Relic Weapons: What do you want them to be?

[RedLolly]

I've done the Zodiac Brave and Anima weapon series in full for one weapon each. I don't know if I'll ever do much in Eureka. I had done most of Bozja on an older character when it was current. I have a growing stack of Manderville weapons.

The older style grind with the original two expansions is vastly superior to me in every way.

Occult Crescent turned me right off despite being a total nerd for anything involving War of the Magi lore. It should be a grind, absolutely, but I feel like I'd need to live in that zone doing nothing but barely scraping by OP enemies to get pennies towards the millions needed to actually earn anything because I wasn't there the moment it dropped.

Because of that, I haven't actually gotten to experiment with the phantom jobs there. Geomancer is one of my dream jobs for FFXIV, and I was ready to go all in on it. I'm nowhere near unlocking it.

It's not the exhilarating type of difficult, either. You just immediately die if you mess up. It just feels like the absolute worst form of DT's battle direction of warp speed reaction, body checks, and instant punishment.

But I also think the Manderville series is awful, too, as a relic. You just aren't earning it as the tomes stack up from doing most content. The storyline was great, but it just doesn't feel like a trophy.


Also they should be stronger. Just better than other options in the most current step by a bigger margin than what we usually see. Asking players to dedicate so much to a weapon that's barely better than crafted just irks me.

[Rein_eon_Osborne]

This topic made me re-analyze what could be my own preference to relic grind. I've done all at this point - from ARR to DT current step. Granted, being a ShB baby, I never experienced ARR, HW, and StB relics on their inception patches so my mileage could be biased. Suffice to say, both Resistance & Eureka Weapons are topping my list by miles versus any other iteration. Anima and Zodiac comes in distant 3rd and 4th, while Manderville & arguably Phantom (except demiatmas) weapons are sitting on the bottom of barrel in term of enjoyment.

I've then come to realize that whenever there's an element that introduce a shakeup to the existing garbage job gameplay, my enjoyment in aforementioned grinds skyrockets. This is why Resistance, Eureka, and MAYBE Phantom Weapon's Demiatma steps specifically would never be dethroned in my list as they have funny interactions with Logos & Lost Actions (both can also be used as money maker so an additional plus!), and maybe Phantom Cooldowns Jobs. When the job that I play can be made fun, I don't mind whatever grindy steps they toss at me, I'll do 'em. I was one of those players who refuses to farm majority of Resistance Weapon steps outside Save the Queen despite being more efficient in their inception patches.

Zodiac and Anima was a mixed bag, but I was able to find some enjoyment by trying to be efficient & resourceful when it comes to materials acquisitions i.e. not just with poetics but also beast tribe currencies, scripts, and so on. But they're bogged down by the tolerable gameplay, albeit not too long because everything was unsynced when I cleared mine.

Manderville & Phantom Weapons's 1,500 tome steps should not even exist, or at least not as the sole requirement. I will say that even DoH/L relic tools on ANY expacs were more fun than this pile of garbage. I don't know how to salvage Manderville, but there were few ways they can make Phantom Weapon acquisition better IMHO such as:

• Those Demiatmas? Keep them dropping even after clearing the first quest, so that you can trade in 1 full set for an equivalent of 200-1000 heliometry of progress (numbers are debatable). Also allow trading dupe gummies at 3:1 ratio. Suddenly the dumb RNG fiasco becomes less of a problem while also providing additional way to grind your relics.

[Nyastra]

This is honestly gonna go nowhere but Eureka, in my very personal opinion. It's still one of my favorites and probably always will be. I do know many disagree.

[Masha_Awandah]

I see, thanks everyone for giving me so many answers. I'll be honest, I'm surprised to see so much support for OC, because the weapons being one and done is why I'm so pessimistic about future relics.

Having to work for follow up relics is usually what makes field ops populated. It's why if you go to Eureka and Bozja now, you'll find both new players and veterans running the content together. I just can't see that happening with OC, since only the first step so far even "requires" it.

However, I appreciate everyone taking the time to answer the topic. Thank you.

[0blivion]

Anima weapon. I have all of them and I regret nothing.

[Xieldras]

If the content is boring or tedious, then the grind is not an enjoyable experience moreso than a giant quest that that makes you go "Finally!" in an annoyed tone once you're done.

This game has a big open world that's sitting mostly empty, and personally I enjoyed the books from ARR because they somewhat filled that world by sending players in it, instead of locking relics behind instances. DT's atma phase, though jank from the pure RNG without any way to play around it (seriously, no trade-ins for the extras?), still helped me see players doing fates in the new zones.

I also enjoyed the HW relic with which you could input the stats you wanted into your weapon. Options are good, even if most of the playerbase will follow the meta or what The Balance says is good.

Good lore could also help make the whole thing more interesting. I remember the Anima weapons and their questline where you essentially forged a bond with the spirit inside the weapon, which is cute. DT's I could not tell you.

[Celliera]

I personally think Shadowbringers almost perfected the relic format after it fixed the Timeworn Artifact step (1 per DRN was rough).

Every single step of the ShB relic, excluding the first one-time grind which is the only one I have a qualm with, have both a way to complete it in a Save the Queen zone and outside of a StQ zone. This means those of us who enjoy forays are able to spend almost all of our time engaging with the content we enjoy while those who don't like forays have options for other content.

As mentioned, my biggest issue with ShB is its first one time step. It is the only step of the relic which cannot be completed within a StQ zone and forces players to do FATEs or ARs instead. I can understand why some players may not like it if they don't like StQ or any of the alternative options but I think overall it gave the best balance of choices any relic has given us before.

Perhaps the most important part of all though is how the grind actually feels. I think the ShB relics feel like a grind but almost never overstay their welcome. I think the Timeworn Artifact step still feels like a slog, though that's mostly due to the 10 minute queue for DRN when queuing with less than 28, but ever other step ends before it gets annoying.

Overall the Shadowbringers relics are my favorite relics in the game and I'd love to see them do something similar in the future.

[Underscore]

I want them to be relic weapons. Zodiac, Anima, Eurekan, Resistance, something like that.

The devs need to stop listening to players who hate relic weapons when designing relic weapons. It's the same mistake they've been making with the job design.

[Raikai]

I want relic weapons to be heavily tied to Field Operations or other combat content that has updates through the expansion. But I want the weapon to be relevant THERE.

Thing is, from a dilligent player standpoint, the relic weapon's power is nearly useless for most of its lifespan. Unless it's treated as a catch up, we're just collecting appearances. That's fine I guess... But let's give the Occult Crescent as an example - the Relics are thematic to the zone, they're literally called Phantom Relics. Why they don't provide any benefit in there? They should be treated the same as the Arcanaut gear, providing bonuses to the zone itself.

As for the grind, I think it should be exclusively tied to the zone. If somebody wants the relic, they should play the zone! Is not even hard, it can be played solo. I think what they nailed right now is how you only need to do the hard step once, which can be applied into the zone itself without the need of the pve currency. OC as an example again, Atma/Light/whatever for the first one, and then the rest of the value in Silver or Gold.

Aesthetic wise I'd love if those weapons retained consistency. Imagine if it's the same weapon that keeps evolving through all of its 3 iterations (with special effects added for the in-between upgrades).

[mallleable]

Kind of hesitant on this thought, but I think the relic might be a little obsolete, and it needs to dramatically change. To me, Arkveld's reward structure highlights this. You get a free weapon coffer from normal (and extreme), and then can enhance it to the same ilevel as the augmented tome weapon using drops from the extreme. So imagine if Doomtrain normal could drop a weapon coffer, and then that weapon can be enhanced using Doomtrain extreme totems. I think having a greater variety of ways of getting high ilevel weapons is the way to go. So if there's going to be a weapon tied to a field operation then it should be considered the 'field operation weapon,' and not the relic.

Which leaves the relic in a weird spot. I think it should require some effort, but I feel like doing a bunch disjointed grinds for the sake of grinds isn't working anymore. If we are expected to work on the relic throughout the entire expansion, then I think they need to develop a system that is specific to the relic that is available to players thorough out the entire expansion. A concept that has been rattling around in my head is where you can feed experience points into the weapon to raise its ilevel, and open up materia slots. The capped augmented tome weapon also needs to change.