Manderville Relic Criticism

[LianaThorne]

Depressing but expected.

[Jonnycbad]

The past few expansions, we’ve had quests and lengthy areas to play in to obtain relics - whether it be ARR/HW Crafting, SB Eureka, ShB Bozja, or any of the steps that involve replaying old content - it’s nowhere to be found with this relic. All it is is a glorified Tomestone grind. 4500 Tomestone and you have your relic for the expansion.

At the very least, I expected SOME modicum of effort to be put into this final step, but woe is the man who expects anything from the past two HILDIBRAND patches. Yes, they can be funny and you have to go through a lot of old stuff - but it isn’t that long in comparison to other relics.

For 7.0 relic, they need to bring back the grind.

If you boil down the old system (grinding old content) it's pretty much the same system we have now. Let's dispense with all pretenses here, both systems were in effect tomestone grinds. The difference here is that instead of forcing you to do 60 Garuda HMs or A1s, you can farm ANY content that gives tomes, giving you the freedom to farm your relic in any method. Again, old content for previous relics were technically things that would be relative to that expansion that dropped basic tomes. Like in HW, you had to do HW content to get Light, so you would spam content for it. Here, you are still farming EW duties except instead of another currency called "light", its just a general currency called tomes. it's literally an improvement. Same grind, just now a common currency and freedom to do any relevant content instead of being forced into spamming 60 Zodiarks or 60 Hydaelyns.

[Ayan_Calvesse]

If you boil down the old system (grinding old content) it's pretty much the same system we have now. Let's dispense with all pretenses here, both systems were in effect tomestone grinds. The difference here is that instead of forcing you to do 60 Garuda HMs or A1s, you can farm ANY content that gives tomes, giving you the freedom to farm your relic in any method. Again, old content for previous relics were technically things that would be relative to that expansion that dropped basic tomes. Like in HW, you had to do HW content to get Light, so you would spam content for it. Here, you are still farming EW duties except instead of another currency called "light", its just a general currency called tomes. it's literally an improvement. Same grind, just now a common currency and freedom to do any relevant content instead of being forced into spamming 60 Zodiarks or 60 Hydaelyns.

I respectfully disagree. While there were times when you had to gather tomes - in the SB and ARR relics you needed to engage in a range of activities including maps, fates, trials and even Raids.

[DixieBellOCE]

I think one thing most players overlook with the new system:

Old relic grinds are considered 'content' in later expansions, what will the Manderville relics be, when everyone has them finished before 7.0 because they are an absolute joke?

What is Endwalker leaving behind in terms of 'replayable content' that people will do in later years?

[Deo14]

I think one thing most players overlook with the new system:

Old relic grinds are considered 'content' in later expansions, what will the Manderville relics be, when everyone has them finished before 7.0 because they are an absolute joke?

What is Endwalker leaving behind in terms of 'replayable content' that people will do in later years?

EW relics will become yet another HW weapons, but even more void of any gameplay or nuance - when you notice that you capped poetics, you will tp to Radz-at-Han, buy 4 stones, and continue with your day. I still don't understand why do people think this is a good thing. At least anima makes you do some dungeons, trials and then group up with others to farm anima.

And what will EW left behind? Questions in NN - "What is this "V&C" thing?", "I'm on some island and it made me click some nodes, what's the deal with this?". How will you answer these question?

[Xeronia]

EW relics will become yet another HW weapons, but even more void of any gameplay or nuance - when you notice that you capped poetics, you will tp to Radz-at-Han, buy 4 stones, and continue with your day. I still don't understand why do people think this is a good thing. At least anima makes you do some dungeons, trials and then group up with others to farm anima.

And what will EW left behind? Questions in NN - "What is this "V&C" thing?", "I'm on some island and it made me click some nodes, what's the deal with this?". How will you answer these question?

I also think people weren't around to remember HW relic's weren't always this easy. I did mine in HW and I remember having to craft items as they weren't in my Grand company at the time and had to be HQ (I remember blowing up kingscake rather vividly for example) and doing Diadem 2.0 for crystal sand due to the blue scrips tokens as you would have been crazy to try to do it via tomes at the time given you needed umbrite too. Also back in the day you do not want to know the amount of ARF runs I did as it was the "casual" way to get tomes due to each boss giving them instead of loot. Got real good at ARF at least.

[Post]

Well, you can have Bozja and you can have relics. If you tie relics to Bozja, then you have to do Bozja for a relic. You might just want to do Bozja and hate relics or you might just want a relic and hate Bozja.

That's what they did in Eureka by limiting your options.

They could have still implemented an exploratory zone in EW and made it separate from relic; we did get the new island sanctuary, variant dungeons and PvP mode, 2 of which can help you progress towards relics on top of all other existing content a player might be chewing through.

I'm glad they don't have relics tied to them because they can stand on their own merits or adjusted until they do instead of being propped up by completionists.

This also helps relic hunters that don't care about an arbitrary quest chain to create the ultimate weapon that somehow gets outclassed 8 levels into the new expansion but get the relic as a means to do other things, like play different jobs in any content. Or just take extra glowy selfies, whatever.

[caffe_macchiato]

As someone who's been running roulettes and dailies since 2016, being made to do the same thing for the latest relic--same old dungeons and all--is nauseating. I get that CBU3 is proud of their work in ARR, but to shove it down our throats constantly is a bit weird. The world has changed a lot in the past ten years, and many games and MMOs have come out since then. They should stop recycling old content to fill the gap. Then again, this is Square Enix and they've fallen on hard times lately with the disappointing sales of FF16.

But everyone's happy with it, so who am I to judge? Just pay $13 and play other games.

Best MMO, better than WoW, free trial, Venat mommy, etc.

[Post]

If you're turning to relics as a gameplay element down the line, you might want to consider the point of relics in the first place. They have some titles and achievements tied to them, sure, but they're mainly meant to be weapons that are easy to obtain from a 'required skill' standpoint. The time grind and timegate are meant to offset this slightly, that's all.

If you feel like there's not enough to do without huge grinds in the game, that's a different issue.

If you feel there's not enough incentive to do what is in the game, that's a different issue still.

Relic being more separated from these issues in this iteration probably feels bad for some players, even simply because it's a change, but I don't think it inherently must be grindy as a system.

As someone who's been running roulettes and dailies since 2016, being made to do the same thing for the latest relic--same old dungeons and all--is nauseating. I get that CBU3 is proud of their work in ARR, but to shove it down our throats constantly is a bit weird. The world has changed a lot in the past ten years, and many games and MMOs have come out since then. They should stop recycling old content to fill the gap. Then again, this is Square Enix and they've fallen on hard times lately with the disappointing sales of FF16.

You can track the relic through HW at least and see that it was always designed to keep the roulette queueing, important story duties moving and players in less populated areas.

Even the Atma step in ARR had players do FATEs in literally every zone except the ones that were popular to level doing FATEs in to make the world feel full of players for the ps4 launch of the game.

[caffe_macchiato]

You can track the relic through HW at least and see that it was always designed to keep the roulette queueing, important story duties moving and players in less populated areas.

Even the Atma step in ARR had players do FATEs in literally every zone except the ones that were popular to level doing FATEs in to make the world feel full of players for the ps4 launch of the game.

I just wish that video games had advanced just a little bit in the past ten years. We had Bozja, but apparently that was a mistake since everyone should be fine doing roulettes. Isn't it sad that MMOs had such massive advancements in quality and playability between 2003 to 2013, yet have completely flatlined since 2013? We shouldn't want anything better, right? This is the end of the road?