Tomestones.. Again.. for a relic..

[DixieBellOCE]

EX mount drops, getting that one piece of weekly loot you want from the current Alliance Raid, gathering mats for crafting in general, getting enough scrips to buy materia or buy even more mats for crafting, raising levels of the alt jobs you want to use, getting trusts maxed out, gearing up every job you want to use (including crafters/gatherers), Shared FATEs, leveling tribes, etc etc. There are a LOT of grinds in this game, so I don't see how anybody can say we have barely any grinds, when there's quite a few.

Not everyone is a new player.

Some people have:
All the EX mounts
No use for armor downgrades from alliance raids.
So much Gil that crafting is pointless
So much Materia that getting scripts is pointless
Omni-90 every job.
Gearing up evert alt jo.... wait cant do that because 620 tome gear is softlocked at 450/week
have full pentamelded crafter gear
Have the shared fate achievements

The game needs END GAME GRINDS, not just grinds in general.

Relics used to fill that spot nicely, now its just log in, get your participation award and realize that the game is just as empty as it was the last patch.

The saving grace this patch has been the crafter/gatherer relics, but by tomorrow i'll have those complete.

[RyuDragnier]

Not everyone is a new player.

Correct, but the grind begins again EVERY time new content is added that corresponds with it, and for anything that somebody decides they want at that point in time.

Ilvl increase? You need to grind the new tomes, the Savages (should you do them), gather all those materials for the new crafted set to use/sell, melding new materia in (overmelding if you're going the extra distance). This happens every even numbered patch.

New EX? You're having to grind it for the new mount. We get a new EX EVERY major patch.

Decided on a new glam? You're going to have to grind for that one piece of gear you want assuming it's not something you can just buy.

The grind is constant and everywhere, all we get are minor breaks from it. And in the case of some, there's always something to level or farm, so the grind for them is near eternal. To act like there is no grind is...no offense, a pretty dumb take.

[Lak14]

In the end, games should be fun and not feel like your time is being wasted

talking about wasting time but you have 31 jobs level 90, ironic, isn't it ?

[Jojoya]

talking about wasting time but you have 31 jobs level 90, ironic, isn't it ?

Taking things out of context, are we? Is that the best you can do as a rebuttal?

[raelgun]

Correct, but the grind begins again EVERY time new content is added that corresponds with it, and for anything that somebody decides they want at that point in time.

Ilvl increase? You need to grind the new tomes, the Savages (should you do them), gather all those materials for the new crafted set to use/sell, melding new materia in (overmelding if you're going the extra distance). This happens every even numbered patch.

New EX? You're having to grind it for the new mount. We get a new EX EVERY major patch.

Decided on a new glam? You're going to have to grind for that one piece of gear you want assuming it's not something you can just buy.

The grind is constant and everywhere, all we get are minor breaks from it. And in the case of some, there's always something to level or farm, so the grind for them is near eternal. To act like there is no grind is...no offense, a pretty dumb take.

The point of this thread is talking about content being added mid way through an expansion.

Most of your post is only valid for the start of an expansion when new systems are introduced and a reset occurs, this isn't that.

People need to stop looking at things from a new player perspective only, this is why the game as time goes on gets more shallow.

[Renathras]

Remember when we had 4 eureka zones for relic steps and everyone complained and hated it and said they wanted the old tomestone grinds back from Heavensward?

Remember when we had to do 15 DR and people just wanted their old content crystal tower farms back?

So now SE is letting people do whatever content they want as long as it gives the tomestones.

Tbh people asked for boring old content and they got it. It’s the people attacking eureka as a concept that got us here so I hope they enjoy it.

EXACTLY!

Been saying this since people complained about the ShB Relic - the most accessible, least grindy, and giving you options in how to do it Relic in the game at-level - that if people didn't stop complaining about every little thing, the game would just dumb it down and they'd have only themselves to blame.

Now it's happened and they're all blaming...everyone who isn't themselves.

All the folks who witched with a capital B endlessly about Eureka and Bozja: This is what you get. Sad that the rest of us have to suffer through it, but it's the inevitable outcome of complaining about everything and refusing to ever be happy. It's not "white knighting" to point out that if you complain about everything, eventually, there will be nothing since everything you complained about being removed leaves nothing left.

EDIT:

We gave up an exploratory zone and relic quests for island sanctuary and dead content criterions.

This is what happens when the casual playerbase get a say in the game's endgame content.

rofl!

This has nothing to do with "the casual playerbase". What a bad take...

[Xirean]

Now it's happened and they're all blaming...everyone who isn't themselves.

All the folks who witched with a capital B endlessly about Eureka and Bozja: This is what you get. Sad that the rest of us have to suffer through it, but it's the inevitable outcome of complaining about everything and refusing to ever be happy.

I'm a little confused by this. Aren't the people who complained about Eureka and Bozja different from the people who are complaining now? Honestly I like the way it is now so I'd call it feedback received.

[TomsYoungerBro]

What a bad take...

The only "bad take" is yours thinking the same people who complained about eureka/bozja are the exact same people that are complaining now XD. Like somehow this game doesn't have a pretty big active playerbase.

[Renathras]

Why does a relic step become more interesting if I have to grind it for more time?

I think it's more complex than this.

Relics often aren't HARD, but few people have them, because they require a certain level of dedication to get them. If you see a person with an ARR or SB Relic, you know they had to put in some footwork and time for it, even if it wasn't necessarily HARD to do, it did require work. Depending on who you ask, this may or may not put it on the same level as Savage weapons, but it puts it above the level of anything else in the game that isn't Savage or Ultimate, as far as weapons go. And when current content (e.g. the expansion they came out in), they're decent weapons to reward the people for their dedication.

Further, Relics OFTEN have a story of some kind attached. Either to the weapons themselves (ARR, HW), the content they're occurring in (Eureka), or both (Bozja). In ARR, you were first trying to restore an ancient relic of power and learn something of the original weapons and the heroes that wielded them. While this was done somewhat ham-fistedly at times, the fact remains that WHM was rebuilding the weapon of A-Towa-Kant or SCH the weapon of Nyunkrepf Nyunkrepfsyn, the sagely scholarly AST (with a book) who helped many survive the Sixth Umbral Calamity in his arc and led survivors to go on to found Sharlyan. These relics had at least SOME weight to them and lore behind them.

HW and ShB's had a bit less - in the former you're trying to forge a living weapon for Rowena to mass produce and sell for profits, in ShB you're trying to forge weapons for the Resistance to use your prototypes to produce for their troops; but even there, a lot of the Bozja story goes back as far as the 3rd Era when the Bozjans fought against Alleg and is where the GNBs came from in the first place, as well as the Primal queen. Eureka was a bit of a departure in the sense the weapons THEMSELVES had no story, but the content ITSELF did, in discovering what had happened to the Isle of Val and ultimately discovering the truth behind Eureka itself (and Ozma's creation, as a sort of side bonus). In HW, while the premise seems thin and based on greed (from Rowena's part), you actually create a life that you then get to build a rapport with and get to know, and it becomes a full being with time that then pledges itself to you and your adventures.

So far, though, the EW Relics have no story other than one of Godbert's ancestors just......invented them all. And he is slowly deciphering his ancestor's journal to figure out how to make new ones. And then you buy meteorite. Even though we could arguably just go to the moon and find a ton of it there for the picking.

Though not everyone gets into it that much, I think that past Relics have always had SOME story involved - and while this one DOES technically as well...it's pretty thin fare by comparison.

EDIT:

I'm a little confused by this. Aren't the people who complained about Eureka and Bozja different from the people who are complaining now? Honestly I like the way it is now so I'd call it feedback received.

I'd wager there's quite a bit of overlap. We have no actual evidence who was complaining then vs now unless you want to deep dive the forums to read what individual posters were saying then and now.

Often times, people complain, then when they "get what they want", complain about that, too. Some people cannot be pleased, and I'd bet good money that quite a few people complaining then ARE complaining now as well...though there's no way to prove it, in the end, either way.

The only "bad take" is yours thinking the same people who complained about eureka/bozja are the exact same people that are complaining now XD. Like somehow this game doesn't have a pretty big active playerbase.

See above.

And "the only bad take"? Hardly. Blaming this change on casuals is stupid. Most casuals (I'm a casual) liked the old Relic grinds as something to do that wasn't Raiding. If anything, it was the Raiding community in ShB that complained loudly about Bozja because they didn't want to have to do it to have the Ultimate's BiS.

I'm not saying "blame the raiders", but I am saying "don't blame the casuals - they weren't the ones asking for this". Trying to pin this on any one group is stupid. The people to blame are the endless complainers - and there are plenty of both casual and hardcore players that fall in that dubious camp.

While I do like not being locked into a separate field area where I can't queue for anything else, a la Eureka or Bozja, in order to grind out my relic stuff, this does feel... not great.

As others have already pointed out, Eureka Orthos released today. The Variant/Criterion dungeons are still very new. Why not try to funnel people into that content?

Agree with the first point. To the second: Probably future-proofing. CLL and DR have given them endless headaches. Even while ShB was still current, if you didn't get through CLL with the first wave, you didn't get through it. People starting their Relic in 5.4 or later just could not get out of Southern Front.

I think they didn't want a repeat of that, so they didn't tie it to Variant/Criterion or Orthos.

Granted, they could have just made it where you could run those for the part to get it and also run other stuff to get the part...though I guess they effectively DID do this via tomes? /shrug It just feels "not good" (I agree) because of how generic tomes are. They're just this thing we get by doing other things that have no actual presence in the game world. They aren't items and they have no lore payoff. You give them to people for things that you actually want, and those people/NPCs just destroy them out of the game on receiving them. They don't use them to research something or develop something or make something. It's a mere currency you magically get from killing things that have nothing to do with Alleg in the first place for the most part and so wouldn't even have tomes in a lore sense in the first place.

That makes it feel more hollow and empty than, say, combining 10 Unidentified objects you can get from trading in either tomes or parts from Savages or other stuff, and combining those with things that you can get from Crafters or from Grand Companies, to make 4 specific items you need that seem to be lore-sensical to forge a powerful weapon with. Though that's arguably very similar to "farm tomes and buy item - with extra steps", those extra steps seem to give it presence in the world that isn't "I bought some rocks from a guy, here, make me a glowy weapon."

[Reinha]

All the folks who witched with a capital B endlessly about Eureka and Bozja: This is what you get. Sad that the rest of us have to suffer through it, but it's the inevitable outcome of complaining about everything and refusing to ever be happy. It's not "white knighting" to point out that if you complain about everything, eventually, there will be nothing since everything you complained about being removed leaves nothing left.

I'm glad Eureka and Bozja were discontinued and I no longer have to spend months in a separate instance. I'm not glad that, opposite to my feedback, the relic starts mid expansion and has been turned into a tome weapon that is nothing like ARR or HW relics. If you're not smart enough to place blame on the developers who made the relic quest, no one can help you. Enjoy suffering through it whilst making up more excuses for them.

It just feels "not good" (I agree) because of how generic tomes are. They're just this thing we get by doing other things that have no actual presence in the game world. They aren't items and they have no lore payoff.

There are also no new UI elements to this newest relic like there were in ARR and HW. No books to scribble out targets from, no magical bar of power to fill, no messages from your weapon's soul, nothing. Just go to a vendor, done. New patch, vendor, done.