4gamer Interview

[aveyond-dreams]

This just reinforces that this is probably my last expansion if FFXIV.

It's been a great run but I think it's run it's course.

I don’t even know if I can say it’s been a great run because of the major controversies I’ve had to endure with this game and it’s decisions. They turned Blue Mage into a limited job and to this day Summoner is still too far from what it should be. They genderlocked one of my favorite races and when they added the missing gender it came with too many limitations and strings attached still. Now the story and content is in shambles too. All the internal data in the world means nothing if they don’t try and listen to actual players instead of staring at spreadsheets.

[Khryseis_Astra]

Why not make the first weapon the long grind and subsequent weapons more lax? Basically the previous relics but with more one-time steps to account for all the extra jobs.

I’d be fine with that… to be fair, I didn’t mind the tomestones overmuch. At least it wasn’t Fates with random drops! But I did miss having a Eureka or Bozja for the relic. Hard grind for first relic, then the current tomestone scheme for each additional weapon? Sure! As someone who multi-classes, I’d appreciate not having every weapon be a grind.

As far as Criterion rewards go, yes they definitely need more. But just don’t take all the glam and emotes from the Variant level to do it. I was happy that each version had a mount of their own. But I don’t want to have to do Criterion just for the glams, emotes and orc roll stuff that’s currently Variant level.

As for DC travel, how do they not know how it is on NA?! I mean, there must be data on that somewhere! That was probably the most troubling statement I read, because besides certain content being totally dead or near-dead on some NA DCs, the Eastern US and EU have been suffering from bad NTT (SE’s ISP) nodes for months now, making the game almost unplayable without a VPN. There’s a 130+ page thread about it in the tech forum. We keep submitting traceroutes, but the problem never goes away for everyone. One region sees improvement, another gets the crushing lag, like a never-ending merry go round. If they really are that ignorant of things outside of JP, that worries me.

[Morphiana]

Why do people want relic to be either a grind or no grind.

Why can't they do criterion dungeons in Dawntrail, make normal mode a bit harder, and make relic one of the steps using those (by discovering X paths which is randomized for each player)?

Why can't relic have a game mechanic outside of grind like Bozja which arguably was a leap in quality and in the right direction (though not perfect and should not be copy / pasted in the future) from the previous expansion relics. Eureka / Books / Fate grinding / Guild Leve grinding / Etc. just isn't fun and at the end of the day a video game is supposed to be fun.

If you make relics look cool but also make it a straight grind you'll get players who pursue it, get burned out, and quit the game. SE obviously saw this in their data, heard the incredible amount of complaints that divided the community during ARR / Heavensward, and has shifted further away from pure grind with each subsequent expansion.

If we want a better relic experience we should make suggestions on what we'd like to see, so I want to ask you - What kind of relic process would you like to see and experience?

[seolhyun]

Why do people want relic to be either a grind or no grind.

Why can't they do criterion dungeons in Dawntrail, make normal mode a bit harder, and make relic one of the steps using those (by discovering X paths which is randomized for each player)?

Why can't relic have a game mechanic outside of grind like Bozja which arguably was a leap in quality and in the right direction (though not perfect and should not be copy / pasted in the future) from the previous expansion relics. Eureka / Books / Fate grinding / Guild Leve grinding / Etc. just isn't fun and at the end of the day a video game is supposed to be fun.

If you make relics look cool but also make it a straight grind you'll get players who pursue it, get burned out, and quit the game. SE obviously saw this in their data, heard the incredible amount of complaints that divided the community during ARR / Heavensward, and has shifted further away from pure grind with each subsequent expansion.

If we want a better relic experience we should make suggestions on what we'd like to see, so I want to ask you - What kind of relic process would you like to see and experience?

i think most ppl just want some variety or something new to do for the relic.

when u spend the first year of EW doing roulettes and hunt trains, then the relic is basically more roulettes and hunt trains, it is pretty disappointing.

[Morphiana]

i think most ppl just want some variety or something new to do for the relic.

when u spend the first year of EW doing roulettes and hunt trains, then the relic is basically more roulettes and hunt trains, it is pretty disappointing.

That's fair, so what would you like to see?

[aveyond-dreams]

That's fair, so what would you like to see?

I would very much like to see a new series of exploratory zones that take after Bozja and Zadnor for the relic questline. I would like for these zones to continue the Ivalician storyline that was unceremoniously (kind of) terminated via the Field Notes. There is a wealth of material they can draw from FFXII, Vagrant Story, and Tactics Ogre in order to accomplish this.

The relic questline should still maintain 2 options for progression in and out of the content, but the relic-dedicated content such as CEs/CLL/Dalriada like events should be the most efficient way to progress the relic as opposed to running fates/old alliance raids. I would like the first exploratory zone to release by the .25 patch, if not earlier due to the lack of long-lived content early on in expansions. No more free relics for tomes. Tome relics exist. People can get those if they want.

[Lauront]

Why do people want relic to be either a grind or no grind.

Why can't they do criterion dungeons in Dawntrail, make normal mode a bit harder, and make relic one of the steps using those (by discovering X paths which is randomized for each player)?

Why can't relic have a game mechanic outside of grind like Bozja which arguably was a leap in quality and in the right direction (though not perfect and should not be copy / pasted in the future) from the previous expansion relics. Eureka / Books / Fate grinding / Guild Leve grinding / Etc. just isn't fun and at the end of the day a video game is supposed to be fun.

If you make relics look cool but also make it a straight grind you'll get players who pursue it, get burned out, and quit the game. SE obviously saw this in their data, heard the incredible amount of complaints that divided the community during ARR / Heavensward, and has shifted further away from pure grind with each subsequent expansion.

If we want a better relic experience we should make suggestions on what we'd like to see, so I want to ask you - What kind of relic process would you like to see and experience?

All I'll say is I am baffled by the fact that they didn't hook the relic and relic zone features (like logos actions) into V/C dungeons, coupled with overshooting on the difficulty for Criterion and not offering sufficient rewards to motivate players to do it. There's been a lot of posts about how they could've improved it or EO through simple changes. I honestly don't consider the "burn out" to be an unavoidable issue of the relic being a bit of a grind to achieve - they state that the issue lies with players having multiple jobs. Fine, then just make the first relic the harder one to obtain and offer streamlined options after that. The whole plan with Bozja was to allow for alternatives to the instance, unlike Eureka, but it wasn't handled too well. Really, Eureka and Bozja just offered a lot of things to do if you wanted to do them, coupled with a social experience, and it's not like their engagement rates were bad, either. That's not inextricably tied to the relic acquisition burnout because a lot of that came down to external grinds. Just make sure to avoid any bottleneck stages that force players back into the instance when trying to acquire the surplus relics. Whether they envision the relic zones something entirely separate or not to the V/C dungeons, which are here to stay, the aim should be for the content fun to play and/or rewarding even to someone not pursuing a relic and provide methods to keep it alive once the next expansion is out. Their current approach to design seems very binary to me and I don't think they've really addressed the issue well or identified those legitimate issues that the relic zones did have.

I'll also be quite honest and say I don't see an issue with the relic grind being something you have to work towards and that any burnout in this case is by choice, mostly through obtaining relics through more than one job. As it stands it sounds like they want the relic to just be a fancier tomestone weapon but I think it's lost some of its meaning if that's the case. There comes a point where you could apply the same approach to any form of content and I really don't think completion metrics are all that matter here.

[EgilTheStressedMage]

Oh good, we’re entering the “Paper Mario Sticker Star” phase of this game.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

[Khryseis_Astra]

If we want a better relic experience we should make suggestions on what we'd like to see, so I want to ask you - What kind of relic process would you like to see and experience?

For me personally, I don’t care if it’s hard or easy. That just determines how many I’ll make. I think I took 1 HW, 2 Eureka and 5 Bozjan weapons to full completion. I’ve lost count of how many Mandervilles I have in various stages right now. lol honestly I have nothing else useful to buy with those tomestones otherwise! Which is why it didn’t really bother me. They had other stuff this expansion (Island Sanctuary and the V/C dungeons) so having an easy relic process to go with the silliness of the Manderville questlines really didn’t strike me as being out of place.

What I did miss was having a new zone to explore, a new side story to tie to the relic weapon quest, new gear and other rewards from the zones, and the player interaction/cooperation (much more so in Eureka than Bozja) to get the NMs/CEs to spawn. I guess rewards-wise, the Variant dungeons filled some of that gap, as well as the exploration part. I actually really like the Variants, though they do lose their replayability after you finish all the paths and get all the rewards you want.

Things from past weapon grinds I could’ve done without: get 30 each of 3 different crystals that may or may not drop when you do a Fate! If it’s going to be a grind, leave the RNG out of it please! Let me know I have to do X amount of something to get a step done. And maybe after a certain amount of time they could’ve made it so you can just que for the bigger dungeons like BA, CLL, etc. rather than spawn them, because once it’s old content, you need to organize a discord party to go do them. Hence why I still haven’t done BA yet! lol

[Gullis]

but the fact is that many players have strengthened the Manderville Weapon this time to the highest level ever

Oh wow! what a revelation! more people have gotten the free weapon we hand out every patch. What a twist!