Thread: Post mortem on relics from 4.0

Originally Posted by PortalScience

The role of the relic:
Relic weapons have always been a top tier item released significantly later than the savage weapon counterparts, as a slower, but easier alternative to the ultimate endgame gear. They fill the role of casual endgame, for people that play a lot, but don't necessarily want to do the hardest content (although they can always do both). To make up for this, they have their own story and are treated as special items, particularly unique in glamour and glow.

Has the current relic not done this?



Also a lot of people who say the grind is too long probably never attempted relic in 2.0. The grind was much longer (atma and alexandrite). Eureka is less of a grind than previous weapons.

Originally Posted by TroySoFab

Has the current relic not done this?



Also a lot of people who say the grind is too long probably never attempted relic in 2.0. The grind was much longer (atma and alexandrite). Eureka is less of a grind than previous weapons.

And they did nothing but COMPLAIN on this forum to give us something new and to stop running us through old content for tomes etc. We got new zones, new nm's a host of new things to do yet what never changes with relic is this forum will non stop pan it as not being worth the time and effort. Same tune different relic grind. Personally I adore what they did with relic putting it in an open world setting with 143 other people. Would love to see something new in 5.0 but would hope we don't get more of the same old farm these dungeons for tomes 2 zillion times and rng dungeon drops and so on.

Interestingly enough i have some friends who love the HW relics now that they doing them after having been nerfed into oblivion and have no clue how much work it was to do simply one relic let alone multiples.

It's really funny how people hate on Eureka, yet praise the 2.0/3.0 relics. These exact threads existed for that kind of content.

Regardless of whether you like Eureka or not, it is a step forward in terms of making relic content meaningful instead of needlessly grinding old content. I would challenge someone to tell me that atma, anemos books, or crafted turn ins are better than Eureka (and the rest is just basic generic content that is shared between the two expansions)

Originally Posted by Lambdafish

It's really funny how people hate on Eureka, yet praise the 2.0/3.0 relics. These exact threads existed for that kind of content.

Regardless of whether you like Eureka or not, it is a step forward in terms of making relic content meaningful instead of needlessly grinding old content. I would challenge someone to tell me that atma, anemos books, or crafted turn ins are better than Eureka (and the rest is just basic generic content that is shared between the two expansions)

My impression might very well differ from yours, but I'm not reading so much "praise" for the 2.0 and 3.0 and rather things like "At least they had this..." - I recall the grind vividly, and atmas were hell! (I was very much convinced that the atma in western Thanalan just didnt exist)
And I try not to hate on Eureka, but instead try to express my dislike for some fundamental choices both within the content itself and in regards to the relic.

While I cant say anything good about the atmas (except maybe that they looked pretty in my inventory), I will challenge you in regards to the Anemos books, crafted turn ins and light farm.

The anemos books at least required you to do different types of content - I didnt like all of those contents and one could argue that its basically just killing mobs (with the addition that waiting for FATEs wasnt fun - and that person would be correct), but it was always a little bit different. Unless Eureka changes suddenly after Pagos, I havent gotten that feeling there. I'm just killing open world mobs of a certain type or a certain level for hours to eventually have a FATE spawn or my challenge log finished. Or I'm rushing across the map to get from one FATE to the next.

Crafted turn ins are something I'd like to defend from the perspective of a master-crafter, not of the perspective of the person doing the relic-quest. Being a master-crafter though I see how... unimportant that is for the most part. Sure, I'm still making money from selling gear and food and potions, but with the release of new patches, with 24-man and NM-raid-gear I can see my markets shrinking. Most people only gear up one or two, maybe three jobs, so there is no need for the crafted gear. Making the relic-step require crafted goods was really nice for the crafting industry!

Light farming could be argued is the same as in Eureka, except... is it not. The old light farming offered me a variety of content to do so - dungeons, raids, trials, PvP... you name it. Much more options to pick and choose from, while Eureka seems to be just more of the same...

At the same time a lot of those steps helped to get people ro re-run older content - the Stormblood-relic created the problem that in order to obtain it later, they would design some sort of incentive to re-run that content.

I dont hate Eureka, but I think it has an aweful lot of unused potential, has the problem of becoming less and less accessible with time moving forward, is incredibly unfriendly to both solo play and groups of friends who'd like to progress together (and dont want to create a "Eureka-static") and has the relic-weapons only as an "afterthought". While Eureka itself has a story, our wepaons dont (beside Gerolt telling us "Hey, I can make an even more badass sword, if you just collect 400 of those crystals that have a random chance to drop!"). I always liked the stories behind our relic-weapons, even if was only a line or two...
I dont hate Eureka for what it is - I dislike it for what if could have been, if some minor adjustments were made - level-synch, something like the weekly challenge log right at the start (maybe even daily quests!), more exploring (personally I always liked the hidden chests in Diadem, something like that could have worked), some lore for the weapons (writing lore is "cheap" - and we could have discovered old scriptures or something, telling stories of weapons of old that Gerolt could have used as models for our weapons and read to us - could have even re-used names from FFV and based the lore on that!)...

Eureka might be a step in the right direction, but its far from being there yet. At least not as long as people can say "At least I could solo my ARR-relic" and "At least my SB-relic had some lore attached to it!"
I dont believe people mind a grind in general - but Eureka is a pretty bad grind... not in terms of how long it takes or how difficult it is, but of how much of the same it is and specially how restrictive it is in regards to people you can play with.

Originally Posted by Lambdafish

I would challenge someone to tell me that atma, anemos books, or crafted turn ins are better than Eureka

They are ALL better than Eureka for the simple fact that they don't last the entire Relic cycle. Were they a massive pain? Yes. Did they over stay their welcome? Absolutely. But don't confuse the scale with the content itself; there is nothing wrong with FATE farming, in moderation; there is nothing wrong with the books, in moderation; and there is nothing wrong with crafted turn-ins, in moderation.

There would also have been little wrong with Eureka, in moderation. But Eureka isn't just one instance; just one grind to get through; it's a series of instances, each of them their own grind, but also each of them largely the same (grind trash mobs to spawn NMs), and each one gated behind the last. Throw in the fact that Eureka is unfriendly to friend groups (i.e. no party level-sync, no reason to return to older instances), works best with a large population (i.e. will only get worse as the population lowers), and is entirely irrelevant to the rest of the game (i.e. can't do anything else while doing Eureka), and yes, it is absolutely the WORST Relic (i.e. 'casual' long term grind) content FFXIV has ever had.

Originally Posted by Reynhart

There definitely was something wrong with Tomestones items, because farming tens of thousands of them was far from moderation.

While it was excessive for the 2.0 relics, it was still your prerogative to farm tomestones not in moderation. SE isn't at fault for any player intention of wanting to farm nonstop, and it's because devs know that players would do that is why we have tomestone caps in the first place.

Originally Posted by Reynhart

Contradictory statement, since older zones sync your elvl, so it's a great way to do your challenge log with friends even if your level is way higher.

Except too much of a level difference means your friends wouldn't get any kill credit.

Originally Posted by Reynhart

The scaling makes NM in low populated instances as easy to pop and kill, if not easier

Last time I checked, like all other fates, it's passive scaling. What that means is that the fate is spawned with predetermined parameters based on either the number of people inside the instance or an escalating value set with each spawn until the fate being incomplete resets those values to baseline levels. In other words, it's only easier in either fresh instances or if absolutely everyone in the instance is participating, and even then there's no guarantee if it'd be easier.

Active scaling is what happens in games like WoW where enemies scale their values mid-fight, and what too many people playing this game think of when they hear the word "scaling". FFXIV servers are nowhere near responsive enough for that.

Originally Posted by Reynhart

Eureka is the fastest way to cap your tomestone each week, and also a good way to make gils since you can sell lots of new items on the market board

This goes back to the whole "moderation" thing. Anyone that can run Eureka can just as easily do an expert roulette once a day (maybe craft or gather while waiting in the DPS queue) and cap out before the week's over. But again, it's your prerogative to farm things not in moderation.

Also helps to factor in that this thread is about the relic weapon--a high-end weapon originally stated to be for casual players--locked by intentionally casual-unfriendly content.