Sincere Question...No Troll...Has SE Gone Full Regress?!?!

[Ankhira]

Nah, relic weapons are supposed to be grindy and hard to get. Zodiac Weapons, at least in the current nerfed state of the grind, are the best relic weapons in the game. Maybe it was bad on release, but now? It's a model that should be emulated.

I was disappointed with Occult Crescent and think the acquisition of demi-Atma there could've been handled better, but there's nothing inherently wrong with Atma itself.

I disagree tbh. Relics have never been prestige or mechanically difficult to get. They’ve always been something anyone can finish with enough patience. Shadowbringers wasn’t hard just time‑consuming. Same for Stormblood and Heavensward. I recently finished my first ARR relic and yeah, it’s a massive grind, but it was just long.

I don’t think going back to something like the old Atma grind works in today’s gaming. Personally, I think Shadowbringers struck the best balance. You could grind it out in Bozja or do it through other content, so people could choose the path they liked. It took time, had a bit of RNG, but it was fun and flexible. The problem with Atma in DT is that seeing someone finish their relic while you’re still stuck needing ten more doesn’t feel like "wow, they earned that." It just feels like "wow, they got lucky." RNG doesn’t create prestige, it creates frustration. When your progress is gated by luck instead of effort, it stops being satisfying.

[PercibelTheren]

Nah, relic weapons are supposed to be grindy and hard to get. Zodiac Weapons, at least in the current nerfed state of the grind, are the best relic weapons in the game. Maybe it was bad on release, but now? It's a model that should be emulated.

I was disappointed with Occult Crescent and think the acquisition of demi-Atma there could've been handled better, but there's nothing inherently wrong with Atma itself.

Relics aren't hard to get. It's just a massive grind and I seriously wonder where this "it's supposed to be that way" attitude comes from.

MMOs are a dying genre and they need to learn that most of their players are in their late twenties and older, with jobs and/or families. Most of us can't grind the game 6 hours a day like we used to when we were teenagers with nothing but time.

The way Endwalker did it was dumb but the massive grind isn't great, either. Surely, some kind of happy medium is possible without them wildly swinging between "no effort" and "incredibly time consuming and RNG dependent".

That being said, my biggest problem with OC is that it feels pointless. Phantom jobs don't add anything fun. Mindlessly grinding basic mobs is soulcrushing. The FATEs are...alright, I guess? But the insane rush from one to the other before it dies almost instantly is also not amazing. Forked Tower being Savage difficulty and needing to be organized through Discord means it's dead content. And, worst of all, you can't even level in there.

The thing I liked the most about Bozja was that I always felt like I was progressing towards something. I was leveling up my rank, gaining memories, leveling my alt jobs. OC took the worst aspects of Eureka and Bozja and combined them.

[VeyaAkemi]

Relics aren't hard to get. It's just a massive grind

I seen this point be brought up a lot, and "hard" is perhaps the wrong word, but "intensive", it is a lengthy grind, and one that requires some commitment to complete, something that may not be for everyone, and every relic barring the EW ones require a lenghty grind to get, it has always been that way, and that's why people say it is "supposed" to be that way, and that grind also becomes an experience, a journey, something you don't necessarily need to do at once, but you can slowly chip away at over the course of months, I can even agree that the RNG behind the Demi Atmas is a mistake, it's hard to "chip away" at something that comes in 5.5% progress chunks that are extremely erratic in their nature, but not the intensity associated with it.

[PercibelTheren]

I seen this point be brought up a lot, and "hard" is perhaps the wrong word, but "intensive", it is a lengthy grind, and one that requires some commitment to complete, something that may not be for everyone, and every relic barring the EW ones require a lenghty grind to get, it has always been that way, and that's why people say it is "supposed" to be that way, and that grind also becomes an experience, a journey, something you don't necessarily need to do at once, but you can slowly chip away at over the course of months, I can even agree that the RNG behind the Demi Atmas is a mistake, it's hard to "chip away" at something that comes in 5.5% progress chunks that are extremely erratic in their nature, but not the intensity associated with it.

The journey of *checks notes* grinding FATEs while doing something else on my other monitor. I guess I just really don't like grinding for the sake of grinding. I'd stop complaining if OC at least gave XP because then it would be progressing towards a distant goal and also something immediately useful.

[VeyaAkemi]

The journey of *checks notes* grinding FATEs

Yes, exactly, it is a grind that requires commitment, and that's exactly what I want, I don't want to just do things, I want to have a reason to do things, and Relics give me that reason, every relic barring EW ones involved some form of FATE farming, if you just consider NMs to be boss FATEs with extra steps, and I enjoyed all of them, it is the moment to moment, talking about what I was doing with people, so on, ultimately the journey is the process of going out and doing things, of interacting with the game world, even if just flying back and forth while occasionally talking to people, that's the journey, and I value what I had with it.

I guess I just really don't like grinding for the sake of grinding.

And that's fine, but relics have, historically, been intensive grinds, 5 out of 6 relics series, counting Phantom Weapons already, have been intensive grinds, so that's what they are supposed to be, and people like me who enjoy those grinds are always happy to get them, and I personally think it's a shame for them be asked to be anything lesser than that, it means losing a form of content I enjoy a great deal.

Also frankly, I fully expect the process to be nerfed in 8.0, literally every single Relic series has been nerfed once their time in the limelight has passed, the Demi Atmas that people complained so much about will be 50% chance to guaranteed in a year's time from OC Critical Encounters, and 20% or more from FATEs, so if you feel dealing with it right now isn't worth the hassle, wait it out.

[tsuchii]

They missed the mark with Occult Crescent 100%
I am usually a die hard ride-of-die fan of XIV and stuff they put out, but fucking hell, OC is awful is hell. Especially when Bozja already existed. Honestly, if they just followed Bozja's formula and improved on it a little, it would've been such a hit. IDK why they went the Eureka route. Nobody likes Eureka. Whoever tells you they do is lying to you and to themselves.

[Gwenkatsu]

Though I have nothing to say on the matter (as I happily ignored any field operation so far), you really should not use this as a challenge:

If you’re in denial, go play Shadowlands for a week. You’ll see exactly why that expansion failed Blizzard

ShadowLands was at its worst when it started (ripcord, anyone?). Blizzard made a myriad of tweaks since then, so that the experience now cannot be compared to how incredibly crappy Shadowlands was when played from the beginning.

[Jeeqbit]

The geniuses at Square Enix actually brought back the Atma grind.

If this is the direction they are taking, then by every metric, I firmly believe Square Enix wants their game to fail. I cannot wrap my head around this design philosophy.

Because everyone complained that there was no grind in Endwalker. Relic weapons were handed out like crafted weapons, for merely tomestones. They are meant to be earned, prestigious weapons. People said "there's nothing to do". The game "does not keep me playing". Relics are "too easy" to get. It was seen a major content for non-raiders to give them something to do in prior expansions. Grinding relics has always been a big thing for them. So SE decided to go back to basics - to ARR, for inspiration. A reset on their relic philosophy.

Why would you take an incredibly unpopular system—one that is hated to this day—and reintroduce it as the core of a new expansion's content?

A lot of people complained about Atma, but the fact of the matter is, obtaining a relic has always been a content of choice for many players. To this day, people feel proud when they have gone through the grind to obtain ARR relics. They still get Anima weapons. People are still in Eureka getting the weapons there. I haven't checked if people are in Bozja but that had life returned to it when people wanted to level newly released jobs.

You are incorrect that they have copied ARR relics though, and here's why. There is a 20% droprate from Critical Engagements, which means it hardly takes any time at all to get Demiatma compared to ARR. Moreover, the droprate from FATEs is 5%, which is more than ARR (I think they told us it was 2% in ARR, in a recent live letter, which is a bigger difference than you think).

There’s a reason you don’t see everyone rocking the "Z" title or carrying Zodiac Brave weapons. They are some of the rarest glams in the game because nobody wants to do the work. Outside of an exceptionally rare few who enjoy slamming their heads against a wall for the most monotonous, poorly designed grind in Final Fantasy XIV history, the community has always loathed Atma.

Actually, nobody complains about Atma (at least not anymore due to nerfs). Atma isn't even the problem. The Atma grind is the easy part, and for me, was even the fun part.

The problem with ARR relics is the books are tedious and exhausting. At least when I did them, the dungeons weren't really unsyncable. I ran out of leves from spawning S ranks. Waiting for a specific FATE was annoying (before World Visit was added) and some of them only spawn under certain conditions. All of it just got pretty tedious. Whenever someone talks about tedium in ARR relics, they talk about books, not Atma.

Not only did I enjoy Atma and the similar FATE grind for the Anima relics, I also enjoyed farming FATEs for the Yo-kai crossover to get every single minion. Part of the fun is partying with others and doing them "with" others. (So you know, droprates were made more likely since ARR and HW).

Another problem with ARR relics is there is a part of the quests that is confusing. I got stuck on a quest objective that asked me to interact with someone, and it wasn't working. I couldn't figure it out until I re-read the original dialogue from the NPC online. They wouldn't poorly design the quest structure like that now.

Then there is needing to obtain items from others. This can be quite expensive, especially if it's a new player that decided to do a relic before progressing to Heavensward, which they occasionally do.

How do we go from Shadowbringers, which gave us amazing content like Bozja and Zadnor, back to 2.0-era mechanics?

You can do most of the relic progression in the Bozja-like content called Occult Crescent. I don't know what you mean.

I welcome anyone to compare the player counts who still do Bozja/Zadnor versus this new content in when 8.0 drops. The results won't be pretty.

Everyone predicted Eureka would die after 5.0 release. I predicted otherwise, because I know that in the long-term, grinding relics is a popular end-game content for non-raiders. I saw it in my linkshells and FCs. Over time, Eureka's population increased again, to where I see people that joined the game post-Shadowbringers still talking about it in linkshells, FCs and discords. Eureka doesn't let you level your jobs either.

MMOs are a dying genre

I disagree. The type of people that play MMOs were almost the only people using the internet in the past, whereas now those same people are a minority of internet users thanks to the iPhone. In raw numbers, the audience potential for MMOs is far bigger than it used to be. New MMOs are just costly to make. You can argue they don't innovate much, unless you expand the definition to cover other live-service games, and by that definition they have innovated and are wildly popular.

most of their players are in their late twenties and older, with jobs and/or families.

Many people want a grind to do when they come home from work. It's a way to unwind. Do an hour of grinding a day. Not everyone can or wants to do that, but for some, it's a way to unwind and have a goal to work towards, and actually always has been - even decades ago, people with jobs came home to grind something a bit after work.

[PercibelTheren]

I disagree. The type of people that play MMOs were almost the only people using the internet in the past, whereas now those same people are a minority of internet users thanks to the iPhone. In raw numbers, the audience potential for MMOs is far bigger than it used to be. New MMOs are just costly to make. You can argue they don't innovate much, unless you expand the definition to cover other live-service games, and by that definition they have innovated and are wildly popular.

They genuinely aren't that popular, though. And we haven't had a decent new MMO in about a decade. What MMO is there to play, even, if you don't wanna join any of the big 4 of FFXIV, WoW, ESO and GW2? Plenty of MMOs with great ideas like Rift have been left behind. Some are on life support, some have since been shut down.

Every time something looks promising, it turns into a garbage fire or just ends up being vaporware (hi, Ashes of Creation) I wish it wasn't like that because I like MMOs but the genre is definitely not doing any kind of well and hasn't in a long while. And I do think it's partly because they desperately cling to a lot of conventions that just hurt them.

[Brandr]

OC took the worst aspects of Eureka and Bozja and combined them.

I completely agree with this statement.
At least in Eureka not only there's time to get in time, but people actually wait to start.
Though, I only started Eureka grinding in late-ShB and finished it (as in, got elemental lvl70), a few days before DT launched. I don't know how it was while it was fresh.
Bozja while it still has fun battles its environment inst original and very same-y.
The idea is cool (we're in a warzone!), but it should be more a medieval fantasy warzone than a Medal of Honor warzone.