Speed of Relics and New iLVL Gear Patches

[Eirwen]

What's your opinion? Here's my 50 gil: I hate it.

RELIC
The Relic weapon hardly seems worth it if it's only the strongest weapon for maybe a month. The updates with new content and gear come way too fast and make the relic weapon obsolete until weeks later they add a new quest to bring the Relic up to the current max ilvl and then repeat the loop. It's holding me back knowing that soon a patch comes where I can buy, craft or farm a better weapon easier.

GEAR
The other gear is also coming too fast.When you get halfway collecting new gear, a patch is announced to bring higher ilvl gear or a change of currency, which they should stop doing as well. (They eventually found a way for Poetics to stay and gave other gear found different means of obtaining it!) I much rather see more options for the same ilvl than higher ilvl, giving the option of choosing between DET+CRIT or DET+ACC or ACC+CRIT, filling out the stat in which I lack.

[Gurpsmeister]

I personally agree. I get that they are pushing patches out fast but it's becoming a bit assembly line. I wouldn't mind a slow down in gearing and maybe some more story or content patches that weren't gear based.

[Eirwen]

I personally agree. I get that they are pushing patches out fast but it's becoming a bit assembly line. I wouldn't mind a slow down in gearing and maybe some more story or content patches that weren't gear based.

I can agree to that.
Not to mention how fast the development team must be working to keep up with all the new looks...

[Thayos]

Now that we can meld materia into our gear pieces, that itself could allow SE to slow down the treadmill a bit and also create different types of endgame with specialized materia pieces as rewards.

Or what if endgame rewards included abjurations that could be melded to enhance a piece of gear's power in a completely unique way?

There are many ways for developers to keep the game's vertical progression while adding more rewards for people to pursue. However, more rewards won't work unless we get a more diversified endgame scene.

[Moonleg]

x.0: Story mode, leveling, dungeon/tomestone gear at the end.
x.1: Raids released, both the 24 man and 8 man. Bit of sidequesting.
x.2: Story progression, maybe new dungeons.
x.3: More story, next part of the raids.
x.4: Story conclusion, new tomestones to catch up with the raids.

That would make the treadmill a little more varied, I think.

[ANG3L2701]

SE should focus more on what made Final Fantasy XI great, I mean stop just adding patches with lame relic upgrades (like 3.25) or patches that makes gear obsolete after a couple months and focus more on Main Story & Side Quets (honestly 3.2 Main Story Quest was a joke of how short and incomplete it was).
Also they should add the already requested more 24 players dungeons.
Also should be awsome if they add instances like FFXI's Sky/Sea where FC's or LS's could farm triggers to pop NM's.

[Derio]

Hopefully 3.3 doesnt come out before I finish 1 set of Lore Gear. I am kind of disappointed in the next step for relic weapon seeing how quickly it is obtained during normal play sessions.

[ThirdKeyOfSun]

Hopefully 3.3 doesnt come out before I finish 1 set of Lore Gear. I am kind of disappointed in the next step for relic weapon seeing how quickly it is obtained during normal play sessions.

I think stage 4 is that quick BECAUSE of stage 3 honestly. Taken individually stage 3 might seem excessive to lots of people but when taken as a whole across all current stages I think 2 and 4 balance out the RNG of 1 and the grind of 3. This is also probably why we won't see a nerf to stage 3 for at least a little while.

[Vaer]

Stage 3 gave a weapon comparable (disregarding secondaries) to a top raid ilvl weapon for the time with no super easy to get eso weapon upgrade item in sight until 3.2 dropped. That's why it was grindy. The upgrade to 245 will be just as grindy if they put it in since it enroaches into raid ilvl territory. Presumably the lore weapon hits a dead end at 240.

Step 4 is a joke because the lore weapon unlocks tomorrow for non-raiders who kept up with the midan gears and have enough lore tomes to get the lore weapon which is i230. Would be seen as completely not worth it to people who also thought that about Step 3 if it took another month grind when you can just pick up the lore weapon.

[Dorander]

They've already said that the relic will always be behind the raiding gear until the very end. Just like it was in ARR. So, by the time 4.0 is about to roll around that's when the completed relic will be BiS because of time spent in acquiring it.