Design your relic weapon grind

[sdr26]

I think there is a middle ground they could take with this. A "hard mode" and an "easy mode" option for players. The hard mode version is the grind component for players who want the grind while the easy mode option is just tomestones. I think that's a fair compromise.

[ty_taurus]

What I was hoping for initially when EW released is something I'd like to see. The system would work similarly to Bozja, with new elements to shake up the experience. This would involve the story of exploring the treasure islands mentioned near the end of 6.0's story--the ones beyond the frozen sea of Blindfrost in Northern Othard. We'd be joining Erenville on a mission to discover new or lost species to record for Sharlayan, and effectively go on a major treasure hunt. This would involve mechanics similar to Island Sanctuary, where a part of the normal progression is discovering special creatures that appear under specific conditions, and engaginging in rare monster sightings that involve helping wildlife, fending off species invasions, and taking on rare monster sightings. Additionally, crafting and gathering tools would get wrapped into this as well, functioning as a zone that works like Diadem a little. Currencies can be earned through combat encounters or through crafting/gathering in this zone. Some examples of relic weapon steps in this format:

Step 1: Complete the first part of the treasure islands story progression and collect 6 items that can be purchased with a general currency earned through treasure islands content (combat or crafting/gathering) or with 500 astronomy. Each weapon purchased this way decreases the amount needed for subsequent weapons down to needing 2 items.
Step 2: Materials needed for this step can be earned through runs of the CLL equivalent, turning in rare crafting/gathering finds, exchanging variant potshards or criterion currency, island sanctuary currency, or by exchanging bicolor gems.
Step 3: A one-time step for all weapons that requires 60 of an item. 2 are earned from some alternative to DR for the treasure islands story, 1-3 are earned randomly by completing Nier raids, and they can also be purchased with 8000 Wolf Marks or 4000 Trophy Crystals per piece.
Step 4: There are 4 new items that you need 10 of each. Different types of treasure island fates have a chance to drop these based on the type of fate it is (boss fate, collecting fate, defending fate, route enemy fate) The equivalent of CE's in this zone always drop 2 of these randomly. Crystals earned in each zone from Eureka can be traded for them as well, with each zone corresponding to each of the 4 items. 50 crystals per item for each zone. You can also buy them individually for 500 poetics. The amount needed also decreases by 1 of each item for every weapon you do this step with, down to 5 of each.

Something along those lines. Create content that has a lot to engage with, while offering various ways to earn materials outside of that.

[Avoidy]

I was looking forward to more grind centered around the stormblood, shadowbringers, and endwalker patches. In roulettes, there's soooooooo much happening in the background that tips the scales in favor of ARR/HW content. The free trial players basically drag everyone in there no matter what, but then you also get stuff like crystal tower being an msq requirement and a relic grind option of its own, stuff like dzemael being a GC requirement, etc. I wanted this relic to be an attempt to even the balance. I was hoping it'd ask us to run the nier raids or maybe even ivalice. I really wanted a reason to revisit the eden/omega raids. Hell, we just got variant dungeons and they're already super duper dead. Why not nudge people back into that, using the relics as the carrot on the stick?

"Just gimme more tomes bro" is such a boring, wasted opportunity. "Oh but this lets you do anything for your relic progression!" No, it doesn't. All of the pre-EW content that begs for relevancy today, doesn't give you the desired tomes when you queue it directly. So realistically, people are just gonna do their dailies, where they'll be pushed into ARR/HW tier content, or they'll do hunt trains. And nothing about the gameplay loop changes. Nothing different happens. Imagine if the devs just went "there's certain content that people want to do, that isn't getting done and isn't popping in the dutyfinder. Let's connect that content.. to the relic... so people do it... so it pops in the queue for people who need it to progress." Hell, I couldn't even get barbariccia (normal) to pop the other day when I was trying to help a friend run it for the msq. We had to get a group of 7 people and even then we sat for 8 minutes waiting for an 8th dps. Imagine if Endwalker trials were just connected to the relic grind. "Go slap Barb's shit 10 times." then all of a sudden we're incentivized to return to one of the most enjoyable fights in the expansion. Or what about the EW extremes? Imagine a system similar to the light grind, but tied to those. Suddenly all those people who never got to do endwalker extremes while they were current, get a second chance to run them with people experienced enough to consider farming it. "Why would anyone take a learning player on a farm run" I'm glad you asked. Now imagine if runs with first-timer bonuses ... simply counted for more credit towards the relic! Bam, all of a sudden players are incentivized to run niche content that gets no action anymore, for something that is valuable to them. For example, step 2 might say "one of the ways you can get [resource] for [relic] is to beat up Endwalker's second trial 10 times. OR, you can do the extreme 4 times. And if you do the extreme with a first timer, the run counts for double." Now all of a sudden people who already know the fight are going out of their way to find an 8th person who's never bothered with it and wow look at that, new and exciting experiences are happening revolving around content people never had a reason to think about last week.

This isn't rocket science, the tome route was such a bloody waste. Think about all the experiences we could be having. Instead, people are just gonna spam a hunt train probably. Such a waste. Lazy as hell. They didn't even go with poetics. If they really cared about giving players the freedom to run whatever they wanted, they'd make it require poetics instead.

[Astrahime]

Step 1: Tomestones.

Step 2: Farm 1000 Bicolor Gemstones

Step 3: Run the Criterion dungeon to get 50 crystals. Two are given for doing Criterion (Normal), five for Criterion (Savage).

Step 3.5: One-time grind of the Nier raids

Step 4: Run Eureka Orthos to get 40 Orthos Fragments or something, with the player getting considerably more past floor 50 and at an increased rate if soloing it.

Step 5: Light Farming

Step 6: a bunch of trials

[hynaku]

Step 1: Tomestones. Step 2: Tomestones. Step 3: 3 hours of cutscenes from random quests. Step 4:3 million gil for items to complete this stage. Step 5: 5 hours of cutscenes and 2000 Tomestones of the highest level. Step 6: Craft all the items needed to complete this stage. Step 7: Big huge vacation party on your Island.

[RitsukoSonoda]

Well... since it's always Gerolt making the relic weapons... why not just make one a gil sink.

Every step is... paying Gerolts increasingly large bar tab...

[ReynTime]

Is this another "Gotcha" thread? No one here is getting paid to come up with the team's ideas for them. And ever since they outgrew the "apologies for 1.0" phase they ignore 99% of the good ideas that get posted in any language in the suggestions forums.

They're being paid to do this. Very few games bother charging a subscription.

[MonteCristo]

I think there is a middle ground they could take with this. A "hard mode" and an "easy mode" option for players. The hard mode version is the grind component for players who want the grind while the easy mode option is just tomestones. I think that's a fair compromise.

I love this idea

[dspguy]

Go FFXI style and combine all the REMA things.

So first you gotta either go into a Dynamis Dreamland and farm anicent money or buy said

<snip>

The Relic line will end with Gerolt fusing your weapon with its clone where it will take on its final appearance and power, as well as giving you double passive regen.

I nearly spit out my coffee all over my keyboard. Well done. As a recovering FFXI player, I could appreciate your take.

In all seriousness though, there has to be something in-between mid-2000s-style MMO relic grinding and 1500 tomestones. Personally, I thought the HW grind was "about right." It had one key difference from the ARR-grind: options.

Most of the "grindy steps", but not all, had options:

• Step 1: Grind FATEs or turn in an ARR relic (not necessarily ideal). At least it was only 6 tokens, not 12 and they could be completed on any job (so you can gain exp while farming your relic items). Dungeon spam.
  
• Step 2: Unidentifiable items from various sources (ARR, HW dailies, normal mode raids, tomestones). Other items for that step were craftable or from GC seals.
  
• Step 3: Aether Oil from tomestone grind or running the weekly CT-circuit. Could run those on any job.
  
• Step 4: Umbrite - tomestone grind, whatever content you want. Crystal Sand (crafting, gathering, tomestone, levequests)
  
• Step 5: Singing Clusters - weekly/daily quests, tomestone grind.
• Step 6: Tomestone grind and/or GC seal grind. Lots of ways to earn both of those - and can run it on any job - plus light farm
  
• Step 7: Victory lap of Hard Mode (easy mode) trials

The reason I think HW's relic was pretty good is that there were only a few parts of it that were "forced" content. Do these specific dungeons/trials. No way around those. And the FATE grind as Step 1 was a bit harsh, but at least it wasn't Atmas where we had to be on the job, using that weapon and earning no experience. The rest of HW either allowed you to make progress while on any job or gave various options to make progress.

Of course, players that want to get their relics as fast as possible found an optimal path that felt "forced" but that was a player-introduced constraint. While I personally liked Eureka for the SB relic, it was "forced" content. We really weren't afforded many options to complete it. Everything was within Eureka itself. Later on, they added the ability to buy the "boss NM" drops with zone-specific crystals/drops. However, I think Bozja was the knee-jerk reaction to Eureka. It was "Eureka-Lite." Here's some forced content you have to do within Bozja and then plenty of options for some steps that could be done inside and outside of Bozja.

In my opinion, the jury is still out on the EW relic. We are only on Step 2, but it seems the devs are sort of "mailing it in." Maybe Step 3 will be something other than a tomestone grind.

[Seraphor]

Best of both worlds:
Obtain 15 of X item. Which drops from the Mhachi/Nier raids (3 per run), Criterion dungeons (3), Variant dungeons (1), the Hildebrand trials (1), or can be bought for 100 Tomestones of Astronomy.
People can mix and match the content they want.

Edit: A bit of refinement after actually doing this step myself:

Step 1 (one time only): To find Pupu's friend you need to search for clues of things that are 'out of this world', gather 'out of this world' items to see if we can deduce a pattern and identify things that may be 'out of this world'.
Collect 5 'Otherworldly Mineral's
Obtained by: Drops from Nier Raids, Can be bought from Omicron Bicolour Gemstone vendor for 100 BG's.
You can choose which route you take, or can mix and match as necessary. Incentivises running Nier raids, contributing to filling queues.

Step 2 (one time only): Collect materials to produce Salamanderville.
Collect 3 unique items.
Obtained by: One drops from Mhachi Raids, one drops from The Sil'dihn Subterrane, one can be bought with Crafter/Gatherer White Scripts, all of them can be bought for 200 Tomestones of Astronomy.
Incentivises Mhachi raids, Variant dungeons, and involves crafting/gathering, but there's also the option to just dump Astronomy as well.

Step 3 (repeatable, per weapon):
Collect 5 'Complementary Chondrite's
Obtained by: Drops from 'Battle on the Big Bridge', 'Battle in the Big Keep' or 'Kugane Ohashi', Can be bought for 200 Tomestones of Astronomy.
You can choose which route you take, or can mix and match as necessary. Incentivises running Gilgamesh trials, contributing to filling queues and helping others complete the prerequisite quests.