Why This Relic is Better Than Endwalker (And Most Expansions)

[Veritas-Ancora]

I've seen a lot of complaining about the relic, but instead I think we should be looking back at what the Relic ISN'T and why this has been better than most of the relics.

- NO RNG. There's not a 20% chance you'll get paste. You get it 100% of the time. This is way better than ARR relic grinding.

- NO LIGHT FARMING. Arbitrary light percentages are gone. No more grinding the same thing over and over again. Alex 1 isn't required over and over.

- CHOICE OF EXPERT & LEVELING ROULETTE. Expert might be good the first 1-2 days for you to cap on your tomes while simultaneously working on your relic. Leveling Roulette is optimal for 20 paste.

- CHOICE OF SOUTH HORN. Let's face it, South Horn sucks. If we were required to be there, people wouldn't bother. Yes it's nice to have it as an option, but let's let South Horn die out already. It wasn't fun content and Squeenix dropped the ball pretty hard on Forked Tower and this job system. Don't force content that people won't enjoy.

- IT'S NOT A TOME GRIND. We ALL complained about Endwalker. It was tasteless, mindless grinding and putting tomes without much thought. Sure you had the freedom to do whatever you wanted, but we didn't have a sense of accomplishment. The relics didn't feel earned as much as it does now.

- SENSE OF ACCOMPLISHMENT. I actually feel like I'm achieving something this time around. I'm playing the game a lot more than I have been and I'm getting my subscription's worth of playing.

- OKAY NOT ALL OF THE RELICS LOOK GREAT. I'm thankful I'm a Reaper main.

Thoughts as always, let's hear them.

[Voidmage]

Just let me repeat the grind if I want.
Tomestones are fine but give me an option.

The relics themselves are great in looks and the whole thing is an obvious step up from EW. Those were a borderline insult imo.
I also like that we have more than one way to get to our goal though it needs adjustment so one thing isn't completely inferior to others.
All in all, yes, the DT relics are definitely better than EW and even Stb given that gave no options outside Eureka.
But imo they are inferior to Shb which managed a good middle ground in having the first step grindy and the following ones easier without making them free.
I also think their lore is really bad this time tbh.


Here is what i think the relics need to be really good (outside the obvious optional steps to Tomestones):

1. Make steps more unique.
That was where ARR actually truly shined even though the execution was suboptimal. Books gave something unique and the special boss fights like the Chimera also were great. Use that as a form of options, make it so you can use Tomestones for a repeat but also can just buy for example books for less Tomestones than a relic costs and fill that up with less grind than the first step.

2. Give them a proper story.
ARR had great background story behind the relics, HW drew us in with Anima and Shb had the backstory of the Queens fighters. Go more into that. Tbh that's the point where I think DT is realy low regarding the relics.
We aren't building a relic weapon this time, we are building Gerold's tools. It simply feels unpersonal and I think a game like FFxiv should strife to use it's world and lore.

3. Ties with 2 but... please retire Gerold.
I like that guy but I feel like forcing him into every relic is damaging the story around them more than it helps. We have Shards, we have specialists everywhere and so on. Use that.
Why not use the Scions for example for different weapons? You build a relic with Y'sthola by going after ancient tomes or with Estinien to defeat powerful enemies.

4. Stop listening to people who don't even like that type of content.
Relics are a grind, it's fine to have a grind. Stop changing them just so more people interact with them.
If someone truly wants a relic then they will do it.

5. If a relic is tied to special content like OC then give them special attributes for use there so they aren't useless as soon as a new patch drops.

[Kaurhz]

I mean using this selective step against other selective steps is a bit discourteous to the overall picture of the relic.

First step was still RNG.
Second step was "Hey, go do something you've been doing already for the past god knows how long"

Third step is better but the previous steps still suck.

Tome grind? Realistically in the long run, these are tome relics... All the repeatable steps are tomestone grinds, which for anyone interesting in completing more than 1 relic just completely dilutes everything else... The amount of time people will spend farming tomestones will completely and utterly dwarf the amount of time actually spent on the one-time steps.

I don't really feel a sense of accomplishment from these to be honest... If you take the route of efficiency, this grind will barely last 10-15 hours, which for something intended to last for several months is a bit disappointing, and honestly, if you're someone who is fine with taking two months, this step will not ask anything of you that you probably haven't already been doing to cap your weekly currency anyway.

I think half of the reason these relics are even praised is because they completely and utterly starved us all for content for the entirety of Endwalker... These are still a MASSIVE step down from Bozjan relics which made use of one-time steps to amp up the first-time grind, whilst still using grinds for the repeatable steps to maintain some level of accomplishment.

For me personally by the time this expansion is over, they are going to be no more accomplishing than tome weapons.

[VeyaAkemi]

Points I don't respond to are things I have nothing to add, for the things I have to add:

- NO LIGHT FARMING. Arbitrary light percentages are gone. No more grinding the same thing over and over again. Alex 1 isn't required over and over.

This absolutely is Light farming, the sole difference is that the "Light" is an item in your inventory rather than a metric tracked by the item itself, the point about "No more the same duty over and over" is also moot, as it is self-inflicted, Light always had a rather large range of options to be farmed from.

- CHOICE OF SOUTH HORN. Let's face it, South Horn sucks. If we were required to be there, people wouldn't bother. Yes it's nice to have it as an option, but let's let South Horn die out already. It wasn't fun content and Squeenix dropped the ball pretty hard on Forked Tower and this job system. Don't force content that people won't enjoy.

The problem lies not so much on the choice, the problem lies on South Horn being such a godawful option to gain Paste from, if they doubled the SH gains, or halved everything else(I'd prefer the latter), it would be actually pretty good.

- IT'S NOT A TOME GRIND. We ALL complained about Endwalker. It was tasteless, mindless grinding and putting tomes without much thought. Sure you had the freedom to do whatever you wanted, but we didn't have a sense of accomplishment. The relics didn't feel earned as much as it does now.

It is though, at least if you aren't a one-and-done, for anyone aiming for more than that or even all relics, the supermajority of the grind will be a tome grind. I'd take at least an alternative to Tomes.

- SENSE OF ACCOMPLISHMENT. I actually feel like I'm achieving something this time around. I'm playing the game a lot more than I have been and I'm getting my subscription's worth of playing.

Far too subjective, I personally didn't feel anything other than a vague "oooh, new shiny" feeling after finishing mine.

- OKAY NOT ALL OF THE RELICS LOOK GREAT. I'm thankful I'm a Reaper main.

Okay subjective again but on the opposite end, I haven't looked at all of them, but I have most, and all that I looked at look pretty great, art direction is the best aspect of the DT relics so far.

[TeresaFortell]

The problem lies not so much on the choice, the problem lies on South Horn being such a godawful option to gain Paste from, if they doubled the SH gains, or halved everything else(I'd prefer the latter), it would be actually pretty good.

Yeah, there is no point in farming paste right now in OC, as it is far more optimal to do levelling roulettes. If they want to even it out, they have to increase the drops of paste in CEs.

[CaptainLagbeard]

- NO RNG. There's not a 20% chance you'll get paste. You get it 100% of the time. This is way better than ARR relic grinding.

Demiatma's would disagree

- NO LIGHT FARMING. Arbitrary light percentages are gone. No more grinding the same thing over and over again. Alex 1 isn't required over and over.

We've had two light farms now, just differently presented.
We had the Aetherglass that you needed to do Roulettes to fill up and now we're gathering the Paste.

- CHOICE OF SOUTH HORN. Let's face it, South Horn sucks. If we were required to be there, people wouldn't bother. Yes it's nice to have it as an option, but let's let South Horn die out already. It wasn't fun content and Squeenix dropped the ball pretty hard on Forked Tower and this job system. Don't force content that people won't enjoy.

Rather than try to improve it, they just moved the content out of there... And in the case someone did enjoy it, they made it not an option for the previous step and an extremely bad one for the current one.

- IT'S NOT A TOME GRIND. We ALL complained about Endwalker. It was tasteless, mindless grinding and putting tomes without much thought. Sure you had the freedom to do whatever you wanted, but we didn't have a sense of accomplishment. The relics didn't feel earned as much as it does now.

There is still tomestone grind involved, just not as the only thing. You have the initial one time grind, but once you've done it, they become just tomestone bought weapons.

[Striker44]

I'll disagree with the OP. The first step was all about a low-% RNG drop rate. They made me "nope" out from the start. I don't mind long grinds, but there needs to be steady progress towards those grinds. Imagine playing an old-school JRPG where level-grinding was a thing...except not only did you need to grind levels to survive the next area, but each individual fight only had a % chance of actually giving you any experience at all. Yeah, no thanks. I can't even comment on the other relic steps this time because I never bothered doing the first step with the RNG up the wazoo.

[Supersnow845]

I'll disagree with the OP. The first step was all about a low-% RNG drop rate. They made me "nope" out from the start. I don't mind long grinds, but there needs to be steady progress towards those grinds. Imagine playing an old-school JRPG where level-grinding was a thing...except not only did you need to grind levels to survive the next area, but each individual fight only had a % chance of actually giving you any experience at all. Yeah, no thanks. I can't even comment on the other relic steps this time because I never bothered doing the first step with the RNG up the wazoo.

Needing 100 experience to level up and having a 100% chance of 20 experience per battle or a 20% chance of 100 experience per battle is statistically the same thing and old school JRPG’s went hard on the former,

[Garruss]

5. If a relic is tied to special content like OC then give them special attributes for use there so they aren't useless as soon as a new patch drops.

The relics are barely tied to OC, other than going into the starting area to talk to the NPC's other than that you can do everything outside of it. I don't see a point in giving them stats for that given no other relic has done this

3. Ties with 2 but... please retire Gerold.
I like that guy but I feel like forcing him into every relic is damaging the story around them more than it helps. We have Shards, we have specialists everywhere and so on. Use that.
Why not use the Scions for example for different weapons? You build a relic with Y'sthola by going after ancient tomes or with Estinien to defeat powerful enemies.

Gerold is the relic guy, though and it's another part of his story

[Aco505]

- CHOICE OF SOUTH HORN. Let's face it, South Horn sucks. If we were required to be there, people wouldn't bother. Yes it's nice to have it as an option, but let's let South Horn die out already. It wasn't fun content and Squeenix dropped the ball pretty hard on Forked Tower and this job system. Don't force content that people won't enjoy.

Disagree. South Horn should be the best or second the best way to farm it. The other options to farm it outside should be good enough that players can choose whichever one they want.

But to make the very content from which the relics come from the objectively worst one to farm the paste was a huge mistake. We need more reasons to return to OC, even if such reasons are optional for those who do not want to.