Manderville Relic Criticism

[Absurdity]

They really should've thrown it into Alliance Raid Roulette. At least then, there would still be possible to complete it within a reasonable timeframe but I guess Lost Actions kind of makes it difficult to balance around.

I honestly think they should throw a reworked version of all the Bozja raids into the roulette and duty finder, they were by far the best thing about that zone, I'd even go as far as to call them the best "alliance" raids we currently have.

[Astrahime]

Except you can’t do whatever you want
why can’t I do it with POTD

Except, you can?
You can farm Causalities in all 3 Deep Dungeons and PvP modes if you enter as a level 90 job.

[Astrahime]

......Aaaand the magic is gone. Or rather, I wish it was gone. Stupid particle effects.

Yep.
"We won't change relic progession" my ass, this is completely different from SB and ShB.
Even if we ignore the superfluous step in the beginning of ShB, ShB was
1: Weapon
2: Weapon but glowy
3: New Weapon
4: New Weapon that's glowy also you can adjust your stats now
5: Newer Weapon that's glowy but if you don't like this, here's a vendor who sells replicas of this that don't glow!

For the first two steps, we were progressing at the same rate as ShB, but with completely different requirements.
We have now completely skipped stage 3 for stage 4, and we don't even have the Matte Replica.
Additionally, let's just look at item levels for a sec.

ShB started at IL485. This was the same IL as the EX4 weapon at the time. EW started at IL615, and that is also EX4.
ShB then went up to IL500 - 5 IL above the EX5 weapon! EW moved up to IL630, which is also 5 IL above EX5. (Or equal to the 3rd tier augmented tome.)
ShB next goes up to... IL510. In order to ascend it to IL515 (EX6), you need to do the second part of the questline added in x.45.
EW goes up to IL645 straightaway.

I can think of several reasons to make the weapon start at 640. Maybe Godbert tells Gerolt that actually we needed another chunk of Achondrite to power up the weapon.
Maybe Godbert says that the true extent of the weapon's power must be brought out through battle. Maybe Gilgamesh breaks into Radz-At-Han and interrupts the forging process so now you need a second item to properly reforge it into the weapon that Godbert was actually talking about.

And there's also the fact that we don't even have the main selling point for relics every expansion has had before - Fully Adjustable stats.
ARR let you put anything on everything.
In HW and ShB, you chose what you got, stat point by stat point.
In SB, you repeatedly rolled the RNG both to get stat types, and the amount of them. Personally I don't like this one, especially since you don't see anyone use a Eureka Relic anywhere, or a Physeos Relic outside of Eureka itself.
In Endwalker... You get asked if you want to change the 2 substats the weapon's maxed on, and the 2 materia slots become magical and are now carried over with you even if you're IL synced.

[Silver-Strider]

I honestly think they should throw a reworked version of all the Bozja raids into the roulette and duty finder, they were by far the best thing about that zone, I'd even go as far as to call them the best "alliance" raids we currently have.

I honestly wouldn't mind that at all.

[Remember_The_Name]

I honestly think they should throw a reworked version of all the Bozja raids into the roulette and duty finder, they were by far the best thing about that zone, I'd even go as far as to call them the best "alliance" raids we currently have.

That would have been their only saving grace. They are struggling to collect enough players to run and SE does an amazingly terrible job to make them popular again:

In 6.0 EW release, they, for some reason, added 10 minutes hard cap on DRN queue and the echo buff. And you know, that again, in reality, it ended up as nothing more then a buffer time for your PF party to visit bathroom and grab a drink. New unsuspecting players register for a duty, only to get their rear handed back to them by the first boss. The only way is still good ol' Party Finder.

In 6.1 patch they "increased" EXP reward from CLL and Dal, but, in reality, you still can amass the same amount of EXP by simply running skirms with no risk. The reward buff did absolutely nothing. Thankfully, over time, players trickled back into Bozja and you have some chance of having a group during peak online hours.

While I have fun running Party Finder, I understand that it should be a temporary solution until the ultimate fix of the system. When "story mode" duty that is also bottlenecking the whole relic weapon progression is locked behind PF, this is bad design.

This is so disappointing that SE shows next to no care about Bozja. We have Challenge Log, Duty Roulette and other ways to make Duties popular, but so far... no movement whatsoever. Current weekly missions for Bozja raids are a joke.

[Toutatis]

I don’t mind the new relic system. I like the fact that tomestones accumulate rather fast as I do a mix of roulette (just a few per day/every few days), hunts, deep dungeons and pvp on whatever job/role I feel like playing. I get a few more tomes on other activities such as the V&C this past week or if I go for other current content. I can play whatever content I want, I can do various activities in between instances, help friends with whatever they need and I am able to get a good weapon on different jobs without having to live in the game. Relic weapons will become BiS only at the end of the EW expansion anyway, not long before the release of 7.0 so might as well have time to gather and use them before they become good for glamour only.

I much prefer the new system to being stuck in a single instanced area for hours like Eureka or Bozja killing the same stuff over and over or be limited to a few specific dungeons/trials or farming old irrelevant fates on a specific job regardless of efficiency. At least Bozja had CLL and Delubrum rather early on to break the monotony but I found Eureka dreadful (plus it discouraged teaming up with friends who were not the same level). I only got one relic in Bozja as I was bored and felt a bit burned out after doing it once and ended up doing the Eureka story only without finishing the relic itself as I stopped bothering with the mind numbing grind at some point. HW wasn’t too bad but required very specific duties and we had to play a specific job in them. As for the ARR relic, it was designed for people with way too much time on their hands and was downright masochist (my life is not boring enough for me to want to finish this unhealthy BS).

[Eastwall]

I am doing my first and last resistance weapon. The timeworn artifact is cancer. I don't mid current system either, But it should be tied to the variant dungeons in someway. Maybe you should do the variant dungeon at least once for an item alongside with tomestone item, Or just make it a choice. Like you can do variant dungeon Or grind tomestone.

[HyperiusUltima]

I am doing my first and last resistance weapon. The timeworn artifact is cancer. I don't mid current system either, But it should be tied to the variant dungeons in someway. Maybe you should do the variant dungeon at least once for an item alongside with tomestone item, Or just make it a choice. Like you can do variant dungeon Or grind tomestone.

2-3 weeks, Variant Dungeon completely died. It's directly a problem with futureproofing, and honestly? Tying Relic directly to this would've been the play, especially since there's 12 Variants. 12 items, just complete Variant Dungeon 12 times. Easy, right? On top of that it doesn't take forever due to actions. Add this with Tomestones(which are farmable in Variant Dungeon as well) and you already are future-proofing the content to NOT die after a couple weeks.

[Toutatis]

2-3 weeks, Variant Dungeon completely died. […] Tying Relic directly to this would've been the play, especially since there's 12 Variants. 12 items, just complete Variant Dungeon 12 times. Easy, right?

Except variant dungeons are at least easily soloable on any job for pretty much everyone and there is no waiting. I find that soloing them is the best way to do them as you don't have anyone interfering with what you need. If someone wants to run them a year from now, they would be able to easily do so and requiring a one time clear of the 12 paths would have been ok though I prefer how relics work atm. Someone who wants to do the variant dungeons can do so anyway.

However, I am quite happy that we don't have to redo the 12 paths for each weapon. Once was enough and while the place is pretty, it is also monotonous (repetitive bosses and mechanics) and adds along the paths offer nothing: except two small groups of special adds on a path variation, they have no mechanics other than stay out of their very slow and predictable cone, line or circle aoe and there's walls everywhere to slow you down. I wouldn't redo the grind, no matter the reward (I can't imagine doing that ninja boss 12 times on each job or 228 times total for all jobs lol). At most I'll go again with friends for a few paths if they ask me.

[Saraide]

Except variant dungeons are at least easily soloable on any job for pretty much everyone and there is no waiting. I find that soloing them is the best way to do them as you don't have anyone interfering with what you need. If someone wants to run them a year from now, they would be able to easily do so and requiring a one time clear of the 12 paths would have been ok.

However, I am quite happy that we don't have to redo the 12 paths for each weapon. Once was enough and while the place is pretty, it is also monotonous (repetitive bosses and mechanics) and adds along the paths offer nothing: except two small groups of special adds on a path variation, they have no mechanics other than stay out of their very slow and predictable cone, line or circle aoe and there's walls everywhere to slow you down. I wouldn't redo the grind, no matter the reward (I can't imagine doing that ninja boss 12 times on each job lol). At most I'll go again with friends for a few paths if they ask me.

Yea it will probably be exceptionally easy to convince a friend or two to accompany a player doing a variant dungeon for the first time. Wouldnt say quite the same for delubrum.