it's to make the materia give the point in function of them level:
- materia I = 1 point
- Materia II = 2 point
- Materia II = 3 point
- Materia IV = 4 point

indeed it will reduce the number of alexandrite needed, but we are talking to a way to make it more new player friendly as closer of the 3.0 we get.

for the book, i dunno, how do it, make the book free it's not a good idea, but i admit the time consumed into the book can be long, if you are unlucky you can spend more of 6-7 hours only for the FATE...where you do nothing at all exept wait!

for the ATMA it was said countless time either increase the drop rate, or make the atma recquire a certain number of FATE done in the area.

[MasamuneBranford]

How do you mitigate the cost of Novus though, which is arguably the biggest hurdle for most players? Unless you're asking people to just accept gimping themselves if they can't pay up which defeats the purpose of pursuing the weapon to begin with. There is no way a new player is going to have the few mil necessary to buy into the materia market.

People pay a ridiculous amount for Novus because they are uninformed / not aware of just how meaningless secondary stats are.

BLMs can deal 400+ damage per second on T8. The best BLM stats on novus per DMG calculators / testing is 44 spell speed and 31 crit. However, a 25 spell speed, 25 crit, 25 DET weapon will deal a mere 1 less DPS. Do the math. This means the 44 / 31 novus gains a laughable extra second of damage every 6.6 minutes. You get an itch on your face and have to scratch it and you've lost your worthless benefit. Nobody will notice a difference.

I'm sorry - but it's pointless to spend 10-15M gil for a benefit that nobody will ever notice. The 25, 25, 25 novus will cost 300-500k tops.