Freaking gacha games respect my time more than Demiatmas, and that's sad

[Supersnow845]

It really boggles the mind how some of these folks spit out insane hyperbole just to seem 'better' or 'more reasonable' than everyone else. Only to look...really dumb.

"Wanting the relic within the first 12 hours of the patch?? How unreasonable. Maybe the content isn't for you."

Actually, that's a perfectly reasonable expectation going off previous relics. (No, I'm not talking the EW relic.) This isn't even the first UPGRADE step, it is the ACQUISITION step. And going off previous relic quests, the acquisition step is often a very low grind or something quick and easy. So expecting similar, is not wanting a handout as some seem to love putting it. It's perfectly reasonable.

ShB was just buying the Thavnairian Scalepowder, which was 1k tomes. Eureka's was 100 Protean Crystals aka 50 Anemos crystals at minimum. HW's was the 6 luminous crystals, which even back on the launch for the anima relics, the drop rates were reasonable for the luminous crystals and I had my animated weapon by the second day. And that's with a job. The longest and most involved acquisition step is the ARR one. And even then, wasn't that hard. Hell, the infamous Atma step for the ARR relics that this is riffing on, was the second upgrade step. Which is about where I would expect the grind to start getting longer.

For the acquisition step of the current relics to last not just several days for some, but weeks for others, is kinda stupid. Even for a one time grind. It's kinda stupid. A grind is fine, it is actually welcome in my eyes. But this ain't it folks. This ain't it. If it was the 2nd upgrade like the atma step? I'd be more willing to defend it. But...it's the acquisition step.

So, I'm with you when it comes to a lot of this.

I sorta confused as to why you think the acquisition step needs to be quick when the relics currently are nothing more than glams anyway

Even if we go by only the first quest does it really matter they moved a grindier step earlier. I don’t usually defend square but even I can tell if they made the first step like the first step of ShB people would have lost their minds because they didn’t like the EW tones. Putting one of the more grindy steps immediately as a way to say “no this isn’t the EW relic this is a real relic” makes total sense to me

[Valence]

Could you explain how a 20% drop chance from CEs is 'Stupidly low RNG' as you put it? Especially when CEs never stop spawning every 2-3 minutes?

Perhaps you might have forgotten or simply didn't experience it at the time, but ShB relics back in the day asked you to repeat the grind process from scratch. Let's compare ShB and DT relics first steps.


ShB Relics Step 1:

Collect 20 Yellow memories, 20 blue memories, and 20 red memories. A total of 60 per weapon that can either drop from Bozja FATEs, CEs, or from specific HW zones, depending on the color.


DT Relics Step 1:

Collect three pieces of each six demiatmas. A total of 18 demiatmas that can either drop from OC Fates, CEs, or from specific DT zones, depending on the color. A process that is required to be done ONCE, and then you can just get as many Step 1 relic weapons as you like by spending tomestones.


Even if the drop rates are officially much lower than their ShB or any prior expansion counterparts. The point stands that DT only requires you to do it ONCE while ShB and prior asked you to repeat the grind process for each weapon you wish to obtain.

In conclusion, as someone who did ShB relics live when they first came out years ago, and have just finished taking my time to complete DT grind. DT grind is much more job-friendly, and it is a good direction that respects and encourages players to have multiple jobs, all while still being a grindy process as relics used to be prior to EW.

It's stupidly low for the simple reason that you just have to look around to see the variance in time spent and efforts between so many players. 20% over a couple of hundred fates/CE is actually pretty low sample, so you'll naturally have a pretty high variance as a result. Oh... but wait! It only seems to be about 20% for CEs (which seems abnormally high for my own results which are literally half of it)! When it comes to fates people are reporting results between 5 and 10%.

I actually did the ShB relics (several in fact), and thank you again to make the fallacy that people are somehow complaining about the grind, which it's never been about.

ARR all the way to ShB had relics that were more designed with the intent of having player pick their fav job and grind their souls out of it. Perhaps some players would do multiple. And then those relics were HEAVILY nerfed. ShB was a somewhat pivotal point in the formula precisely because the devs started introducing unique steps that had somewhat heavy grinds, probably already starting to shift their paradigm, which ended up in EW and now DT as players grinding their souls to get ALL of the weapons, and perhaps they also think that since we have literally double the jobs compared to ARR, it's also necessary, but I can't exactly get in their heads to know.

But that's nowhere here nor there. I actually like the way they think about it. I like being able to go after all of the weapons over time as long as I put in some effort. What I don't like, again, isn't the grind, but the rng.
And being forced to do content I hate (like fates).

[Granyala]

This is beyond egregious design.

And now you know why our Kitties made that face when Gerolt mentioned the A-Word. :'D

It just boggles the mind why they don't make a bad-luck protection.
The silver coins and Bicolor Gemstones are RIGHT THERE. USE THEM.

1 Atma for 1000 Bi-Colored (equivalent amount of Silver Coins for those that farm inside OC) should be a good protection against extreme RNG outliers.

[Mikey_R]

This is just being needlessly pedantic.

Sometimes, pedantry is important so that the finer details are not missed. I could go on however, I know you do not want to so I will leave it at that.

And makes SB look even worse as, if we DID fuss over the purple background, that means we never acquired our relic till Pagos in 4.36. As the Anemos and Pagos states are still blue backgrounds. Only shifting to purple when they reach Elemental.

Ah yes, my bad. The elemental stage is when you actually get the Eureka weapon. Again, agree to disagree.

It just boggles the mind why they don't make a bad-luck protection. The silver coins and Bicolor Gemstones are RIGHT THERE.
1 Atma for 1000 Bi-Colored (equivalent amount of Silver Coins for those that farm in OC) should be a good protection against extreme RNG outliers.

I don't think being able to buy the demiatmas is the right way to go about RNG protection. What you need is some sort of stop where the RNG just gives you the item. This can be done in a couple of easy ways, either guarantee the drop after a certain amount of time, or, keep increasing the drop rate a little bit each time it fails to drop. Personally, I would find this a more rewarding system than just buying them for FATE currencies.

[Granyala]

I don't think being able to buy the demiatmas is the right way to go about RNG protection. What you need is some sort of stop where the RNG just gives you the item. This can be done in a couple of easy ways, either guarantee the drop after a certain amount of time, or, keep increasing the drop rate a little bit each time it fails to drop. Personally, I would find this a more rewarding system than just buying them for FATE currencies.

Your argument is illogical. Both outcomes are the same, the maximum amount of possible player effort is capped. There is nothing inherently "more rewarding" in a hidden Pity counter over a visible currency accumulation. Reminder: players are not supposed to buy these, they are just there to eliminate the extreme outliers.

Especially since we're talking about an online game, where such hidden pity counter would be disclosed a few hours after the content has been released.

Using the currency = 0 DEV effort. Everything is already there. Just shove the new items into the vendor's list. They could add that in a hotfix.
A pity system would need to be programmed, implemented and tested, as currently I am not aware of XIV employing such a system anywhere.

[MetaBoi]

And now you know why our Kitties made that face when Gerolt mentioned the A-Word. :'D

It just boggles the mind why they don't make a bad-luck protection.
The silver coins and Bicolor Gemstones are RIGHT THERE. USE THEM.

1 Atma for 1000 Bi-Colored (equivalent amount of Silver Coins for those that farm inside OC) should be a good protection against extreme RNG outliers.

I like this! I was thinking of 250/500 Bi-Color per atma but you keep the atma step for all weapons. The caveat would be that you need 6 atma total and you can also trade tomstones for atma you want. It feels really bad to throw away Atmas and having multiple bad-luck preventions also make sense.

[Carin-Eri]

And now you know why our Kitties made that face when Gerolt mentioned the A-Word. :'D

It just boggles the mind why they don't make a bad-luck protection.
The silver coins and Bicolor Gemstones are RIGHT THERE. USE THEM.

1 Atma for 1000 Bi-Colored (equivalent amount of Silver Coins for those that farm inside OC) should be a good protection against extreme RNG outliers.

Yeah - in hindsight, it really was a very appropriate reaction!

[fulminating]

Your argument is illogical. Both outcomes are the same, the maximum amount of possible player effort is capped. There is nothing inherently "more rewarding" in a hidden Pity counter over a visible currency accumulation. Reminder: players are not supposed to buy these, they are just there to eliminate the extreme outliers.

Especially since we're talking about an online game, where such hidden pity counter would be disclosed a few hours after the content has been released.

Using the currency = 0 DEV effort. Everything is already there. Just shove the new items into the vendor's list. They could add that in a hotfix.
A pity system would need to be programmed, implemented and tested, as currently I am not aware of XIV employing such a system anywhere.

As you say the outcome is the same, so maintaining the illusion of an older style atma grind with a hidden backstop/pity mechanism would be better from a coherence/camaraderie standpoint. It wouldn’t have to be disclosed anyway, it could remain unacknowledged as with the rumoured opposite scenario with ffxi and the kraken club drop rate suppression where it supposedly drops less frequently than the 1/1000 rate would suggest.

[CaptainLagbeard]

I would be happy as a minimum the ability to exchange extra demiatmas to other types, maybe for some bicolors or silvers, so that you'd always at least be making progress when you get a demiatma instead of piling up unneeded extras...

[Arohk]

As you say the outcome is the same, so maintaining the illusion of an older style atma grind with a hidden backstop/pity mechanism would be better from a coherence/camaraderie standpoint. It wouldn’t have to be disclosed anyway, it could remain unacknowledged as with the rumoured opposite scenario with ffxi and the kraken club drop rate suppression where it supposedly drops less frequently than the 1/1000 rate would suggest.

Or trade one of each 5 atma for one other atma.

but anyway, this is by far not the worst grind in the game, it is more an inconvenience .