What makes a good relic storyline / step

[Avatre]

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).

The part of the Eureka weapons I hated most was the people who sat there doing nothing when you were working to spawn NMs, just to zerg it and then go sit and do nothing waiting for the next. That, and Pagos, were probably some of the most annoying parts of the entire process. And I was someone who was doing all of them, ended up with SAM needing BA only, WHM needing Hydatos+BA, and everything else was just starting Pyros. And that's where they've all sat since I finished Pagos partially due to it being boring going in there alone, and there barely ever being anyone else in the instances.

[Jeeqbit]

The part of the Eureka weapons I hated most was the people who sat there doing nothing when you were working to spawn NMs, just to zerg it and then go sit and do nothing waiting for the next. That, and Pagos, were probably some of the most annoying parts of the entire process. And I was someone who was doing all of them

That was also an issue. The people who were just doing one didn't like it if they were casual players either, for some reason, because their 2 hours of play was consumed by waiting for NMs.

Some people like myself are perfectly alright with that though. I think I did Pagos after it had only had one nerf (it got many more after that), but people were still saying it wasn't good, but I had no problems at all and even solo-spawned some NMs in Pagos.

[TheNight]

Amazing overview.

I would just add that it's pretty easy for Sqaure Enix to ameliorate some of the pain points with a band-aid fix, so it's sad to see that they haven't. The Timeworn Artifacts step in particular needs a nerf. They can easily do this by simply making the step require 6 Timeworn Artifacts and boosting PotD's reward to 2 or even 3.

There is the concern about deep dungeon's lack of longevity however. While seasoned solo deep dungeon runners would have no problem at all with early floors, new players would and the queue times are insane now for grouping up. They should frankly give an Echo buff for the earlier floors if soloing. I don't think this affects the solo achievements at all (other than Lonely Explorer) since the hard floors have always been above F100 for PotD and F30 for HoH and Orthos. It will definitely affect scoring but the ability for new players to solo the easier floors should supersede the handful of people who even compete for scoring beyond just getting the solo title.

[Eastwall]

Amazing overview.

I would just add that it's pretty easy for Sqaure Enix to ameliorate some of the pain points with a band-aid fix, so it's sad to see that they haven't. The Timeworn Artifacts step in particular needs a nerf. They can easily do this by simply making the step require 6 Timeworn Artifacts and boosting PotD's reward to 2 or even 3.

There is the concern about deep dungeon's lack of longevity however. While seasoned solo deep dungeon runners would have no problem at all with early floors, new players would and the queue times are insane now for grouping up. They should frankly give an Echo buff for the earlier floors if soloing. I don't think this affects the solo achievements at all (other than Lonely Explorer) since the hard floors have always been above F100 for PotD and F30 for HoH and Orthos. It will definitely affect scoring but the ability for new players to solo the easier floors should supersede the handful of people who even compete for scoring beyond just getting the solo title.

Yes, l am working on resistance weapon right now. The timeworn artifact is a cancer... I am not making another one. That made me appreciate how easy ew relic weapons are.

[Kaurhz]

They wouldn't need to nerf Timeworn Artifacts if they did a better job with Delubrum and future-proofing.

Just saying.

[Zarkovitch]

Choices is the important steps of relics. Don't like the new open world SE made for you then, grind old world content such as fate,roulettes,hunts to achieve it. Biggest flaw of SHB relic was there part they force you to do bozja content for sake of lvl up relic. They should just put options grind X amounts of stuffs to get the lvl up or do new open world content.

[Minali]

That's a very thorough analysis of the relic grinds! I agree with your conclusion regarding the story: It wouldn't make up for this lack of grind, but at least it would be entertaining. As someone who did at least 1 relic from all expansions (except the 6.4 EW step), I was hoping they would use the opportunity to include people from the previous relic grinds and tie the previous stories together. Jalzahn and the guy from the Anima weapons are from Radz-at-Han. Coming up with an excuse for the others wouldn't be that hard. Granted, they announced nothing like that, but when they said Gerolt and Godbert would join forces, and they wanted to go a bit more back to the roots, it sounded to me like expecting some big collaborative work would be a reasonable assumption. Instead two famous guys congratulate each other how great they are and try to become even better in their greatness...?

Personally Bozja seemed to me in many ways like a very good combination of the advantages of previous grinds. You had an own area with story, many interesting characters and fights, like SB, but also options among the usual duties, boosting side content and dungeons a lot and thereby helping with the queues, like HW. That one time grind with the normal raids was the one thing I didn't like, especially after EW release, because that was an unreasonable big amount of things, one time step or no. So I'm not saying everything was perfect, there was definitely room for improvement, but it seemed to me like they were getting there. When they said they wanted to go back to earlier attempts, I thought we might get HW but with the improvements of previous relic grinds. Maybe a choice of 3 side content duties that need a push instead of 1. And this would have been perfectly fine for me. It also wouldn't have required any additional time for the devs compared to now: The duties they could tie it to and could use a boost already exist: Shared Fates, Variant Dungeons, all Normal Raids, optional dungeons,... You could even add Gold Saucer FATEs or Chocobo races to the mix with Godbert involved. xD The NPCs I mentioned above are also all in the game and could be easily repurposed. The relics wouldn't have felt like participation trophies, you would have some fun with the variety of duties you usually don't see due to unpopularity, and the story would have been a slightly chaotic collaborative thing that befits an expansion like EW. Instead they just noped out, made Hildi mandatory for this and added something where the WoL is just a walking coinpurse who happens to be nearby. How is that fun if neither the story nor the process is in any way engaging?

[ForsakenRoe]

They wouldn't need to nerf Timeworn Artifacts if they did a better job with Delubrum and future-proofing.

If it were up to me, I'd make POTD give 1, 1, 2, 3, 3, for a set of 1-50 or 51-100 (incentivizes clearing a full set, helps newbies get their 100 clear to unlock HOH or Orthos). Delubrum would be moved up to 5 per run (and 3 memories for the later step) guaranteed. Dalriada would then move up to being 5 memories for that final step, so it's still 'better', but if you're working on many relics, doing both steps in tandem via Delubrum is still the 'optimal' strat

Additionally, if it were up to me and I didn't have to factor in devtime, I'd make it so that if you queue for Castrum, Delubrum or Dalriada and don't have the full 48, you get NPC Bozjan Resistance soldiers to fill out the ranks. No need to worry about 'oh damn not enough went top and now it enraged' because the NPCs would automatically sort themselves to try and equalize the split. Additionally, the game would add soldiers of the role required to fill each party out to 2/2/4 composition. If you have 10 tanks, 7 healers and 14 dps in the queue (all solo queuing, for argument's sake), it'd add two tanks, five healers, and ten DPS to equal all the parties out. It'd try to add named NPCs like Bajsaljen (don't remember how to spell), Marsak, Alori the 'slightly different DRG animations' from Zadnor, etc, and then once it runs out it'd just add 'Bozjan Chirurgeon', or 'Bozjan Stalwart', etc. If every 'real player' is KO'd, the soldiers would call for a temporary retreat and regroup, so you can't just start a fight and go AFK, you'd have to dodge stuff still. You could let them do all the damage, like you can with trusts though.

Idk I just think it'd be hype to reclaim Bozja directly alongside the boys, instead of them sitting back in the vanguard and/or being relegated to skirmishes. Also, fighting alongside eg the SAM/DRK/MNK trio in Castrum, only to see them mangled and turned into the Trinity Seeker, would hit harder if they were literally alongside you for the Castrum raid, rather than them being only in skirmishes. A 'we won some ground, but at what cost' kinda thing

[Minali]

Btw, for all the people doing Shb relics now: At least at my server in Light DC, DR runs are fairly frequently organized via Party Finder with 8 people. You don't need a Discord to organize this. During popular times it should be no big issue to find a group. If there is none open, open one yourself, they tend to fill up in maybe 30 minutes max? It's not great, certainly not like it was when it was current content and we could enjoy 24 people chaos every 10 minutes, but still beats PotD droprates and is more fun. (Afaik thanks to the echo you also don't need 8 people, but I made the experience with less people it takes forever and is a bit more risky if not everyone knows the ins and outs of the duty. But I also only had one or two runs with less than 7 players.) Maybe it is similar on your servers?

[CNitsah]

(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).

The speed, for re-doing half of the steps, I can assure you the bozja/zadnor option are not 100%. Compared to the 10 min that CT tower takes, with the certitude of getting one. It's also why people mostly ran out of bozja Fates instead of bozja fates for the augmented resistance weapons. People will prefer to do something that takes them 10 min with 100% drop rates over something that takes 5 min with a 50% chance drop rates (and it was not 50%).