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

Originally Posted by RiceisNice

Even WoW (at least up until WoD) doesn't follow the basic model this poorly. Each expansion (again with the exception of WoD in regards to the classes) came with new groundwork that would set the frame for future content. Heavensward lacks that and they're trying to said those new groundworks during the 3.x patch cycles (which makes it much more demanding as far as time constraints is concerned).

Honestly, I feel like FFXIV does a better job with the content model than WoW did, for me at least. We get more dungeons per Expansion than WoW ever did, at least for now--I'm honestly a bit worried about them going down to 2 per major patch. Are we going to be at 1 per major patch in 4.x? I sure hope not.

But I also don't generally enjoy Raid content, so FFXIV's focus on regular release of low-man/midcore content is much more appealing to me than WoW's Raid-focused model. I also prefer FFXIV's "smaller" Raid scale, which means that FFXIV has been the first MMO where I've actually been interested in raiding to a significant degree (current Savage Alex notwithstanding because of the difficulty level).

But as far as 2.x content goes, you're probably out of luck. They've already touched on roughly half of the content HW brought. We'll likely see a stage that touches on the Primals in some way, and one that touches on the Levequests in some way. Anima already interacts in a small way with Diadem (the crafting mats come from there), but they'll likely tap that in the future, too. If they were already using all of these things in this first step, we'd be retreading 3.0 content again and again in future steps (because there wouldn't be any 3.0 content we haven't already had to do for it), and personally, I'd much rather revisit a little of the older content in each stage so I'm not getting burnt out on the freshest stuff that much more rapidly. At least then, it's a trip down memory lane through something I probably haven't done in awhile (or at all, in the case of Beast Tribe quests).

Originally Posted by Alahra

Honestly, I feel like FFXIV does a better job with the content model than WoW did, for me at least. We get more dungeons per Expansion than WoW ever did, at least for now--I'm honestly a bit worried about them going down to 2 per major patch. Are we going to be at 1 per major patch in 4.x? I sure hope not.

WoW's dungeon stays more relevant as far as the gearing process is concerned, and you certainly did not outlevel them (or at the very least, exhaust the novelty of them within the first 2 weeks because of Expert Conflip) as soon as they came out or within 4 days after hitting level cap. They also have the achievement systems behind said dungeons which adds self-imposed challenge or dynamics, making it a lot more varied than FFXIV dungeons can achieve.

Originally Posted by Alahra

but I also don't generally enjoy Raid content, so FFXIV's focus on regular release of low-man/midcore content is much more appealing to me than WoW's Raid-focused model. I also prefer FFXIV's "smaller" Raid scale, which means that FFXIV has been the first MMO where I've actually been interested in raiding to a significant degree (current Savage Alex notwithstanding because of the difficulty level).

This is sorta where you need to hit both sides of the spectrum, and not hit the extremes of both ends (which they are doing consistently). My server population has significantly diminished because of the mass transfers off just for the raiding scene. Lower population leads to lower number of crafters, decreasing the supply of crafted items (especially with specialist recipes) and a dead open world, making for a really not so fun time.

Originally Posted by Alahra

But as far as 2.x content goes, you're probably out of luck. They've already touched on roughly half of the content HW brought. We'll likely see a stage that touches on the Primals in some way, and one that touches on the Levequests in some way. Anima already interacts in a small way with Diadem (the crafting mats come from there), but they'll likely tap that in the future, too. If they were already using all of these things in this first step, we'd be retreading 3.0 content again and again, and personally, I'd much rather revisit a little of the older content in each stage so I'm not getting burnt out on the freshest stuff that more rapidly. At least then, it's a trip down memory lane through something I probably haven't done in awhile (or at all, in the case of Beast Tribe quests).

As far as relic steps is concerned, they have not touched on level 60 content, trials or EX primals directly (sans the roulette), or ARF (which desperately needs attention, and it's not bloated with long cutscenes like praetorium anyway so I don't see a problem with it being lobbed into a lvl 60 roulette), temple guildleves, or centaruo marks (which can also be obtained from daily hunt marks if you wanted to take a daily approach on it). They've been re utilizing the content within the 2.x cycle just fine for the entirety of the relic steps.Your bolded statement I honestly don't have a problem with, that's the norm they had established with 2.x's relic questline. I just don't like the idea of going back to the 2.x cycle for anima quests again with that in mind.

There's also the matter of what the steps require. They could do something like Animus books for 3.x dungeons, FATEs and temple leves (and the eqvuilant of what we have now would be anima books that send you back to do 2.x fates and dungeons). Like not exactly doing the books, but similiar on concept like how step 3 mirrors the broad approach, open ended of zodiac

And don't forget that they are adding implementations to PvP (and I think diadem) in 3.2, so it's another perspective...something like obtaining Nacl compound from a random match making or frontlines in celebration of it.

Originally Posted by Alahra

I think people are reading too much into that, though.

There's not a whole lot to read too much into. It was all but stated verbatim that, in order to keep Gordias Savage weapons be the quickest way to an i210 weapon, and due to Gordias Savage being deemed too hard, they purposely overdid it with the Anima Weapon quest.

Originally Posted by Yoshi-P

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).

Since it is currently only possible to obtain an item level 210 weapon from Alexander: Gordias (Savage), the time and effort required to create an Anima weapon was set to be roughly the same level with this as a benchmark. ... Furthermore, with the difficulty of Savage being very high, Anima weapons have become the sole option for obtaining item level 210 weapons for some, and we understand there is an issue with there being no other options. ..To repeat what I said earlier, we made mistakes with the setting of the difficulty for Alexander: Gordias (Savage) and the item level of the rewards, which affected the content that came afterwards leading up to Patch 3.15. We are reflecting on this problem, and based on everyone’s feedback we will be revamping the balance of the game from Patch 3.2 onwards.

The main problem that gets me with these kinds of things is a lack of visible progress for a given quantity of effort. That's why the Atma / Luminous Crystal grind is so irritating - you can expend a huge amount of effort and get nowhere. The Animus books were not so bad, because you could hop on and see visible progress within a matter of minutes (assuming you had an incomplete book). The Novus was not so bad - a daily roulette (which most people do anyway) and a quick treasure hunt later and you were good. (It only got really bad and really expensive if you just had to have optimized stats. I put Skill Speed on my NIN weapon to help mitigate the cost of crit and DET Materia.) Again, the Nexus stage I couldn't stomach when it was current due to the excessive grind. Never got to the Zodiac or Zeta stage when they were current either, but I doubt I'd have enjoyed them due to RNG, massive money / crafting (to include desynthesis) requirements, and grinding.

The grind itself is bad. It feels excessive, even with the numerous ways you can get items. Tacking on HQ crafted merchant items just feels like adding insult to injury since, again, casual / solo players are unlikely to have the gathering / crafting skills or money necessary to get them. (Even if they went down to ~200k / item from the current sitting at ~750k / item, it would damn near bankrupt me.) The only thing we got in response to this and the RNG was "it's designed for players who want to spend time getting it instead of doing difficult content," but the time is excessive for the reward this time around and the RNG / money issue wasn't properly addressed.

... in my opinion, anyway.

EDIT
I understand the gist of what he's trying to say is "Anima Weapons are i210 because that's the current maximum item level obtainable from Gordias Savage and we don't want to exceed that," but the rest is still valid (see Yoshi-P's comments' on the excessive amount of time and again, the lack of addressing the RNG / crafted item issue). And again, it's not that I don't understand where they're coming from, but if they acknowledge they made Gordias Savage too hard, then say they wanted the Anima weapon quest to simulate that difficulty in a single-player experience, they're basically admitting they made the Anima Weapon quest (specifically Step 3) too hard.

Originally Posted by Cilia

There's not a whole lot to read too much into. It was all but stated verbatim that

That pretty much means you're interpreting, or reading into, what he's saying, though. Because he *didn't* say they made the grind more difficult because of Savage's problems--only that they used it as their benchmark to gauge how long the grind should be. What other content would they use for their benchmark? It's the only raid tier they have. And given that the Anima grind is generally no more arduous than most of the previous stages, it's safe to say they didn't take into account the increased difficulty of Savage relative to the difficulty of Coil, which would have been the benchmark for the Zodiac stages.

And here's why I think that:

The Anima stage is overall no more grindy (and in fact, less grindy in some ways) than most of the major stages in the Zodiac questline, able to be completed with a relatively casual pace thanks to the high Tomestone bonuses available on Daily Roulettes, in a little over a month (about 40 days). That's only been true for one other stage (Zeta).

Animus required about half the amount of Tomestones that Anima does (effectively, anyway: the dungeons of the time provided half the Mythology that current dungeons now provide in Law). But it also had a rather long grind attached to each book. Overall the time invested for an Animus weapon was about equal to what Anima will take, generally. Roulettes do a lot to reduce the overall number of runs required for Anima and that can't be discounted. Additionally, Animus didn't provide you with a top level weapon: you got an i100 Relic when the top items were i110 at the time. Anima compares far less favorably to the equivalent step in this chain (Awoken), which requires only 10 Dungeons with no additional Tomestone costs.

Novus required more effective Tomestones (61,500 versus the 54,400 for Anima) and couldn't be progressed as quickly because there weren't two Tomestone paths for it. You could run 4 roulettes to contribute to your Novus (Expert, High Level, Trial, Main Scenario), with Expert contributing both Tomestones and a free daily map. We've got an extra Roulette for Anima (the new Level 60 Roulette), and Trial and Level 50 Roulette provide tomes for *both* stages (Level 50 Roulette in particular provides 120 Law and, on average, about 130-140 Poetics). And all that's without considering the RNG Materia melding process, which could result in millions lost to bad luck on the Grade IVs. While the crafting stage for Anima isn't insignificant, nothing about it can really compare to the Novus materia grind in terms of pocketbook impact.

Nexus was a pretty long grind, as you noted yourself. I did it twice pre-nerfs, which required near constant playtime to be around for the efficient light windows. This is one of the first stages that let us work with a variety of content, though--and you can see them applying that philosophy in the Anima stage, only in a way that's far more friendly to the player. Just for kicks: if you were to do Nexus solely on Roulettes back at original values, you'd be looking at a grind somewhere in the vicinity of about 65 days. If you hit every single bonus window on every single roulette (which would be very improbably, of course), you could cut that time in half. Somewhere in between, you could probably expect to complete a Nexus on Daily Roulettes in perhaps 45 days, which is roughly comparable to the time it takes to complete an Anima with Daily Roulettes (about 40 days).

Zodiac was another fairly grueling stage. It wasn't nearly as bad as Anima on Tomestones (6,400 total) but also required 80,000 GC Seals and a 400k "downpayment" (the vendor items). Then you had the 16 "Dungeon Atma." While I don't believe anyone ever did the data compilation necessary to get the exact drop rate, I'd imagine most folks would say the drop rate was in the vicinity of 10%, resulting in an average number of 160 dungeon runs necessary to complete that part of the quest (though it's worth noting that the drop rate may have been as low as 5%, judging by reports of some folks taking 50+ runs for some dungeons). Then you throw in the crafted portion of that quest, which was arguably worse than the Anima one. While the Anima items are locked behind Specalist crafting, they aren't incredibly difficult to craft, requiring relatively easy to acquire items, and can be made with decent success even by crafters who aren't omni-crafters, which is resulting in steadily declining prices for the items as they begin to flow into the market. The Zodiac "Perfect" items, by contrast, were locked behind harder-to-acquire Master books and required nearly complete Omnicraft status to craft reliably and required mats locked behind the much-maligned Desynthesis system.

All in all, I just can't get behind the idea that the Anima stage is worse than the Zodiac stages were, generally. It is, at worst, only *as bad* as them, and even then, it provides us with far better "casual" options to approach the grind, as well as the ability to engage with a few different avenues of content so as to further reduce burnout.

Subjectively, it may certainly feel worse to you, but there are a lot of things about it that are far better than what we've been dealt before (most especially the speed with which it can be completed fairly casually, largely at the player's own pace).

If the Anima stage was noticeably worse than the worst of the previous stages, I could see why it would look like they made Anima more time consuming because of Savage's highly-tuned difficulty, but generally, when looked at alongside the old stages, it's well within the same ballpark of time required, and more friendly to the player generally, with more efficient ways to approach the grind (while Nexus/Zeta did let us choose how to get Light, there were really only a few good duties to grind, whereas all pathways for Anima are fairly efficient ways to progress).