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(?)!