My feedback on the method of obtaining relics in Endwalker

[Mithron]

Let me start off by saying I stated several times how much I disliked Eureka and Bozja, and would rather run Tamtara normal in Duty Finder synced a thousand times than do anything in either of those two areas again. And I still hold to that. I do not like Eureka or Bozja, and I especially don't like how difficult it is to do them when they're not relevant any more and depend on others to participate. I'd rather just solo queue Duty Finder, get 4-24 randoms that are all there from Roulettes, or grind some Fates I can do my self for small progress.

I stated several times how much I prefer being able to do a variety of tasks to accrue progress towards my relic, even if it's small and incremental, so that I may choose the way I grind them. I quite enjoy the ARR and HW relic methods of obtaining, having done several of each, many of which while they were relevant. Mostly because I can do them with a variety of methods, rather than "just Eurkea" or "just Bozja."

So, Endwalker was closer to what I like but still missed the mark on several things. The first, and most obvious, is that 1500 Tomes per "step" is really small. Just a few days of Dailies is enough to fully cover a single relic from beginning to end, and you can do that even faster with things like Hunts or even Crystaline Conflict. I do like all the ways you can get Tomes to cover these so I'm not limited to a dead zone like Eureka, but instead of using Tomes, I think it would've been better to have unique currencies that you obtain much slower doing the same things. This is why steps like the Books, or Atma, or Crystal Sand/Umbrite were all much better. Even after they had their amounts reduced, they're still grindy enough to be long term goals and payoff. And the methods of obtaining them are still viable today without needing external resources like Discord groups or depending on other peoples' interests.

I'll leave the discussion about the aesthetics of the relics in Endwalker to a minimum, but they're mostly pretty terrible especially compared to how good the ARR/HW relics are. There's only a small handful of SB-EW relics I enjoy, and none of them are final stage. So far, most of the best EW relics are the step right before the final. The DRK one in particular is pretty good, because it has two separate glows on it at the same time instead of pulsating between two colors without being a truly abhorrent shape. Well done, I like this one a lot!

So, my main feedback is that no more forced Eureka or Bozja ever again, but also make it harder than just 1500 Tomes per step. Good job on letting us choose our methods of grind, keep that up. The Manderville quests were great and a treat, I enjoyed them in EW almost as much as I enjoyed the other Hildibrand episodes, another good job.

That is my feedback, thank you for no Eureka/Bozja, but make it harder than 1500 Tomes.

[Jeeqbit]

Personally, I'd like them tied to the new Field Operation. But a fair compromise would be to do it like Bozja where people can choose to do it in the Field Operation or by farming boring old content like Crystal Tower and leves.

I think the difference compared to Bozja should be that it is slightly more efficient to do it in the Field Operation, but if someone is determined enough to do it via old content then they can.

The problem in Bozja was that the drops were RNG whereas doing old content it was guaranteed, which didn't make logical sense if the goal was to make the new content enticing.

[Mithron]

The problem in Bozja was that

The problem with Bozja was that it was bad and not designed for longevity. Again, I'd rather do Tamtara normal a thousand times in Duty Finder than anything in Bozja.

[Jeeqbit]

The problem with Bozja was that it was bad and not designed for longevity.

Actually, it was. It allowed you to farm long-term for the books that get the mount. There is also a rare mount drop from Dalriada. You can farm skirmishes for a really long time to grind extra stat boosts and that was intended for the hardcore crowd, because they would have to know that most casual players aren't going to grind the damage/HP/healing buffs.

But I agree that Bozja wasn't ideal for me personally. I preferred Eureka, because having everyone waiting with eachother to spawn NMs was great for social interaction and there were lots of rewards to get from different types of farms, treasure hunts with rare rewards and bosses that drop rare rewards that can boost your stats and element capability.

In Bozja, the skirmish farms do get a bit samey like farming FATEs, but CEs do save it a bit because CEs are really good.

[4clubbedace]

The problem with Bozja was that it was bad and not designed for longevity. Again, I'd rather do Tamtara normal a thousand times in Duty Finder than anything in Bozja.

i was in southern front last night with a full 72 person instance, with a 48 man Castrum run

peopel go in there since its a great place to level 70-90

[Heroman3003]

Personally, I'd like them tied to the new Field Operation. But a fair compromise would be to do it like Bozja where people can choose to do it in the Field Operation or by farming boring old content like Crystal Tower and leves.

I think the difference compared to Bozja should be that it is slightly more efficient to do it in the Field Operation, but if someone is determined enough to do it via old content then they can.

The problem in Bozja was that the drops were RNG whereas doing old content it was guaranteed, which didn't make logical sense if the goal was to make the new content enticing.

Main issue with hard-tying relics to the Expedition zones and progression in them is aparent. It becomes very dead in next expansion. I'd rather have it other way around, relic completely unrelated to expedition zone and progression of it being its own, but expedition zone instead being the optional way to get the relic pieces. That way we won't have another Eureka where content is basically dead in earlier zones, or Bozja where the step thats the worst to do (DR) is also step thats the worst to do outside of it (Horrendously low dropchance from palace, just why).

I’m not sure how people can argue field content isn’t designed for longevity when you can literally go into both field content zones now and be able to do everything in them that you could do in them day 1

Hell both zones are more active than most of the content EW introduced, if field content isn’t an example of content that’s been correctly evergreened that’s not in a roulette I literally cannot think of an example of something that is

Well, if you're lucky with timezone availability and/or are on a particularly populated DC, perhaps. But in time I have available to play, on my DC? Anemos and Pagos are absolutely dead, and BSF is lucky to have more than 4 people present at all.

[AnotherPerson]

Main issue with hard-tying relics to the Expedition zones and progression in them is aparent. It becomes very dead in next expansion. I'd rather have it other way around, relic completely unrelated to expedition zone and progression of it being its own, but expedition zone instead being the optional way to get the relic pieces. That way we won't have another Eureka where content is basically dead in earlier zones, or Bozja where the step thats the worst to do (DR) is also step thats the worst to do outside of it (Horrendously low dropchance from palace, just why).

That's not how it works. If you don't want expedition zones to die, you don't make it have a lack of rewards. A lack of rewards/incentives to do the content make it die even faster. There's plenty of evidence of this with EX fights and Criterion after patch is done. The problem with Eureka and Bozja isn't so much combat design but both the accessibility to reach those zones and the lockout factor. The lack of accessibility in starting the content (finding enough players with the convoluted way to join in an instance) and lack of incentives is ultimately the reason why it dies.

We saw Bozja come back to life in the beginning of Endwalker exactly because new jobs were released (incentivized to play for the exp to level new jobs). Clearly there can be reason to do exploratory content, but the gains usually make visiting this content not worth the losses. When the incentives in the game are good enough to exist for enough players, then the first problem is also no longer an issue.

The main reason people do exploratory content otherwise is because of the content itself (current expansion endgame) and the relic -- progress tied to the relic when the relic is still endgame gives people a reason to do it. By the next expansion, we get new weapons with higher ilvl, so the number of players who really want the relic do so because it is aesethetically pleasing or they're a collector. Hence, the main reason why expedition zones die is because there's a complete lack of incentive to do them when there are more easily obtainable alternatives. Plus, old content will eventually be restricted from a lack of skills due to the way the game makes the toolkit feel incomplete without being at the most recent expansion cap level.

If you want it to be a progression zone, you tie to MSQ but not everyone likes exploratory content, so this isn't a good solution either.

The idea of turning it into a roulette for daily rewards is basically putting an incentive to do bozja weekly is just another way to address the concerns of longevity, which can work but there would still be obvious barriers to entry with the current way the instance is designed.

[Boblawblah]

Assuming this is in good faith, and not trolling, I'll say that I would love everyone to be able to do whatever they enjoy to get progress towards relic weapons. PvP? Sure, go for it. Island Sanctuary? Yup, that's alright too. PvE dungeons with trusts? Sure! Hardcore raiding? That too. Field operations? Yep yep.

Everyone gets the kind of ice cream they want, they just pay for it a bit differently.

[Burmecia]

I would love everyone to be able to do whatever they enjoy to get progress towards relic weapons. PvP? Sure, go for it. Island Sanctuary? Yup, that's alright too. PvE dungeons with trusts? Sure! Hardcore raiding? That too. Field operations? Yep yep.

Wasn't this almost exactly how Anima, HW relic, was? Yeah, I think I like this method the best, instead of tying relics to Eurekas and Bozjas.

[ReynTime]

I take the opinion of people who didn't like the previous relic grinds and throw it into the trash bin.

Not every reward should be easily and quickly obtained by people who don't enjoy the type of content that reward was meant for. Relics were a cool little reward for people who enjoyed long time commitment type of MMO content.

Just like savage gear is made for people who enjoy practicing and clearing hardcore boss fights that require good group coordination.

Just like pvp rewards exist for people who like partaking on pvp.

Just like gold saucer rewards exist for people who like playing minigames.

For people who didn't like the grind or field operations because they complain about 'not having time' for that kind of thing, there already was a type of weapon for them. It's called tome gear. And the final tome gear of each expansion's cycle is more than enough to carry them about as far as a relic would in terms of item level.

I'm not whining that I can't get pvp glamour without doing pvp. Because I'm not entitled to every reward in the game despite not liking the content that locks it. Neither are any of you.

Feel free to disagree. But at the end of the day your whining about how relics used to be is just more irritating noise that makes this game a little worse each expansion.