Thread: The Current Status of FFXIV Patch 3.1 and How to Address it Moving Forward

I usually stick to the Lore forum, and as a casual player, do not care about Alexander Savage balancing. Never touched the Diadem either. So I'm just gonna share my thoughts on the Anima weapon comments.

The first stage? Kind of annoying, because I remember the Atma drop rates from 2.1. I thankfully finished my Zodiac Zeta shortly before this, but my brother is going through it in my place, and I feel for him. If even the producer doesn't want to do it (Yoshi-P said in an interview he would be glad to skip it if he could), why would you wish it on your players?

The second stage? Not so bad. It's an old-school dungeon tour, from Snowcloak through the Vault. A good way to help out newbies and revisit some old content. Doesn't take too long, not too much of a grind, and it helps out newbies.

As for the rest?

I don't know where this notion that "not enough players had Relics in 2.0 because they were behind the HM primals" comes from. The original Relic quest was, in my opinion, the best one: it took a little bit of everything. A high-end crafted weapon (which drove me to level ALC since I was playing SCH), a couple good materia, a current endgame 4-man, some tomestones, a couple unique fights, and the current most difficult trials. That was fun. Aside from being a little time-consuming, it forced you to learn to play your class in preparation for the Coil if you ever wanted to do it, and showed you a plethora of content (dungeons, trials, crafting) you were either relatively new to or had never touched before. The Zenith version (then known as [Relic] +1) just took saving up a few weeks' worth of tomestones... a little disappointing, but there was no quest behind it, so OK.

It was a challenge, and most everyone rose to it. Seriously. Most everyone I saw had their Relic / Zenith. The rest of the stages started to get ridiculous though, especially if you did them when they were current. As previously mentioned the Atma drop rates were absurdly low and all you got for them was a reskin; the Trials of the Braves weren't so bad, since despite being just a little time consuming you could hop on and make visible progress without spending too much time and would often need more tomestones instead of the book taking too long; the Novus stage wasn't so bad, since you could get a map from tomestones or your daily roulette (materia costs went through the roof, but that's not SE's fault) - again, you could see slow and steady daily progress; the Nexus stage I just could not stomach because of how much a grind it was (a lot like this one here) until they nerfed it to the ground; the Zodiac itself wasn't so bad to me but that's likely because I did it during 3.1; and the Zeta was not too bad (a lightened replay of the Nexus step).

The Anima weapons proper, though? Pure grind recycling old content, and this is the start of it. You can do just short of a week's worth of Vanu dailies, 4.3 days' worth of old world beast tribe dailies (assuming you can do the Lv48 ones), trade a boatload of tomestones, either grind 2.x Hunt targets (1000 Seals) or hope you get one from a 3.0 treasure map (~5-15% from what I heard), or do 10 runs of an Alexander sector. FOR ONE ITEM. OF WHICH YOU NEED EIGHTY. At this point, none of that content is new or even challenging. Casual players have gotten everything they want out of it, story players have likely already seen the tale, and hardcore raiders simply don't care. It's not interesting, and the time investment just isn't worth it to the point I don't feel like actively pursuing an Anima weapon. The original Relic quest showed you new content and forced you to learn to play if you wanted the weapon. It was a challenge to rise to, and not unreasonably difficult (until you hit Titan, but he's all about knowing how to dodge and a single, slightly annoying DPS check). This... isn't. Even doing 10 runs of an Alexander section a day on top of the Vanu and Kobold dailies, it will still take me over a month straight to get the items I need.

(That's not even getting into the HQ crafted merchant items, which is a whole 'nother bag of worms with the excessive jump from 2.0 to 3.0 crafting and gathering, overinflated market board prices, and the limitations of specialist crafting. Suffice to say that while I did get Builder of the Realm in 2.x, I've not kept up with 3.x crafting due to its excessive difficulty jump stemming primarily from the fact it was likely balanced around people having done endgame crafting / gathering in 2.x.)

... of course, since Yoshi-P all but outright stated raiders are having too hard a time with Alexander Savage and they don't want them to be butthurt over other "easily" obtainable i210 weapons, it's hardly surprising that the Anima weapon seems like an insurmountable goal for solo players. (Yes, Yoshi-P, I am a solo player and I vehemently dislike the difficulty and setup of obtaining an Anima weapon. Turn down FC invites all the time.) Even as a solo player, I will rise to the challenge and do HM (or rather EX, since HM primals are now the "normal" versions) trials to get a nice weapon. It's worth it, I see progress, and if I fail it's usually my own fault and I will overcome those faults.

This is just a grind to keep people busy, and people who recognize that probably won't bother with it. It's designed to be as "difficult" as getting an i210 weapon from Alexander Savage, but time + money =/= difficulty. I get it, you made Alexander Savage a smidge too hard and raiders will be butthurt if other i210 weapons are not as difficult to get. If the Anima weapons are designed with solo players in mind, though, they fell far short of the mark. Meanwhile I have over 1000 Esoterics in my inventory and nothing I really wanna spend them on...

EDIT
Merry Christmas everyone! Sorry for the salty rant(?)!

Originally Posted by Pence

I feel like Yoshi also said that T5 weapons were getting buffed because so many people were getting relics easily.

It wasn't because too many players were getting them.

It was because the time investment in learning the fights was so disparate. Titan HM was a much easier fight to learn and clear than Twintania was, and so people rightfully provided feedback that it should probably offer greater rewards than the option that took less effort, as there was no reason for players who theoretically *could* clear Twintania to do so for the weapons when they also probably had Relic weapons from Titan already.

They are two separate issues that might seem related and in conflict at first glance but aren't necessarily so.

Originally Posted by Alahra

They are two separate issues that might seem related and in conflict at first glance but aren't necessarily so.

Yoshi certainly doesn't feel so about this, which is only causing more and more disparity with his design philosophy versus what's actually needed for the game.


A. The relic content is too easy/requires little investment for the reward
B. The the relic content had too hard of a gate initially, and thus they won't do it anymore.
C. The Raid content should always have the highest weapon ilvl to encourage players
D. The relic weapon that follows raid content would be the same Ilvl to the raid weapon

They're doing C and D now if zodiac and anima is anything to go by. Both Relic zenith and BCoB had also released at the same time so you can take what you will out of that.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...=1#post1587770 - Specifically mentions that the relic weapons are common (many people have it).

This on the other hand though, still leaves me to confused to their design approach for designing content. Even before they'd say the relic is incredibly accessible and there are a lot of people with it, but according to Yoshi titan was still a huge wall for progression for relic so they won't do that again (Points A and B).

Originally Posted by Alahra

It comes from data that the developers track regarding quest completion rates. They track similar data for things like raid clears and primal clears, which is how they also determined that too few people were clearing Alexander (Savage) or that less than 50% of the playerbase cleared Titan (Extreme) back when it was current content.

I know they have the data for these things, but what I'm saying is that it's BS. Everyone had the Relic Weapons in 2.0. Vanilla 2.0. There wasn't much to do as a casual / solo player after the MSQ, and special weapons are always cool, so you went and did it. The fights were not a huge barrier like we've been told. They were a barrier, but one that most players were able to overcome, so the "casual / solo players don't want challenging fights and we don't want to tie Relic / Zodiac / Anima weapons to them as a result" is nonsense.

The real reason the Anima weapons are so ridiculously grindy is because they don't want raiders to feel butthurt that "filthy casuls" got an i210 weapon without putting in the same tremendous effort they did. They pretty much said so verbatim. I understand that raiding (the most difficult content) should provide the greatest rewards, but this treadmill we've been given in exchange is not what casual / solo players want or enjoy. It's not.

Originally Posted by Alahra

They are two separate issues that might seem related and in conflict at first glance but aren't necessarily so.

Here's the kicker: Titan HM was a prerequisite for going into T1. So as long as you had half a brain and knew about the Relics, chances were you had one anyway before going to fight Twintania. Making the Relic Zenith be an equivalent iLv to the Allagan weapons from T5 was a mistake on their part, which was rectified. After the Zenith, all semblance of difficulty was removed in favor of just making it take longer. That'll keep people playing, but it's not enjoyable and it doesn't make them happy - it's a treadmill to give them something to do, and people who recognize that won't bother getting on it.

They're trying to compare the difficulty and sense of achievement of raiding with what drives casual / solo players, which is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. They made the last step of the Anima weapon try to be as difficult as clearing A4S, trading difficulty for time... which is utter BS in my opinion, especially when Alexander Savage was released months before the Anima weapon quest.

Originally Posted by Alahra

It comes from data that the developers track regarding quest completion rates. They track similar data for things like raid clears and primal clears, which is how they also determined that too few people were clearing Alexander (Savage) or that less than 50% of the playerbase cleared Titan (Extreme) back when it was current content.

Part of the problem is that I feel he's looking at the numbers without context or the time in consideration. Is it a problem that most players are not clearing current content when it's...content? Hell, Titan EX was unchanged for the entirety of it's life, and same with Titan HM. Did the developers ever think to look at SCoB Savage's Clear rates when they decided to tuned Alexander to be just as, if not harder than that? He said that he was "satisfied" with the high amount of clear rates for Alexander Normal...but honestly what are we supposed to take away from that? It's content that can be done even if you have 1 dps afking and 1 other spamming heavy thrust.

And now honestly with this next statement.

Originally Posted by ArcyEvil

Lies... 1st relic was sooooo common that they buffed t5 weapon to 95ilvl. Yoshi thinks that players have troubles with memory? Coz I'm not. They digging their own grave for treating players like idiots.

Originally Posted by Pence

I feel like Yoshi also said that T5 weapons were getting buffed because so many people were getting relics easily.

That's directly against the design choice of not making something like the initial relic step ever again because too few people were getting it (which was Yoshi's reasoning if the liveletter was anything to go by). If it's supposed to be something that gets easier over time from overgearing, then fine. Content should be like that anyway. If it has no resemblance of difficulty on release, it really doesn't have that long of a shelf life for a typical player that has a small focus on progression (and we see this with Alexander normal). I know you mentioned before that you feel relic should be difficult to obtain and that it should feel special for the player and their main job; but I don't even know what it's supposed to be intended for with the conflicting updates and viewpoints from the developers themselves.