5.X Relic Feedback Thread

[Velthice]

After spending the day in learning and a few clear parties, I have to say I really don't like the dyeable armor being locked behind an extreme. I was willing to give it a chance, but the struggle to clear it, much less reliably farm it for what would be many armor sets is waaaay too much. I'm firmly of the belief that relic and related af armor should come from soloable content with a decent time investment. This relic and armor process really misses the mark on both.

I'm glad people who like extremes have a new one to do, but I'd really rather extremes never be tied to relic or af armor ever again in the future

[Avalon304]

Im very much not a fan of the dyeable artifact armor being locked behind an EX trial grind. Watching my friends spend 7-ish hours trying to clear it today and not actually clearing it makes me upset, because I find that level of content far to stressful to be able to get a few of the pieces of gear I want for glamour. I hope this dyeable set gets pushed somewhere else and something else is given to the trial as a reward...

[TaleraRistain]

Why the hell is the dyeable version of the *casual* gear locked behind an Extreme trial??

[Elizar_Naki]

-AF dyeable gear locked behind an extreme trial

Probably my only real gripe regarding the combat relic stuff (haven't started the Skysteel ones yet, not exactly a priority for me), though it isn't because I think the EX trial scene is too small an audience; that's too tough to gauge, all things considered. My big issue with this is that each xpac makes us put in more and more effort for basically the same thing, no matter how they wanna dress it up. A refresher for comparison's sake:

-the dyeable AF1 gear was a fairly basic trade-in involving the non-dyeable version and some crafted items that were fairly high-end at the time but trivial nowadays. I found the whole idea daunting when I first joined the game in 2.4, but I probably could've managed it pretty easily if I'd just taken the time. In either case, the end result was literally just a dyeable version of the base gear--same stats, same lvl prereq, etc. Pretty much what I imagine most of us actually want from dyeable AF gear anyway.
-the dyeable AF2 was early-HW grind gear, complete with relevant stats and the usual tomestone gear upgrade process that made it part of your main gear progression at the time. Nowadays, it can be bought/upgraded with centurio seals; pieces of it might be given to new players who reach a certain point, I'm not sure, but those of us who did HW when it was current had to grind for it. Gonna be honest, I'm not a fan of that idea. To me, the AF gear should be something you get for doing quests related to the job in question, the reward being that you get gear that lets you LOOK like your job instead of using shared gear. Making it grind gear meant that you could, say, run roulettes and earn tomes as PLD, then spend those tomes on your NIN AF2 if you wanted. You now have the current gear that lets your NIN look like a NIN, but you didn't DO anything as NIN to earn it. Like I said, not a fan of that process, to say nothing of how much longer it took to obtain both the base and dyeable versions of the AF2 than the AF1.
-the dyeable AF3 was Eureka gear. This was...a weird one to me. The upgraded/dyeable version was still weaker than unaugmented tomestone gear available at the time (I made sure to test it at an SSS dummy), even with 5 materia slots to work with instead of the usual 2. It wasn't a particularly good gearing substitute for your main job, and it was a lopsided time sink for gearing alts that could only barely be considered worth the effort stat-wise. Eureka itself was, of course, more tedious than challenging, and they've supposedly made the process more solo-friendly nowadays, but I still think most people coming up through the ranks now would look at the requirements for upgrading their AF3 and just nope the F out. It's a tedious time sink, and even though it probably took less time to finish getting a dyeable AF3 at the time than it did to get/upgrade a full AF2 set when THAT was new, it's still more effort than the AF1 was.
-now, the dyeable AF4 is obtained through an EX trial. Once again, they justify this increase in required effort by putting semi-relevant stats and 5 materia slots on it, but the gear itself is mediocre and doesn't outclass the current tome gear, so trying to put relevant stats on it feels like a waste of time for what this gear really is. I can't personally speak for the difficulty of this trial yet (my group won't be attempting it until Friday, and I'd rather not pug it until after we've cleared it), so I can't speak for how difficult the trial will be for mid-tier players like myself, but I feel like that's beside the point. Barring lucky rolls on the coffers themselves if/when they drop, it takes 19 clears of this trial to buy 1 full set of gear (assuming the totems themselves are the usual auto-drops rather than something to be rolled for); regardless of the trial's difficulty, that's a bit excessive imho. Meanwhile, since the trial has no other rewards, it's gonna get abandoned pretty quick once the bulk of the community has everything they want from it (don't tell me they won't, I've seen it happen over and over again with other content over the years), so anyone who doesn't hunker down and spam this thing ad nauseum during the first few weeks/months is gonna get left behind. And we don't even get dyeable versions of our AF weapons this time; the trial doesn't include an "Idealized Lion Heart," for example, and the GNB relic itself skips straight to the Crownsblade instead of including a Lion Heart variant along the way. AF2 gear, by contrast, included a dyeable weapon via the usual upgrade process for tome gear (as well as glowy variants early in the relic process), and the Anemos step of the SB relic weapons was a dyeable/glowy version of the AF3 weapons.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for putting in the effort for something if I feel like the effort is proportionate to the reward. But here, we keep having to work harder and harder for essentially the same reward every xpac. Gussy it up all you want with semi-relevant stats and extra materia slots, it's still gonna get relegated to glamour fodder (which is all this gear really SHOULD be) in less time than most other gear, and I don't feel like that reward has really been worth the effort we've had to go through for it for at least the last 2 xpacs--certainly not in this one.

[Eldevern]

The bothering thing is they break the rule it was before : extrems have their own weapons, relics are independants and AF is easier to get than the weapon. You have to grind but there's not this kind of wall. Currently there are a lot of lags and freeze in my area (I can see them when gathering, crafting or doing MSQ roulette) and we are supposed to do extrems?

And the AF we get from the avatar of Gerolt lost all sense.

[Halivel]

Barring lucky rolls on the coffers themselves if/when they drop, it takes 19 clears of this trial to buy 1 full set of gear (assuming the totems themselves are the usual auto-drops rather than something to be rolled for); regardless of the trial's difficulty, that's a bit excessive imho.

I have nothing to add mostly, just want to clarify this part. EX Trial gives 2 idols, not 1, so for a full set you need 10 runs at max, same as we usually need 10 runs for EX Trial Weapons (except Hades that also gave 2 idols which led to 5 runs for a weapon)

But here, we keep having to work harder and harder for essentially the same reward every xpac.

Because people... keep whining that they have nothing to do? :>

To be fair tho, with farmable AF set we got rather easy 1st stage for a relic weapon itself, so I could say that in combination the grind is somewhere there, but not much hard. Not that 1st phases for old relics were any harder anyway.

[Crushnight]

Barring lucky rolls on the coffers themselves if/when they drop, it takes 19 clears of this trial to buy 1 full set of gear (assuming the totems themselves are the usual auto-drops rather than something to be rolled for);

You get 2 totems per kill so 10 kills for full set for 1 job if unlucky. Its difficulty for mid core players will be the mechanics not the dps checks (it's worse than Ruby in the leniency).

[Hanayumi]

I think this was a decent introduction, they said the grind and new exploration area wasnt going to happen till 5.35 a while back. This story definitely peaked my interest far better than eureka's did. As for locking af gear behind an Ex, im alright with it, optional, its not that difficult of a fight, there isnt really any close dps check, just follow the mechanics and youre good.

[Granyala]

I find the idea of dyable glamor gear locked behind an extreme trial to be quite lame.
It's not the encounter I'm afraid of, I raided savage in the past, so it will be easy to me.

However, doing such things w/o a static group is a hell in itself. I won't touch party finder with a 10 foot pole when it comes to content that can actually kill you.

Really LOVED the quest chain though. To all people complaining about it's duration: that's what you get when you leave out the braindead grind!
Development of such things is very complex, takes a lot of time and has a low yield. Well done grind obfuscates that a bit.

[Allegor]

I wish I could at least see the dyable gear to decide if doing the EX is even worth it. I mean, since when is gear 'hidden' inside coffers?