4gamer Interview

[EgilTheStressedMage]

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

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

[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.

[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

[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?

[Jeeqbit]

There has never been a relic grind that has ever been fun.

That really depends on the person. There are people who find them fun.

Bozja on the dev side, was supposedly such a failure that they hap hazardly ended it and scrapped the third zone we were supposed to get for it.

I was in there (all throughout Shadowbringers right up to the last months) and it was full up always. It clearly wasn't a failure. I did CLL 23 times and Dalriada 32 times. I farmed for the stat boosts and it was busy then as well.

If their definition of failure is that casual players who like farming CT and Deltascape 3 instead of field areas didn't do the field areas, then they should adjust their definition of failure.

Now all of a sudden there's demand for aggressive relic grinds despite history showing that a bigger portion of the community was against them.

Nobody showed support because they didn't need to, since they existed and you could visibly see the achievement hunters very happy and very busy farming them.

Now those same achievement hunters are evidently bored and quitting according to this graph https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...-is-in-decline - this graph is about achievement hunters dropping at an unprecedented rate and unless I'm mistaken, it's a drop of about 100,000, taking it to Stormblood levels.

I think relic is one of the few pieces of content where SE devs are, "Damned if they do, Damned if they don't".

Agreed. But just because people support all content being easy, doesn't mean it should be. As I said in my original post, just because a lot of people would like savage to be clearable in 1 pull doesn't mean it should be (in case you don't believe that's the case, remember the majority of people unsync it later on).

[CNitsah]

There has never been a relic grind that has ever been fun. Each relic can be cherry picked apart on why they weren't fun. Bozja on the dev side, was supposedly such a failure that they hap hazardly ended it and scrapped the third zone we were supposed to get for it. Now all of a sudden there's demand for aggressive relic grinds despite history showing that a bigger portion of the community was against them. I think relic is one of the few pieces of content where SE devs are, "Damned if they do, Damned if they don't". I'm hoping this 'voice' from the community only exists because the rest of the content is equally unsatisfying, but I've been around the block enough to know that even if EW had gone perfectly, there would still be complaints of field content.

I can't go totally against that, but the problem is that they scrapped that and gave us nothing else to do. Bozja, for its relics or whatever other reason you were there, was a place to spend a little time during down periods. It gave you incentives to play the game. Something to engage into with a clear goal. Now what do we have to replace that? Roulettes and Hunts Trains, content that were already there. I think there are some crazy grinder in the pack, but overall, I think it boils down to "I want to play but outside reapeating roulettes at nauseam (I can't stand any of the 90 dungeons anymore)". It's been month that outide caping my tomestone and doing the Wonderous Tails, I basically do nothing. Bozja and relics were the things that avoided that feeling during ShB. It seems to me that why they are so often brought in.

[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.

[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!

[Kaurhz]

On the 6.0 "final day" trial: This does not address the underlying issue with all capstone trials - They should be looking at all capstone trials. Making an adjustment in that, for example, the boss cannot die before transitioning is still bad. Granted, this is an assumption I am making, but they have done the same in the past, e.g., with Gaius.

On Alliance Raid difficulty: I mean, it's a fair point, Alliance Raids, you're dealing with massive gaps in player skill, to be honest. I think the current version of Ivalice is a decent point, even if a lot of it is just sponge.

On criterion rewards: I'm glad they're looking at increasing the reward. Still, I personally think they should restructure slightly how people get these rewards. e.g., after x number of runs I know I am guaranteed to get everything. Making that a little uncertainty would be best, e.g., lockboxes with a greater scope of rewards.

On Relics: I mean, yes, the sentiment behind this is good, but they have gone completely bonkers in that direction. Under no circumstances should someone be able to log in and immediately have everything for the relic as soon as the quest is complete. There should still be some effort required. A good balance between this is to create more 1-time steps (and I don't mean quests). e.g., Go complete a checklist of duties x number of times. In fact, for people getting the Resistance weapons, I would argue that on-patch, it wasn't really a significant amount of effort at all, really - If you took away the one-time stages. The initial relic was a little painful, yes. But subsequent relics were a joke. It created that middle ground for players. People who wanted a grind had it in the form of one-time-only steps. People that wanted something on the easier side for collecting them all, were also catered to.

They need to understand they'll never please everyone. That is literally every single relic series they have gone with.

On DC Travel flocking to a single DC: I hope they eventually develop a cross-DC party finder.

[Payadopa]

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

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I'm so hoping the TTYD remake incentivises them to make Paper Mario fun again. That being said, Sea of Stars is absolutely amazing with it being a cross between Crono Trigger and Paper Mario.