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

Originally Posted by Belhi

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I cannot agree to any of this. You are basically saying that SE should not do anything to shake things up even at casual level game play. People are not asking for them to make the relic quest where you need to beat bosses harder than Thordan or Savage. What people are asking is to at least put some breathing room in the relic quest line. It doesn't have to be difficult content, but it should be fun content. Something to get you out of that grind mind set, even if it is just for a little while. I think you have failed as a company when you have tons of people dreading on how not creative the quests is and they are not fun at all, then you make an excuse on why it has to be not fun. The very same people who preach that if people are not having fun with it, you did something wrong.

Seriously, wouldn't of it been great instead of running old dungeons from ARR again which in itself took no time at all, you instead offer an interesting puzzle that has you going around the world finding clues, then working together with the community to put the pieces together, figure it out, then finish the quest and continue on your new grind. It is called breathing room where you don't go from a painful grind to another painful grind. It just blows a fuse in a lot of people.

You are not going to make any content without shaking up the community a bit, its going to happen no matter what. Why not attempt to give them something they didn't know they wanted? SE lost it's creativity and is now just putting mindless grinds in and poor attempts to bring FFXI like content into this game. All they can accomplish is getting people back in the game for a short while before they head off again. They barely do anything now to influence people to stay in. Playing too much into the safe route and catering too heavily on the casual audience, they are going to learn the hard way that it is not a good idea. Again, they think only short term, not long.

It feels like at this point that FFXIV doesn't know what it wants to be anymore and we all suffer for it.

Velhart: People just want FFXI elements that are rewarding not a mindless grind that will be nerfed in 3 months and unrewarding. I think that speaks for more than just the relic but since we can't have everything people seem to be wanting for the relic to be rewarding fun time consuming and that it feels like an actual acheivement and not something thats useless by march/april. Even if you seem to be so anti FFXI for some reason and saying its two different games Yoshi P uses alot of elements and ideas from other games too might aswell use some FFXI elements the right way? (Diadem don't count LOL). Do dungeon x get item ex use item X to pop boss to get item X for relic on the world map. Boss has to be hard too where you need to actually get help from other people to do it. Not instances not a fate something you can pop with item x and have any random people from the worldmap helping you. <-- If you read alot of the comments people are wanting something similiar to this and don't take this the wrong way this is not anything negative I'm just trying to understand why you are so anti ideas like that? Is it because they where used in FFXI and it isnt something "new"? If Final Fantasy XIV has over 5m people most of this will be new content for alot of people. FFXI at its peak had 1m subs wich means 4m other people get to experience something thats new to them.

I'm not so much defending the current relic quest line as stating why it is. I'm also realistic in the resources available to produce it and am happy to have it even as it is rather than not have it at all because they didn't have enough spare resource toproduce unique content for it.

By the same page I will point out again that there are things like puzzles that many players are very much against. Even the very simple puzzles of the Broom quests were too much for some people.

I do however think more variety in ways to progress the quest would be a good thing. However this wouldn't lower the amount of grind, simply what you chose to grind because the grind is part of the justification for the reward in the first place.

I would make two points about the relics.

First, I don't like the RNG aspects even though they allow the option at least for levelling alternate Jobs. I would far prefer a system like lights where you 'charged' the luminous crystals with a chance on every FATE for a bonus spike of charge with perhaps the special FATEs having an increased chance of a bonus. RNG is rarely a good mechanic in any grinding scenario unless its well mitigated by alternate progression options.

Secondly, I think one way the new anima chain is very much superior to the old chain is the amount of options of what content we can gain progression from doing. This makes the grind far less cumbersome since we can gain progress from stuff we were doing anyway. I would also think opening it up further to include things like EX tokens and such would be a good thing, as long as people understood it wouldn't make it any faster. The weapon is going to be a grind. You want a weapon of that level by doing hard content you should be doing the hard content that rewards a weapon of a similar level.

Im very much keen to see them experiment with quests and puzzles and such. I don't however think the relic/anima questline it the place for it. Too many people who will be attracted to the anima weapons won't want to see content like that or find it fun.

Ex Primal - yes!
Crystal Tower - yes!

These two content DF is taking more than hours... = god damn dead content ...
Stop rescuing your lol FATE and get these content back to live. They are far more better content than lol FATE grinding...

Originally Posted by Pompompar

Ex Primal - yes!
Crystal Tower - yes!

These two content DF is taking more than hours... = god damn dead content ...
Stop rescuing your lol FATE and get these content back to live. They are far more better content than lol FATE grinding...

And please, DONT try to do something with Hunts >_>

Originally Posted by Alahra

I suspect the number that do is larger than you realize. People play and pay for this game primarily because it provides them with entertainment, and there are numerous reports of servers that are experiencing more active PF participation lately, much of which can be attributed to the Anima questline. While there are players who will indeed do things they don't like to in order to achieve a goal, I'd be willing to bet even those players at least find the goal for its own sake fun.

The wealth of criticism on the forums is slowly dying down when nothing has really swelled up to replace it, which suggests that there's not really a continued disappointment with the quest from the larger playerbase to me.

It is a ilvl210 weapon, it is an upgrade, especially to people who are still trying to tackle Savage. Of course people are going to do it if there is a reason. It doesn't make it more fun. When people are dedicated to a character, or wanting any type of advantage to get content they cannot clear done, of course they are going to do it, no matter how poorly designed it is. It doesn't make my point less relevant that they need to focus on the fun factor as much as the grind.

Everything dies down eventually because people usually give in or quit the game. You can only beat a dead horse of a topic but so much. I am very sure that most people would vote that the quest line is very disappointing, uninspired, and lazy.