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

Originally Posted by Bayohne

Greetings, everyone!

We've got a message from Producer/Director Naoki Yoshida that we wanted to pass along:

Anima Weapons

The successor to the Zodiac weapons, Anima weapons, have been implemented; however, their balance is directly linked to the item levels of the rewards for Alexander: Gordias (Savage).

Similar to Zodiac weapons, Anima weapons are based on the following concepts.

• Will not be the strongest weapon at the same time as the rewards for clearing the hardest difficulty content.
• Clearing the hardest difficulty content will not require you to obtain Zodiac/Anima weapons.
• Creating these weapons will require you to put in effort over a longer period of time.

Just as mentioned in the patch notes, a long period of time will be required to complete Zodiac and Anima weapons, and they have been designed based on the idea that you will progress through the series at your own pace. Additionally, this content is strongly geared towards the element of time for players who are not into raids or other difficult content, or for those who wish to play solo.

To: Yoshi P and the Dev Team,

Thank you for the detailed response above, about Alexander, Diadem and the Anima Relic Weapons. I am glad to hear you're listening to our feedback; I agree with your changes to Alexander and Diadem (they sound great). However for the Anima Weapon Quest, please consider this:

* There is a *fundamental flaw* with the idea that the way to "balance" the Anima Weapon is through long periods of time *and* that it's made for players who are NOT into raids or difficult content:

Casual players are NOT the ones that can stomach beating Alexander Normal 800 (EIGHT HUNDRED) Times to grind out the necessary items for the Anima / Relic Weapon! Casual players are also NOT the players who can subject themselves to partaking a super long quest grinding all sorts of old dungeons, get key crafted items, etc. and persist for MONTHS and MONTHS to accomplish!

Players who are more casual and not into difficult content as you said generally DON'T have the time to spend, say, 8 Hours a Day for MONTHS on end to accomplish the current Anima Relic Weapon Quest! What is the logic and reasoning behind this?

It's flawed.

The players who *will* have the time to grind and grind and grind for MONTHS on end, to beat something like Alexander Normal 800 Times, *ARE* the Hardcore Players!

* In addition, another fundamental flaw and what makes the Anima Weapon Quest feel underwhelming and NOT worth it is the timing / release schedule: You've introduced this quest at 3.15, and expect players to be able to grind like mad to spend MONTHS to get the Anima Weapon, except that Patch 3.2 is ALMOST HERE. With 3.2, the Item Level of the Weapons will once again be raised, and guess what? The Anima Weapon is second rate again.

No normal player would want to spend MONTHS grinding for a Weapon that is obsolete before they even finish the quest, because the next Item Level (3.2) just got released.

It feels underwhelming and like a big waste of time!

In closing some suggestions:

1. If you truly want to keep the Anima / Relic Weapon as something for Non-Raiders / Casual Players, REDUCE the amount of Grinding / Time needed to complete it. I'm not asking you to make it super easy, but expecting a "Casual Player" to beat Alexander 800 Times to finish *one* step of the Anima Quest is ridiculous. Even HALF of that amount (400 Times) is bordering on crazy.

Especially considering how fast you release major updates (3.2 is just around the corner), it makes the Relic Weapon Quest feel like a waste of time.


2. Alternatively, consider making the Anima Relic Weapon Quest be something as a true Alternative to Alexander Weapons (same Item Level), but with enough challenge / unique steps to make it worthwhile. There's nothing wrong with MORE CHOICES. This would also be a good opportunity to introduce *some* Horizontal Progression: So you have 2 or 3 Max Level Weapons, but they are all gotten through different Raids / Challenges.

It's more variety and much more healthy for the life of this game (instead of driving everyone to only go for 1 Raid, or else you're stuck grinding a second tier weapon).

Thanks.

Uh... Kiara? You are aware that Alexander is not the only way to get this stuff... please speak for yourself and not casuals as a whole.

~A casual who is enjoying the hell out of gathering her stuff for her relic weapon.

Originally Posted by One_Time

. I still haven't completed Turn 5 of first coil. I don't consider myself a bad player, I'm just not social and can't commit to 3-4 raid nights with a group. Hoping they continue this pattern for future content.

this for example, binding coil for the longest time has been so nerfed and overgeared that it's essentially comparable to Alex normal right now. Honestly, if you take your situation right now, it can be applied to the other half of the population, the midcore people can't find other people to play with... Not because they don't have he time commitment, but they can't because they all transferred off. Something like t5 with Echo and i115 doesn't even take an hour of learning with how lax the checks are, even dive bombs.

Originally Posted by Kiara

-snip-

The Zodiac/Anima questlines have never really specifically been designed for players with limited time or for solo players. Here's Yoshi-P in an interview not long before the release of the Atma stage, the introduction of the Zodiac Weapon Saga:

Originally Posted by Yoshi-P

We received much feedback from all over the world because with tomestomes there was a limitation to how many you could obtain every week, and also when it comes to battle content some was too difficult for some players and they were not necessarily able to complete it in order to receive the item. We received feedback from players that “We would like another way of getting these items, even if it takes time, but something we could obtain in a different way.” So that’s why we decided to include this third option which is the Zodiac weapons.

( Source: https://www.playerattack.com/news/20...-realm-reborn/ )

The Zodiac (and by extension, Anima) questline has always been about investing time to achieve a goal. While that could certainly change in the future, it's doubtful that it will change to a significant degree, as if the weapon takes too little time, then the balance with respect to other options for top-level weapons will be misaligned.

And it doesn't take 8 hours a day for months to finish Anima, by the way. If you actually play that much, you can have the weapon in a couple weeks, at most. You can get it done in about 2 months playing for 2 hours a day (doing your Duty Roulettes for tomestones).

When will he ever address the complaints about crafting in HW and the specialists system? Whether you like the system or not, it's definitely not doing what it was intended to do, and I'm sure there's a number who do not like the direction crafting is going in general.

Originally Posted by Kiara

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800 alex isn't the only way to do relic and even that is more then what is required due to the fact you are getting law. You can casually do hunts for like a month and finish given how much seals, poetics and law they give.

Originally Posted by Zumi

800 alex isn't the only way to do relic and even that is more then what is required due to the fact you are getting law. You can casually do hunts for like a month and finish given how much seals, poetics and law they give.

No, you don't need 800 Gordian section runs because you do get 20 (+50, I think, for first time bonuses) per run, so it comes out to something like 680 runs, tops.

Either way, while the variety of ways to get the items is a definite improvement over certain Relic steps, the sheer amount of tokens needed comes across as staggering. 80 is a relatively big number, seeing as it takes at least a couple hours to run all the Daily Roulettes and get enough for two or three items. For the other methods, not everybody likes doing them (or even can do some of them). Personally, I don't like hunts; I was quite a fan of hunting rare mobs in WoW that dropped special mounts (I miss my Time-Lost Proto-Drake...), but here I find it boring and am not a particularly social player. Not everyone can do the required 2.x Beast Tribe quests (I was only interested by the Kobold and Ixal, the latter of which don't let you get the items), and those would probably take about an hour to do all of them and only provide payout every 4.3 days (the Vanu Vanu dailies are worse, providing payout only every 6 days). Not everybody can get treasure maps, and even then there's only a small chance of getting one of the two items you can from them. 10 Gordias section runs take between 1.5 and 2 hours.

You need to do this eighty times over.

And that's still not including the HQ Crafted Items, which are impossible for non-gatherers or non-crafters to obtain at anything resembling a price they can afford. Yes, even if you buy NQ components off the Market Board and seek out someone to make them for you (which defeats the purpose of solo play). I'm pretty fortunate that I can get many of the components myself except the ones from the Diadem and have a small fortune to help with those, but most casual / solo players (the people the Anima Weapons are targeted at) aren't (my brother just about bankrupt himself buying a Sanuwa mount).

Originally Posted by FizzleofHyperion

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We live in an era where people don't want to be challenged anymore and want content that requires no thought for max reward. SE is obviously just catering to the 90% of the players. Poor SE doesn't feel its right to challenge people. I don't know if to blame them or the apparent mass majority who want this type of content.

Well business is business and seeking challenge in video games is overrated nowadays.