Zepla about FFXIV Relic and Square Enix not taking any Risks

[Xeronia]

Is this a fairly universally accepted thought?

Personally I had expected an ARR/HW like relic myself which for as much people argue it is just a tomestone dump now that ignores stuff like umbrite/crystal sands, books, and light steps.

[RyuDragnier]

Personally I had expected an ARR/HW like relic myself which for as much people argue it is just a tomestone dump now that ignores stuff like umbrite/crystal sands, books, and light steps.

Umbrite/Crystal Sands are basically just tomestone dumps, Books are tedious busywork (there's a reason why they never came back), and light farming is just basically farm X content for Y drops in another form. Looking back, you can see that future relic quests basically just used the skeleton of ARR/HW relic quests. Which...may explain why a lot of them have been pretty much repeats of the same things at the bare bones. A shame this one is just the tomestone dump, but I'd love to see them force people into the higher level Alliance Raids. Forced to do Dun Scaith, Orbonne, and Paradigm's Breach for the drops, if only to reinvigorate the amount of people running them.

[Absurdity]

Umbrite/Crystal Sands are basically just tomestone dumps, Books are tedious busywork (there's a reason why they never came back), and light farming is just basically farm X content for Y drops in another form.

Except that you could get Crystal Sand from pretty much any content, be that crafting, gathering, raids, old and current extreme primals, etc.

The same goes for light farming to a lesser extend, sure it was all combat content but which was entirely up to you, frontlines gave light, dungeons gave light, raids gave light (A9S was technically the most efficient IF you had a group that could clear it reliably and quickly), even FATEs gave light.
Even books would've been acceptable if you could actually pick up more than one, the annoying part was finishing a book only to find out that the next one you picked up sent you to almost the same places so you could've already completed both if the game let you.


But instead of building upon those systems while ironing out the parts that made them annoying they instead chose to just make you farm tomestones.




I was actually one of the people that wanted the older system back for a change.
I did Eureka while it was current, I did the NM trains, I did the naked reflect farm for days to reroll my weapon until it had 725 crit and 155 sks, I slogged through Bozja's drab environments to do god knows how many fates in there for a bunch of books and I was tired of it.
But what we got is not the old system.

[VeyaAkemi]

Books are tedious busywork (there's a reason why they never came back)

Hot take, books would've been fine if they didn't feel like they were procedure generated, and actually told a story of some sort, but "Uh do these 3 unrelated FATEs, then these 3 unrelated Dungeons, then these 3 unrelated Levequests, and finally go commit a lot of random murder but like only a tiny bit in each area" was so incredibly soulless that there isn't any enjoyment to be found, in-story, they feel like they should be something special, but in terms of gameplay it is all disconnected and meaningless, which makes how much they are just busywork for busywork sake obvious.

[Jeeqbit]

Is this a fairly universally accepted thought?

No. Many people hated Eureka. In fact even when everyone was in there, seeming to have the time of their life, when I actually asked them, they said it was an awful experience. Yet they seemed to be having fun to me based on the laughing that was going on in my linkshells and FC? And when I went in there, I was having fun too.

We had a lot of people saying they preferred the old way of getting them from old content like in Heavensward and ARR, at the time, causing SE to try and find a middleground with Bozja where we could do it either way.

Then they just went completely the tomestone way with this expansion, and now the scales are tipped in the opposite direction from Stormblood so people who liked the Eureka way are now the ones disappointed.

At least Bozja gave us the option to do it purely through Bozja if we wanted to restrict ourselves to new content.

[SturmChurro]

...

Eureka and Bozja really got the community together and.. doing things.. There really isn't anything else in FFXIV like it. At the time Eureka was a blast, because everyone was there doing it. People were cooperating with eachother for a common goal, and even if people didn't like the content, they liked just being there talking to people.

[Sheriyana]

Eureka and Bozja really got the community together and.. doing things.. There really isn't anything else in FFXIV like it. At the time Eureka was a blast, because everyone was there doing it. People were cooperating with eachother for a common goal, and even if people didn't like the content, they liked just being there talking to people.

When Pagos came out you didn't have time to type in shout chat or any chat for that matter or you'd drop the kill chain and get kicked from the group. That was wild, some people praised it back then too. But outside of Pagos, Eureka was good content.

[Sheriyana]

No. Many people hated Eureka. In fact even when everyone was in there, seeming to have the time of their life, when I actually asked them, they said it was an awful experience. Yet they seemed to be having fun to me based on the laughing that was going on in my linkshells and FC? And when I went in there, I was having fun too.

We had a lot of people saying they preferred the old way of getting them from old content like in Heavensward and ARR, at the time, causing SE to try and find a middleground with Bozja where we could do it either way.

Then they just went completely the tomestone way with this expansion, and now the scales are tipped in the opposite direction from Stormblood so people who liked the Eureka way are now the ones disappointed.

At least Bozja gave us the option to do it purely through Bozja if we wanted to restrict ourselves to new content.

I can admit to hating Eureka when it came out. After I got into the NM trains in Anemos it actually started to be fun but then Pagos came out and that was such a miserable experience that I didn't touch Eureka until the nerfs and character buffs in Shadowbringers. Now it's actually a lot of fun, especially at max level. Shame the weapons themselves look very underwhelming or I might go for more of them.

Bozja was pretty good overall, in terms of the base stuff I'd say Eureka now is better but I think Castrum Lacus Litore is some of the best content the game has to offer. Dalriada is pretty good too and Delubrum is fun if people actually use their lost actions so the runs don't take an hour each. They future proofed Eureka way better, now Bozja must be next to impossible to do with no one doing the 3 parts I just mentioned.

But yeah, people like to have real goals and content to focus on, doing the same roulettes you're already doing every week is not something new for you to do. This relic is noncontent, might as well make it a login reward with how little focus and effort it takes on your part.

[Jeeqbit]

I think Castrum Lacus Litore is some of the best content the game has to offer. Dalriada is pretty good too and Delubrum is fun if people actually use their lost actions so the runs don't take an hour each.

I agree that these raids are some of the best content in the game (even if I am still to this day burned out from farming them 50 times). It is very unfortunate if people can no longer do them with a large group without echo stacks, honor buffs and lost actions making them easy.

Needing a really good group of 8 people for Castrum was a perfect concept. It allowed the majority of casual players there to get carried, but allowed the 8 really good players to do something with high stakes. That is how they should do large scale raids generally in my opinion. It worked. Now it gets destroyed too easily.

Imagine if alliance raids were like this. 16 people would always be able to get carried, but 8 people had to do a high-end fight with high stakes to allow them to progress. Over time, some of those players who get carried would come out of their shell and join the party of 8 when 1 spot is left and then they would become good at it. Castrum prooved this concept works.

It also helped that everything in the raid was telegraphed once, but never again. This is also something that could be done in certain content that telegraphs a lot.

[Kaurhz]

Taking risks?

Yes, and no.

Nope in the regards to they have not flushed out relics as well as they could have and still remain on a fairly rigid patch schedule.

Yes, in regard to the fact if they didn't take risks then they probably would not have gone for Island Sanctuary nor criterion/variant. Anything which follows outside of what they have historically done is a risk. Whether the risk in the long run for IS and the dungeons remains to be seen.

If they were interested in playing it safe they could just give the players exploratory content ad nauseum for eternity.