What makes a good relic storyline / step

[CNitsah]

(TL;DR / Conclusion, for those who don't want to read the whole thing)

Lately, the relics have been a big tension point in the game. I'm not a fan of EW relics. If I recognize they can be easily done for people that just want the glam in the future, which is nice, the way you get them lacks engagement for the current expansion.

A lot of people put the blame on the lack of exploratory zones. I don’t totally agree with that. I think the lack of exploratory zones is strongly felt for another reason : because those zones were easy to go in, easy to go out, long running, non capped content. You had incentives to do those zones. You didn’t have to spend 15 to 30 min to make a pf or to wait the same amount of time for the DF to find a party. It’s the kind of content we currently don’t have in Endwalker. When you look at ShB relics, 9 times out of 10, the out of Bozja/Zadnor option for the relics was more profitable than the in Bozja/Zadnor one, which makes the feeling this was never about the relics, but about having something to do in the down time. The mount, haircuts, fieldnotes mettle for medals and the fact it was a good place to xp your other jobs from 71 to 80 were the true reason people farmed this content. Despite being associated with it, the relics are not the important thing.

So my plan here is to analyze HW, SB and ShB relics, step by step, to discuss what steps were good, and what steps were awful. Both at the time of release, and in later expansions. Because I feel the amount of effort people are ready to invest to get the relic of a current expansion and basically a glam are not really the same. For the sake of this thread, I re-did one of each over the past months to jog my memory (I stopped at Law's Order for the ShB weapon, because, no, it’s just too much of a pain)..

Based on that, I’ll try to define what I think is a good relic step.

I choose to ignore the ARR relics because I only did one a couple of years ago, and from memory, even in unsynced, it was not a pleasant farm. Maybe one day I’ll amend my post, but I doubt it.

I also need to mention I began playing during late SB, and didn’t get up to date with the msq until 5.2. Which means a lot of what I’m gonna say about HW and SB steps at release will be based on what I've been told, and weapons guide and threads on the internet. Don’t hesitate to correct me.

[CNitsah]

Heavensward

> Animated relics step has two possibilities :
- either you give a Zeta Zodiac weapon to get the 2 crystal needed to complete the stage,
- either you collect 6 elemental cristal that can be gained in FATES from the different HW zones. You used to need 3 crystals of each element, now it’s only one of each. I don’t know if the drop rate has changed since HW, but the current drop rate, while not 100%, is still high enough so you can easily complete the step in under one hour.

> Awoken weapon asks you to make 10 dungeons from late ARR and HW. It’s simple enough, and unsynced makes it a walk in the park today.

> Anima steps is one of those “you have to collect some objects, but you have to exchange them with other objects, that you can either get with tomestone, either with tribe token, or with GC seals. I do see that step being a pain in ass at the time, but mostly long, not really difficult. So I guess it was ok. Nowadays, with the price of the object being what it is, it’s fairly easy.

> Hyperconductive anima : you need 5 items that can be obtained with a repeatable quest (that consist of doing the 3 CT raids or with tomestones (1800 of the non caped HW at the time). I feel like doing 15 CT raids was not the most enjoyable, but at the time, there were only 4 alliance raids, so I guess you could easily get them. Today, it’s far more easy, one of the items costs 350 poetics.

> Reconditioned Anima. You have to exchange two definite items to augment by 3 (1 in the past) the substats of your weapon. At least there are a lot of ways of getting the 2 items, being crafter / gatherer token, exchanging crafted items or items you got from some ARR extremes

> Sharpened Anima. You need to get 50 items. At the time each of them cost 80 non caped tomestones. You could also get 18 of them by doing a weekly quest (3 leveling roulette) or a daily (1 expert roulette at the time, now a 50/60/70/80). Today they cost 40 poetics. Overall a balanced step.

> Complete Anima is divided in 2 part. one is creating an object that’s not so hard, but the other is getting 2000 points of light. I found post that said that in early stormblood, that was between 120 and 130 A1S. Which, if we take they kept the same categories as explained here https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/w..._Weapons/Quest, means we got half the light we get today at the time. for someone that didn’t do savage, that means 120 dungeons or 60 HW alliance raid. If you want my opinion, that’s stupidly long. I’d take the 1500 memo over that anytime. Today the change in light given and the unsynced makes it a really fun step, but at the time, I wonder what was the reaction.

> Anima Lux is doing the 12 AAR and HW primal trials. then buy an object with tomestone. Once again, it can be unsynced, and It’s 12 different trials, so it’s a good step.


Overall, I think the complete anima step was fucking dumb at the time. needing to farm 63 dungeons (that’s if they needed the same light as today, which seems to not be the case) is not good game design. Especially since those steps were supposed to last for a little less than 2 month, compared to the 4 month now

I still wonder about Hyperconductive and Reconditioned steps at the time. Not a fan of repeating the same content again and again (CT for Hyper even if they didn’t go overboard with that), and not sure about how boring it was for Reconditioned. It seems to me it was also a step that asked you a lot of braindead farm, but what do I know? On the other hand, the steps that ask you to do some precise dungeons/trials are very good and aged well. Talking about aging, the changes done with all the steps makes them really enjoyable to do today. Even the Complete Anima step is a pleasure to do today. PF are still pretty common, and each of those was a good experience for me.

But the sole existence of that step made me wonder what was the playerbase like at the time? Were a bigger part of them into extremes/savages? Or were the relics a content made for the hardcore player at the time. And if it was, what about the midcore players? The lack of proper midcore content is one of the things I find problematic with the current game, so was that always there?

One last thing, the whole thing has its own story, that recontextualizes why you need to redo those. It helps keep the player involved with the story.

[CNitsah]

StormBlood

I’ll not go over all the steps, because being linked only with Eureka, SB steps are really alike. What changes is the number of crystals you need. It’s a far more even experience than the HW relics. You run the fates in the zone to get enough cristal, and for the last step of the zone, you also need items that drop on the higher fate of the zone. With time they made farming easier.
There is one thing that I think was a very bad decision at the time : in Pagos (I could stop my sentence here), the crystal you actually need for the weapon obtained by gathering light killing some enemies. The problem is that the kettle you need to unlock that light gathering is only given in one of the last Pagos quests. So when you farm your first weapon, you can only begin to farm for your weapon when you’re nearly finished with the zone. Pagos being the worst zone Eureka, it’s a pain. That said, today, farming the light goes so fast if you know where to go, it’s more of an hindrance than a real problem.

I also have some questions about the last step (The baldesion one). I feel like needing to complete 4 successful baldesion runs to get the last step is too much. That said, that step is only for some eureka stat, and nothing else changes in terms of look or other stats, so I guess it’s ok. But there is always that feeling that “it’s not finished”. Given the involvement needed to make a single BA run today, maybe needing less eureka fragments might be a good thing. The thing is run at best once a week.

The weapons kinda lack a proper story compared to the other relics (well except EW ones), but being so tightly linked to Eureka, it kinda doesn’t feel like it.

Shadowbringer

> Resistance weapon. Very basic step, getting 4 scalepowder. nothing to say here, it’s just for the basic weapon.

> Augmented resistance weapon ask you to gather 60 memories of dying (20 of 3 sorts). You can either farm them on the HW zone fates, or get them in the fates in Bozja. I feel the HW fates are a better choice, because Bozja (and later Zadnor) suffer from the fact they’re divided in 3 parts, and each part gives a certain type (also, not 100% drop, far from it). Except in reality, players mostly farm the 3rd zone, which gives more mettle. Farming fates in zone 1 and 2 takes longer. It could benefit from dropping the number a little now we’re in EW, but overall, it was an ok step. It’s a little long now, and I think the drop rate in bozja should be increased, but not the worst step.

> Resistance recollection. Once again, ask you to get memories of dying, but only 6. You can get them by doing a 60 dungeon, the leveling roulettes, or rng drop in Fates and CE in bozja.

> Law's Order Resistance Weapon : you need 15 items. You get 5 by doing Castrum Litore, which pop pretty often or get one by doing any of the CT raids (you can also sometimes get one by doing a CE, but you know, you can’t count on rng). Whatever the solution, it’s pretty fast to do, despite not being a fan of the whole “doing 15 times CT”. You get it easily either being because it pops so often in the alliance (well, it probably gonna change due to what was announced in the last fanfest), but that’s not the most engaging step. I was fine with that step when it was the relic weapon step, but now that it’s basically to get a skin, reducing the number needed would be nice. (something like 10, with castrum litore giving 5 and one CT raid 2).

> Here there is a one time step, you only have to do once for all the weapons. you have to get items in either SB fates or HW and SB alliance raids. There are two different items, and you need 18 of either. Still not a fan of repeating the same content again and again, but the fact you can do fates and it’s one time thing make it pretty good.

> Then comes the worst step of all, the augmented Augmented Law's Order. You need 15 timeworn artifacts that you can get either in Delubrum Reginae (1 per run in the beginning, now 3), or in PotD. Both are awful. Delubrum Reginae on pick up can be a pain. Especially since it’s not that much ran today. Sure it’s scaled, and after 30 min, you get in whatever the number of people. And after that, if you’re not lucky, that can be a pain to finish. There is the solution of organized optimized runs, but I feel needing to go to a discord to get a precise date and hour to make an optimized run is asking a lot of engagement for a relic step.

The other option is not better. PotD is dead. And even during ShB, where a lot of people farmed it for the relic, the drop rate was just not that interesting. You can only drop them on the boss, and I never got more than 2 on 50 floors, often 1, and a few times none. It was an awful step at the time, but time made it worse. None of these things can be unsynced, so it doesn’t become easier, but PotD has returned to its dead content state, and people barely run DR. That step is the only single reason I’ll only ever have 3 ShB relics finished. It’s not just worth the time. It wasn’t at the time, it isn’t any more now that we added the infinite queue time. Making the PotD bosses drop them at 100% would make it better, but that would still be a cosmic pain to do.

> The next step is another one time step. Through several quests, you have to gather 30 versions of 6 different items that can either be gathered in Zadnor Fates and CE, either in the Alexander, Omega and Eden raids. I don’t have a lot of memories about those, but at the time it didn’t seem like too much to me. I would maybe now argue that 30 of each might be a little too much for a glam, but still a one time thing.

> The last step asks you to gather 15 items, you can get them either by doing the dalriada (3 per run), the DR (2 per run) or any 70 dungeon (1 per run), or Heavens-High (rng on the bosses). Overall, not really exciting, and repetitive, but at least it’s not that long.

In terms of story, the ShB relic took the best of both HW and SB. The relics have their own story, while being only one aspect of the resistance storyline. It’s satisfying, and you get the link between the two. Of all the relics stories, it seems to me it’s the most satisfying.

Overall, the ShB relic quest was pretty good, except for one step that downright the worst of all 3 expansions I talked about. As long as you did them outside Exploratory zones. Drop rates in bozja Zadnor were worse than outside of it. I appreciate the idea behind that move, giving us another reason to do old content as a secondary method. This is one of the reasons I think the whole Bozja popularity was never about the Relics, but all the other things it had to offer.

Another big bad point is that it’s the first relic that won’t get easier/faster with time. Everything has to be done synched or no drop. This relic has literally become longer to do now it’s a glam than when it was one of the best weapons. It's a no. Timeworn artifact has become so ridiculously difficult to get it's just not worth it. This has to change

[CNitsah]

Conclusion (and TL; DR)

So in the end, what makes a relic questline good. First of all, I think having its own story is an important part of keeping the player involved. A lot of old relics steps have been “do older dungeons” or buy this with tomestones. That said it was always recontextualised. The content was a mean to get what was needed. In EW, relics were Frankenstein’d to the Hildibrand storyline, and the whole depth of the relics story is “Godbert found a book”. There is no involvement from the players. I’m pretty sure a good part of the complaints about the relics would not have happened if there was an effort made with the story of the relic.

When it comes to the steps themselves, I feel avoiding a braindead farm of 60 to 120 dungeons for one step is pretty obvious. It seems to me the 6 to 15 dungeons/trials they used in both HW and ShB seems a good choice, as long it’s not repeating 15 times the same instance.

It also needs to be easily accessible. If you need to do something that’s not so popular (like deep dungeons), the drop rate has to be close to 100%. Spending 25 min in a potd queue, then 10-15 min running the content, to not get anything 3 or 4 times in a row, that’s basically 2 or 3 hours, to not get any items when you actually need 15 of them is just a no go. .

One time step seemed like a good direction to explore. EW relics could have used those to unlock the Tomes items you have to use. It feels to me this would have been a good middle-ground to make relics engaging and feel like you have to work to get them (at least the first time) without changing the current system that much. Even what I labeled as the worst steps would feel ok if they were one time only.

Another important point is making older relics more easily available. For that, HW is an example, and ShB is the thing to avoid. Another way to do that, that would go in the direction EW relics went, is to make them buyable with the exploratory zone money once the extension ends. Bozja had 4 or 5 kinds of pieces that stacked and that stopped being useful as soon as another patch arrived. Make the items buyable with those. Or if you don’t want new exploratory zones, put a one-time quest that unlocks the items needed in the bicolor gemstones vendor, for example. This would have the side effect of keeping the zones relevant and alive.

Those are only a few idea, but I think there is 3 points that are important to keep the player engaged :
- A story : the current relic story doesn’t feel like a relic story at all. You just took an existing content and artificially added a relic to it.
- The feeling of having to work for it. I just mentioned a few propositions to make that while keeping the core of the current relic loop.
- When it comes to the step the steps themselves avoid repeating the same content again and again. The 6 to 15 dungeons/trials seems like a good scale, as long as the drop rate is 100% for those contents. As much as possible, choose the content, to avoid forcing people to farm the same content again and again. They also need to be active content.


I think following those would make the relics enjoyable for most of the players. Of course some hardcore people that have the Savage weapons anyway would complain it’s too easy, but for me, those feels like good guidelines for relics steps.

So what do you think about that? Do you think having the relics having one time quests is a good idea? Do you think my ideas are awful? I tried to go a little further than “current relics sucks” that we too often see here, so I would appreciate you also doing so. The whole point is trying to go further than the observation than the EW relics are disapointing. Thank you.

[Dionysius]

Personally I don't really care that much about the method of obtaining it. What matters to me is it how it looks and have unique effects especially the alternate color like the Lux version from HW.

The effect quality and design is best in ARR and getting worse with each expansion.

[Avatre]

I prefer steps that are more than just "get X amount of tomestones and buy these items". Sure, having a step or two like that isn't terrible, but something more immersive that makes it feel like I truly earned it would be better. Not the books from ARR mind you, but something more like the light/dungeon grinds.

[ReynTime]

I didn't hate the books. At all. Their point was to push you to interact with every type of battle content in the game (at the time) for it and take long enough that players interested would have to engage with it during the patch's entire life cycle. Besides they're a lot less repetitive than running hunt trains or the same 2 dungeons over and over.
But exploratory zones are more engaging. They give you relic steps in parallel with having their own unique progression system.

I don't care about what the "storyline" of relics are lol. Just give me a decent and long grind to do that has nothing to do with tomestones.

[ZephyrMenodora]

Still a fan of the early ARR line. A relic reborn first step had a long enough but interesting process to me.

https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/w..._Weapons/Quest

(Boring fate grinds that came after are another story, but that initial quest was outstanding.)

[ForsakenRoe]

I think if they want to strike a balance between 'you can farm every relic because you're a collector' and 'it's a grind worthy of a relic quest', the solution came with Bozja: The 'Blade's X' step required 30 of 6 different items, which came from either specific Alex/Omega/Eden raids or doing CEs/Skirmishes in Zone1/2/3 of Zadnor. This gives options, if you don't want to do Zadnor as much you can do the raids (I got a lot of my items by going into E12 a lot for the final TT card I needed for the Jam-On-Toast mount). Additionally, this step functions as the 'grind', but only needs to be done once. Every weapon after, requires a much smaller (by comparison) grind of 'get 15 memories', which you got 3 at a time from Dalriada, or 2 at a time (and 3 timeworn artifacts for a previous step) from Delubrum, so you could bash out two steps at once

So in current quest terms:

One time quest- Gerolt says 'We need 10 of each of these rare items WOL, they come from Bicolor Gemstone vendors idk how they got them but you need to buy them for us'
100 gems, 6 SHB and 6 EW areas, total of 1200 gems (or, 100 Gold ranks). This incentivizes farming FATES in SHB/EW areas, meaning it's a good chance to level any 70+ jobs at the same time. Formidable/Archaeotania/the Thav one/Chi are revitalized because 84 gems for a Gold rank. Getting rank 3 in some areas almost passively due to the grind.

Repeatable bit- Godbert says 'OK thanks WOL we now have the capability to improve the relic even more, but we need the rare final materials to do it and wouldn't you know it, Rowena's the only known source somehow'
Buy 5 SuperGoops (or whatever name) that cost 100 Astronomy each, or 300 Poetics each (or hell have both currencies as options, why not)
Each weapon to upgrade requires 5 SuperGoops, so in total to get all 19 relics you'd need 95 SuperGoops, costing 9500 Astronomy, or 28500 Poetics (or a combination of the two currencies). Poetics as an option reincentivizes doing non-max level content like Eureka, MSQ roulette, etc, and allows people to earn relic progression on non-capped classes (level alts AND get relic progression via Levelling/Alliance Roulettes? Yes please)

(prices can be adjusted for balance)

People who want only one weapon (or one role, ie all tanks) would do the grind, and get their weapon, and it'd be a satisfying 'I worked to get this and now I have this, dopamine obtained', but those who want all 19 would still be able to 'reasonably grind for all 19'. As it stands, the current total tomes needed to get all 19 weapons up to current level is 4500x19, or 85500 tomes. I would be fine with grinding out 85k Poetics, since we can get 400 a day via MSQ roulette (and get loads from other sources like WT), but Astronomy? No thanks, I'll just wait till 7.0 when it's all shifted down to Poetics. I take a small amount of solace knowing that, making the current relic cost Astronomy, means that it'll cost Poetics in the future, and that when that day comes, the extreme amount of Poetics needed will re-incentivize one of the best 'spammable sources' of them: Eureka

[Jeeqbit]

Stormblood and Shadowbringers were the best ones because of using Exploratory zones. The RNG substats in Stormblood were not good and I am glad they don't do it anymore.

People who want only one weapon (or one role, ie all tanks) would do the grind, and get their weapon, and it'd be a satisfying 'I worked to get this and now I have this, dopamine obtained', but those who want all 19 would

That was one of the big issues. I got my weapon for one job casually over a few 3-hour sessions of each Eureka area as they released. It was like 3 hours a week. That's it! But the people who got all the weapons for all the jobs were like "this is too much or too grindy" and said it was miserable waiting for NMs, yet if they just did 1 there wouldn't have been these issues.

Shadowbringers did try to address this problem by having some steps that are one-offs and then you don't need to do them for your other relics. It also gave people the option to spam old raids, which some people prefer, whereas I prefer to do the new/exploratory content, so I did it all inside Bozja and Zadnor. I didn't do CT or Omega or anything like that.

(don't know why people preferred CT so much, it's like a love-hate relationship, they complain about hating CT but when given the choice of that or Bozja they do CT).