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

I'm not sure what the wisdom is in sabotaging other content because they wanted to keep it less important than a bad raid.

I want to throw in my two cents, but I know its going to fall on deaf ears. Devs need to get their act together and put out more content because if they don't change their act they will find the fan festivals rather empty.

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 Soulraver

His words: "If it isn't fun you're doing it wrong."
I don't consider grinding upon hours of the same content and mindlessly repeating the process over days throughout either fun nor challenging or rewarding as mentioned by Alexander_Dragonfang. I had completed the Zodiac quest line and had hoped they would find a better means to implement future relic weapons, as the relic weapons were late content compared to what was already available. A lot of my fc members have simply stopped due to boredom. Please reply so we know we are being heard, I would be more then happy to direct you to other post where people have written well laid-out explanations as to why they feel this game is going the wrong way.

I would like to quote this and remind Yoshi, how he gained players back to 2.0

Now that 3.0 has good story going, and sadly, this is the only part I'm looking forward for future patches.

Relic/ Anima -
1) You used it wrong. From the whole FF Series, they are meant to be most powerful and best weapons. Are you not with FF series ? or You hate the FF Series fan base and trying to screw them up?
2) You could have use Gordian Weapon (BLUE icon) for people who has no interested with your end-game, but has time to grind for ilvl weapons.
3) You could have make Relic/ Anima obtainable only from End-game.

Yet... you forgot that all these BiS from FF Series, they always come with special effects.
This is why all FF fan base here hate you because you make these weapon just a normal/ catch-up items and get obsolete whenever any 3.x0 patches coming.
Now it is even worse... majority players looking at Anima as Glamour purpose weapons.
You are taking Relic/Anima weapons far away from FF Series Path.

Is that what your company (SE) want to do?

Lastly, if you are still enjoying the "victory" that you gained all the players back from 1.0 to 2.0, and completely forgot - your presentation slide (in quote), please do look at it again.

Most people have limit of patient.
You get us back once (1.0 to 2.0) or twice (2.0 to 3.0), it doesn't meant you can get us back again and again.

I have canceled my subscription for now because there is nothing interesting for me to do in the game.

Farming esoteric tomes now seems pointless to me since new tomes will be introduced with new gears and ilvls in a couple months. I do like the look of the esoteric gears and will farm them later when the tomes are not locked behind weekly limitation.

I don't farm Void Ark for the same reason I don't farm esoteric tomes. But I do like the story behind Void Ark.

Alexander savage holds not interest to me since I have no motivation to do it because why should I bother with my gears when in a couple of months new gears with higher ilvl will be available. The Alexander savage gears do not even look any different from the normal Alexander. Nor is there any unique story behind Alexander savage.

I had maxed all my disciple of the hand and had penta-melded the chimera set. I am able to craft and HQ the 2 star lvl 60 craft with relative ease but I see no point of the blue gears for now. The specialist systems left a bitter taste in my mouth that there will be recipes that I will not be able to craft and not because of my inadequate skills but because you, Square-enix, had decided to go back on your words where you said a player can do everything on a character, and introduced the specialist system.

The relic weapon quest sounds very uninteresting. I am one of those players who never finished their Zeta because I got tired farming dungeons for the drop that never dropped and after you, Square Enix, had nerfed it, there were better weapons available so I see little point in finishing my relic weapon. When I learned that I would have to farm fates AGAIN because I did not get the Zeta relic I just thought the whole relic quest stupid. I WILL NOT FARM FATES AGAIN FOR A RARE DROP. I will be those players that will not bother with relic weapon because there will always be a weapon that is better than the relic weapon. When I started playing the game, I had thought that the relic weapon would be a legendary weapon that is unlike any other weapon in the game but that is truly not the case. I had hoped it would showcase a players ability and skills to play the game (this had been the case for the ilvl 90 relic where you were required to defeat Titan hm which was considered the hardest boss in the game at that time). However, the relic weapon only showcase how much free time I have to play the game. It speaks little of my skills or none at all. It makes me feel like I am not the Warrior of Light who is capable of great deeds but just a Chinese farmer (no offense to the Chinese players) doing trivial content repeatedly.

I don't do hunts because I don't feel like competing with hundreds of players on a single mob for a miniscule reward.

I like PVP but the queue time to enter Frontlines is too long. I wish Square Enix would be able to do something about it.

Those are my reasons why I cancelled my subs for the moment. I will be back in a few patches (probably the patch before the new expansion) mainly to do the main story quests and Void Ark story because I really like the story.