I mean I can kinda get WHY.. sword is naturally longer than Sephiroth is, so tryna size that to like.. a Lalafel? That can be a challenge in of itself. Though I think that’s why we’ve slowly seen Samurai weapons get a bit longer (Hingan Shigan is, iirc, the longest Sam weapon atm). But I def agree Sephiroth’s weapon should absolutely be added at some point. And a proper Buster Sword while we’re at it. We even have a means for it to make sense if they don’t plan on implementing it as a relic weapon: crossover event
@@missleiadragonitemaster7597 a Buster sword is so boring tho, I can see it as a collaboration but they had that opportunity doing its remake releases yet did not do so, therefore don't see it happening unless something VII comes up again
@ To be fair they have an opportunity for when Rebirth comes to PC and/or the final game in the 7R trilogy gets announced. That and there is objectively very scarce in-game direct references to 7 (there’s only like, 3 or 4 music tracks total from 7 and one is bound to the mogstation Fenrir Bike, for example)
The problem with island sanctuary was that the progress was tied to the instance owner and everything was designed to be played solo. That style of design killed any "community" aspect of it. Previous midcore content relied on shared instance areas.
I remember I got my island to level 10 pretty quickly and then never touched it again. Heard there's even new levels to get your island to but it didn't feel very rewarding to me.
The answer is Garlemald Restoration. I want to kick all your asses on the Botany leaderboards again. Also I made my own Relic video and god... I miss the bullshit that was Anima needing 60k tomes... for one step
I personally think Eureka did it best. Yeah, there's grinding, but nothing crazy. Just join a mob and do fates until you have enough crystals until you reach ozma.
Are we going to risk another war if we finish restoring it eventually and then introduce Fêtes there as well though? I'm not so sure how they will react to people shearing a Yak in a random street while people in colourful weird animal costumes cheer them on. :D On the other hand it would be a great chance to introduce a mecha pteranodon mount. Hm...
There was nothing long term. Lots of things you could do in a week or a weekend (Variant, Orthos, etc.), but nothing that requird repeatedly actively playing. The closest was Island Sanctuary, but that was very set and forget - you only needed to check-in once a week once you were set-up. We're still feeling it now - people would typically be using this time to finish off things they hadn't gotten around to, such as the Field Exploration. Not adding a Field Exploration zone into EW and removing the connected relic grind is one of the the worst decisions they ever made.
I warned people about this when the news was first released. Nobody believed me, and then, mysteriously, people started saying "Endwalker got kind of boring". I wonder why?
@@Sammysapphira They tried to cope by saying "then do the past expansion content" in Endwalker Come Dawntrail what happened? People who did do past expansion content in Endwalker, now have nothing to do in Dawntrail. The cheap excuse of "do past expansion content" isn't going to cut it anymore.
list of good things about EW relics; -made people do hildy, so queues will pop now -made a ton of money selling tome material items well past their relevancy -consistently pretty -forced me to do every other relic out of spite and i had a ton of fun suffering through real grinds -i made 24 million gil selling a cassie earring
The best thing about it for me was being able to upgrade my weapon on every job. If it was a huge grind just to get ONE weapon, I would feel like I can only really play one job and ignore the rest. I would hate that, as I love to bounce around and play all the jobs according to what I feel like at the time.
Forcing Hildy is arguably the worst thing they did in EW. I love HIldibrand, but forcing 10 years worth of side quests in a row to even BEGIN the relic was not fun, tons of people hated it and I actively hated doing it. It didn't feel fun it felt like a chore I had to do to get the relic, which was then just go buy weapon don't even earn it
100% this. Theming was alright throughout since most at least had different color effects, but then Endwalker....literally all the same skins at the final step. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
What i found odd about the Mandeville relics is that the middle stages looks like 10x better then the final stage stuff, like warriors flaming axe is so amazing and then it turns into a flimsy looking thing with led lights lol
You mean based on jobs yeah its why I still regard ARR the best Relics as a set oppose to some in HW and ShB scattered about that are any good. ARR their basic designs although basic had very coold gold or steel details then the added glow effect just improved it into what felt like a relic from the heroes of light.
it's worth noting that Eureka wasn't until patch 4.25, while bozja was patch 5.35. So if we are getting that style of content again in Dawntrail, hopefully we'll get it in 7.2 rather than 7.3
Well, yeah and nah. Bozja *did* start with 5.25, it's just that the start of Bozja was the Cid Dreamscape instance and the relic start just required what was basically a tomestone buy-in of 1000 poetics
we are getting it... but I hope that this time they don't force us into it to do the relic sure, make it one of the options to advance the weapon for people who enjoy it, but don't push those of us who didn't like just fate grinding and having to form parties in shout chat into it. the way they did relics (apart from the required crafter step) in Heavensward was honestly the most perfect design for steps they've had so far... and I hope they go back to it
The relic grinds were my favorite part of the game, I was so disappointed with the tome grind of endwalker. It is truly a tragedy that they have put less focus on them as time has gone on.
I personally feel like the SHB relics were close to being the ideal system, though they got things a bit backwards. They offered the better quantity of rewards to the dungeon grind when I think it should have been more incentivized to do Bozja. However, I also think they should have made Bozja not a strict requirement, and also paced the relic steps to cover the gap between content and also push players back into Bozja and other duties to keep them more alive (Bozja in particular here). The aim with this idea is to give players options on what kind of content and grind they want to participate in, while giving them a regularly updated process to keep up with and keep them engaged in the game over the period of an expansion, especially between major patches.
To this day, I have yet to progress a SHB relic passed the DRn step, nor step foot into Zadnor. I did 3 runs of DRn on release when it took upwards of an hour per run and decided that wasnt for me.
Field Operations are just a really good chunk of long character progression content in terms of relic weapon. It took me a long time to finish Borja relics but because it was a variety of content needed to achieve this, I never got bored with it. Eureka on the other hand, I'm almost done, just need 4 weapons but what Borja improved in Eureka was a bases off, not being able to swap out of jobs outside of battle but solely im camp is annoying, no speed riding map means you are stuck with slow speed forever, and unfortunately all SB relics final step have the same glow effect and nothing unique to the job as ARR and HW were. At least ShB had different colors but those weird themed teeth or flower petals fkd some weapons over. I dont even want to get into the part about how Kirin or Vermillion outfits will immensely help with Eureka if you did your homework or someone tells you to wear it meanwhile you don't need to know anything in Borja beforehand to have a good time and let the game increase your power gradually instead of hidden behind end game field operations like BA to get said Kirin Vermillion mats to trade in.
I also feel like Bozja was pretty perfect and agree with you on the strict requirement thing and the quantity of rewards in Bozja vs outside-Bozja activities. I was annoyed at having to do DRN for that one step - you have to do it already to advance the Bozja storyline, and it felt pointless and kinda boring to run it multiple times after that. Or at least let people load into DRN immediatelywith a premade party, since everyone PFs it anyway.
Remember when people thought that Criterion was going to be fun midcore content that you could casually hop in to with friends, and it would be a bit more challenging than regular dungeons, but then we got something that was somewhere between Extreme and closer to Savage level difficulty?
Please Yoshi-P, all I want is Heroic Dungeons from WoW (could call them Unreal Dungeons), just upscale the leveling dungeons aswell as the gear so Expert roulette also doesnt consist of the same 2-3 dungeons for months at a time.
I love the backwards walking Larryzaur, my favorite cryptid (?) Hey, we have DC-wide random bonuses for Chaos Alliance Raid now! Surely a throwback to the totally awesome light farming.
IMO the relic hunt in HW was probably the most rewarding. ShB had some of the more beautiful glams, but the payoff after finishing an anima weapon just felt more satisfying. EW was kinda a let down when we found out "oh, just do Hildabrand and you got it" - nothing against Hildy, but it felt like the devs were basically giving them out for the sake of allowing us midcores to finish the expansion w a shiny new completion certificate. hope the DT relic hunt at the very least has something more engaging than EW. also if you read all of this, have a nice day :)
Considering that poetics are kind of useless for long time players, I am glad there is one Relic set (EW) that is literally just a quick dump for excess tomes. People forget that FF14 is going to run for another decade and in ten years when someone new to the game asks what they can do when capped on poetics the easy answer will be Manderville quests for weapon glams. Now if we get a pattern of Relic weapons being non-content currency dumps in multiple future expansions, then I can sympathize with complaints against the EW Relics.
Anima is just poetics relic done right, if Manderville made me run a dungeon or 3 i would've been way less tilted about it the whole way through. and not the hildy stuff, either!
@@DeathJest3r i'd argue that EW relics suck because the previous relics are already evergreen and Anima is literally just a poetics dump with some extra flavor.
I miss ARR and HW relics where most of them had a unique, individualized effect, starting with Stormblood they started giving the final step all the same effect, hasn't been the same for me since.
I'm with you Larry! Relic weapon should be something everyone can work towards during downtime. Additionally, I wish they make at least the 1st relic step would be the glowy versions of the artifact (LvX9) weapons, similar to how they did with ARR.
I understand the *thought process* that they went with for the Endwalker relics The idea was that since it's tomes, you can do whatever you'd like to build them up over time In my opinion, the two biggest flaws with this were: 1. The requirement was entirely too low, to the point that you could get it day one if you were capped already 2. Optimization; players will always optimize the fun out of everything. So "You can do whatever you'd like" became "spam hunt trains and get multiple relics a week" For Dawntrail, I fully expect them to follow the SB and ShB style relic grind, and tie it to Fantasy Bermuda Triangle when that comes in 7.2 I'm hesitant to say whether I prefer the SB or ShB style specifically ShB allowing stuff outside of Bozja was a blessing and a curse On the one hand, you don't have to do Bozja for the relic On the other, that means Bozja has severely dried up now that ShB is said and done Eureka still has a fairly active community from my experience, and though Bozja is still *doable*, it feels dead by comparison and the large-scale duties are a chore because of it
SE mishandled bozja because the grinds that allowed not doing bozja were strictly better to do outside bozja for some reason. I'm okay with compromising and allowing another way, but punishing players for doing the actual bozja grind made no sense
@@Delta4Weapons Yeah, if anything, they should have made it that both had 50/50, OR at the very least that the chance for the items in outside content was lower, because I LOVED doing Bozja, I wanted to spend all day there, I sometimes did. However, when I spent four hours there and I barely got any items for the relic, compared to getting GUARANTEE if I did old, outside content, it felt a bit bad. And that last zone had almost nothing grind-worthy for me to do, but I loved it there.
That is exactly why I liked Endwalker relics, I could actually have fun getting tomes. Not mindlessly farm FATEs for hours without end. The only good part of Bozja was the large-scale duties and it's a shame people don't do those anymore.
@@Dharengo I didn't say anything about getting all of them But most people also don't do the omni-relic grind, they only go for one or a handful on their main classes This is why ShB introduced the one-time steps in the questline, to add a lengthy grind for the first one without making it as bad as ARR/HW for each one after It could be argued that the one-time step for EW was doing the Hildy questline, but for those of us who were already up to date on it, and for each patch after the first, that doesn't really apply
Yoshi-P said during his Pax Aus 'an evening with' streamed talk that the next field content would be coming in 7.2, so it'll probably be relic grind starting then like Eureka was.
I really hope the devs see this. As someone who is literally your definition of midcore I feel like this expansion there is literally nothing for me coming out. Right after launch was savage, now savage alliance raids... where's the relics, where's the side stuff that non savage hardcore players get? Normal 1 24 man alliance raid? That's cool but, not really that great. a new trial and extreme are fun too, but still, 2 new fights, while hardcore's have 5, no 6 now cause also Ultimate is coming too! They are literally favoring hardcore players over anyone else and that's not really fair. I don't think the majority even do that content
Some of the best memories I made with my FC were in Eureka. I don't have the time and stamina to commit to a raid group these days, so a Eureka experience would be welcomed.
I agree with this so hard. Long-term relic grinds have been what's kept me going between content. I've got all ARR & HW relics completed. I've got every Eureka weapon up through the first stage done, and 6 all the way through Hydatos (won't touch Physeos because I won't do BA). I've got every Bozja relic through stage 2 and 1 in stage 3 (so I can keep passively collecting doodads for the others by having the quest open all the time) and 5 completed. I've got all but 3 Manderville relics fully completed at this point. So, realistically, the only long-term relic grinds left for me are Eureka and Bozja, which I find I only have the patience to do VERY occasionally. Relics should be coming out much sooner in the patch cycles and they should definitely require more effort than EW's did, just to give people some kind of reason to keep logging in between content drops.
i was a shb baby and during that time bc of covid i spent a disgusting amount of time grinding relics so it became my favorite content in the game. i was hyped to see what ew relics had to bring and i was hella disappointed. i think its important for 14 to have this content in the game bc the journey is what makes it feel rewarding and also areas like bozja and eureka make the game feel like a classic MMO where you see people in the world interacting with one another working towards a common goal rather than be a hub-based game. i just hope for the best in the future and wish we got the content sooner
Imagine 20 million people paying $15 a month to play the game and saying "uh we didnt have the time to make a quest that asks you to run Palace of the dead and do some Stormblood FATEs to get meteorites, heres this NPC instead that." Like isnt the point of the relic grind supposed to keep players engaged, and feed level cap players into low end content for the benefit of newer players/lower level jobs or even just... make the world feel less empty with people running around hitting FATEs and stuff? How much dev time does it take to make a relic quest, 3 minutes? It literally cant take any longer, you have the actual relic quest itself made still, just add some objectives to it? Why was this not a thing, Yoshi P?
I think the thing Shadowbringers did well was about halfway through when there was one big INITIAL step for some of them but it became easier for subsequent weapons. It's getting to the point where there's so many jobs and I don't think the follow up grinds need to be as long because there being so many to make naturally fills in the "we need players doing this content" bit because of players doing several relics
its simple, sure they could take the massive amounts of profits this game gets and reinvest in the game or reward the devs or hire more people or Square can use that money on dumb projects or nfts hard decision i think theyll do the latter
They've been taking the profits from FF14 to fund dumb projects for years. EW relic quest was the laziest piece of crap I've ever seen in this game. SE doesn't have a staffing shortage...they have a common sense shortage...
Right? ARR Hildi is how most even knew about Sildihn lore, so not tying them together when you already have to do the Quests to unlock the Relic was insane to me.
Eureka was the most fun I’ve had in xiv, I really hope they’ll bring something like that back. Right now I only log in once a week to do reclears and it barely feels worth the sub.
/sh is pazuzu up? Totally agreed though. I was wondering what I was doing during 6.1-6.25 at the time, because I didn't remember being this heavily bored as I am at this moment, despite not having any new relics to do either. Then I realized I was busy finishing the old relics. I was doing them on my main and my alt (yes, I do relics on alts if they look good :D ) and hadn't finished all of them when Shb was still current content and grinding all these spare parts and stuff via Normal Raids kept me busy for quite some time. Meanwhile I didn't even have the drive to finish a single Endwalker relic while it was current because I loathed Hildi, I only used the mats I had already unlocked as tomestone dump, I worked on plenty of other relics instead. Finishing Eureka with two characters, running BA for the first time, grinding more stuff for more Shb relics... I even completed another ARR weapon. So now I don't really have a lot of other relics to work on anymore to fill the gap. I need to run Delubrum a bunch of times, but that's about it. I still have plenty of mats in storage for future weapons.
Eureka is one of the best memories i have in ffxiv. I would go and raise people across the map and they would do the same. Those hunt trains, the boss fate and everywhere you see there were red mages. Stormblood relic i hated the whole desolated area, the logos thing and it was not as appealing as eureka was.. Endwalker relic is joke, heck even dungeon weapon take longer to get than ew relic
Yeah, I'm on that boat personally and I did the second half of the ARR Relic weapon and the Anima weapon when they were old content when it was supposed to be "easier". It was so tedious that I never bothered starting a new weapon again. Did it once and I'm gone. Eureka weapons, I did as many as I could because it was still a grind to get done but I still had several done. ShB and EW relics, I did as many as I had jobs able to get them because they were able to fit into my schedule and were not clashing with other content for my time.
So glad you made a video about this. Relics have to actually mean something. A journey that can be shared with others so you know what it took to get through it. I got attacked quite harshly when I critiqued the method of manderville weapons. People really just want things for free/no effort and I don't understand it. What's the point of doing anything if it's just handed out? Feels bad. To me Eureka and Bozja are the best style of relics. Bozja especially spoiled us field operation enjoyers with 3 full sized raids and over 20+ different scaled boss battles with a spread of difficulty from easy to choctober. I went back and got all the HW weapons and even that grind felt more fulfilled than the manderville line. (Maybe the real EW relics are the exquisite set from Critereon Savage) All in all I look forward to Shade's Triangle. Whenever it is that they decide to release it.
It probably depends on how much free time you have. I am happy with manderville (albeit i dont see it like traditional relic and more like extra manderville quests) precisely because it can be put on background and forgotten about at the moment (and is kind of funny). But that is because I dont have time to play a lot because of work. You absolutely have a right to dislike it for it, yet for someone like me its actualyl fortunate it is the way it is. And in spite of how easy it is I only managed to get 2 weapons from it. Another relics I have are grimoires from HW and ShB so yes I understand the disparity. I really loved Bozja when I had this elusive free time and honestly plan to return on the grind in small portions when I can. I'd say both styles of content have their place but they should swich them up and balance overall level of content. Which in my opinion they mostly do. Not always sucessfully but they do.
@steelclackers2611 People short on time already have access to shiny relic like weapons. They're called crafted trial weapons. You can buy them on the market board. The idea is to have weapons for everyone. Not take it from one group of players. Endwalker essentially removed gameplay for those who enjoy that style of grindy relic content. It didn't add anything for short on time players that they couldn't already get the equivalent for a little gil.
@@steelclackers2611 Yes. It's a precedent set from the beginning since 2.0. You should have to earn rewards otherwise it's meaningless. You want that cool mount? Do the content. You want the shiny armor. Play the game. Want that elusive minion? There are ways to get it. It's called having a game to play. EWs lack of a meaningful, repeatable relic zone or task made for a really shallow expansion if you didn't do savage but wanted to play more than 30 minutes a day.
This game in general just seems to have problems accepting the fact that mmo players in general play for the reward, the carrot on the stick making them log in day after day. Its honeslty kinda crazy.
they've deluded themselves into thinking that their success is solely because of the single player component and that it "respects players time" that a lot of disgruntled wow players keeps chanting (which, fair, shadowlands was an absolute black hole that sucks up all joy) which they translated into absolute zero grind. Sure, story is a big part of the game. But the rest of the game shouldn't be ignored either. EW was the peak of their hubris when they decided all the focus will be on one-and-done content and pouring massive amount of resource into reworking and implementing trust to every msq dungeon in the game, and shoves all the good rewards onto island sanctuary and mogstation while other content gets scraps and essentially removed relic because hildibrand "relic" is just tome weapon. Then they probably thought the writing team can do no wrong because of shb and 6.0 combo (when clearly having a competent lead writer is a huge part of it), and DT MSQ happened. I'm not even a giga hater of DT MSQ, but I fully understand why people think it's bad, the quality has clearly been declining since post EW MSQ. So now their main attraction is a bust too. What exactly can they offer now?
@@dividedbyzero4 What theyre obsessed with is the idea of copying WoW and basing the game's focus on high end raiding. Guys were doing Ultimates again! Guys look at our savages, hey check out this world race stuff, Look Savage 4 man!
Tying into this, I find it absolutely wild that the field zone content and cosmic exploration (probably similar to Ishgard Restoration) aren't dropping until 7.2 or 7.25, nearly 8 months after DT released. These are the grindy pieces of content (like relics, which field zones have been tying into since StB). These are the pieces of content that will keep people subbed. Why are they releasing 8+ months into the expansion drop? These should be dropping day 1 and hooking players from the get-go! And I say this as a savage/ultimate raider, someone to whom 7.05 and 7.1 caters their content. But it's nuts that the long form content takes so long to drop, and more ephemeral content gets priority. It should absolutely be the other way around. Grindy content first and then less repeatable content later on in the expansion cycle. The game's population would be way healthier for it.
I didn't think I liked relic grinds, but I absolutely agree with everything Larry said on this. Turns out, I just didn't like FATEs lol I love Eureka, and would love another relic zone of that scope
I think what it comes down to is that the actual combat of XIV isn't particularly engaging. Boss fights are, but it's because of positioning and patterns. The game usually disincentivizes grinding monsters in the overworld (unless you need leather or something, in which case it's mindless running in a circle) and FATEs are... that, except you get level synced. If you have EXP or bicolors to farm then it's not terrible, but the actual minute-to-minute gameplay of FATEs is nothing special or particularly engaging.
I keep telling people this! It was literally just tomestone weapons, but everyone tells me "No it's not you have to buy an item to upgrade the relic". Like yeah dude, by spending tomestones to buy said material you just give to a person and boom free weapon upgrade
I was never in need of the newest Relic weapons, since it was only by Dawntrail that I ever truly made it to current patch, aaaaaaaaaaand I hate Hildibrand with a burning passion, so Mandervillious weapons weren't happening before that in Endwalker. Please spare me from having to deal with him again to get Ultros & Typhon's blue magic. He has no brain.
i think a relic grind is healthy because it's never the BiS weapon for any job until the end of the expansion. what i think they should do is have a relic grind, then when the last step of the expansion drops that makes the relic weapon BiS finally, they unlock ALL the tiers of the relic to the uncapped tomestone. that way, people who want a grind have a purpose to do it because they'd have each step including any shinies first, where as the people who care about the BiS aspect of it aren't gatekept by content they don't enjoy.
This was my one complaint about endwalker. We had two issues: relic was just tomes, and no one cared about the variant dungeons even though they were universally agreed to be awesome. How the hell were variant dungeons, the content we got instead of a Eureka type area, NOT involved in some way with getting relics?
I'm basically of 2 minds with relic grinds, as somebody who has done the grind on all of them. On one hand, the number of them makes doing stupidly long grinds absolutely an insane task. On the other hand, EW make them stupidly easy to obtain them all, even though there were more than ever. And now that we'll have 21 relics to grind, I can't imagine the insanity of trying to grind something like the early relics on all 21 of them. Maybe a balance of making the first few a big grind while nerfing steps the more you do? Just throwing out an idea.
The Eureka approach of the first one being a long grind (because you have to level through Eureka and do the quests) and then the subsequent ones being faster (because you're capped in Eureka and can just farm the stuff more easily for more relics) I think was a good compromise.
One of the best parts of FFXIV is the fact that the devs listen to community feedback. One of the worst parts of FFXIV is the fact that devs listen to community feedback. People complained about things being too easy or too hard, and the end result was the devs catering primarily to both the casual and harcore portions of the community, while the midcore players kinda got neglected as a result. Is it because hardcore and casual players are more vocal than midcore players? Idk. I just know that people complaining every expansion that the relic grind was "too grindy" or w/e was almost certainly the cause of them having the relic "grind" be what it was in Endwalker.
midcore players have been eating good ever single expantion BESIDE ew and now that dt is here offer soon( in some months) ONLY MIDCORE CONTENT with next to ZERO causal content that ew had beside variant dung(and new beastmaster ) ppl still cry it cant come to fast .
@@anteprs7908 idk how many times people gotta tell you the same exact thing, but the vast majority of the game is casual content, from dailies, dungeons, a whole 10years worth of story arc that you can even replay, island sanctuary, and so so so much more. In-fact, *the game is severely lacking in Midcore content.* Go ahead, lose it again cause someone calls out the balogna. But you're just wrong, so again: *No.* But maybe you're not as casual as you think you are lol.
@@ikeaira8701 dailys arent anything but queuable msq content agai nthat nto enough i am talking abotu NON MSQ RELATED CONTENT island santuary is casual content but midcore have bozja and eureka for that. at best 60% is casual content the rest is midcore ot hardcore (excluding pvp and crafting and housing that content for all it has no target aduience). saying dung that is just msq is content is beyond sad too. als odung are one type of content not really diverse .
For what it's worth I didn't finish any Relic until shadowbringers. I think Bozja took what was good about the concept of Eureka and perfected it for somebody who is a self-professed mid-core player. There was loads of content to do and there was a lot of little rewards along the way, and it took time and definitely some skill particularly with stuff like DR. My ideal Relic scenario is that they repeat what they had in that expansion but release it with the regularity of older expansions. I did eventually go back and finish the Eureka Relic although I never gotten to Baldacci and Arsenal because it was late and Walker and frankly I'm not that good at the content LOL. I can absolutely see what people enjoyed about it. It took me a while and I really did enjoy the content trains in Eureka but I think for a mid-core approached shadowbringers in terms of the makeup was probably the best we got. Just release it more regularly and address some of the end game gripes.
To me peak relic grind was Bozja (I started the relic grind in EW though been playing the game since shadowbringers), as it had a lot of flexibility to what type of content you could do to get the relics not like eureka where you kept having to spawn NMs to get the 999 clusters you needed. HW to me was alright but it was more of just tome farming and do this specific dungeon or raid x amount of times to get the best amount of progress on that step. ARR.... I've never finished a ARR weapon books just slaughtered my motivation because waiting for a specific fate is just pain. Though thats just my takes on it! I'd love to hear other people's opinions!
I felt like Bozja was the most disconnected on release for trying to get things done, as you were busy getting mettle through fates and getting a slow drip of relic mats off random kills and no clusters at all unless you went out of your way for em. I hit rank 15 (the cap at the time) with 0 clusters. I didnt even know they were a currency. DRn on release took nearly an hour a run and gave 1 token on clear. I did 3 runs and lost all motivation. Still havent gotten a SHB relic passed that step. Never set foot into Zadnor, stil rank 15 today.
@ Very fair, didn’t know Bozja was in a state like that on release. How it is right now I was is a pretty good state and I hope for the new content that’s going to be released it’ll be more like how Bozja is now then how it was on release.
@basicallyaria445 Yeah, I know a lot of people who really enjoy it today, but I could only ever play it with friends. Going in alone with no actions, no currency, and being stuck at level 80 is soul crushing unless I have people to chat with.
ARR relic: I was ok with what I had to do (FATEs, leves, dungeons etc.), but not the repetition of it. The twelve books was torture, because so much was just a repetition and I could only use one book at a time; I don't mind this returning because with more content than in ARR, this opens up old content again. HW: I think it was ok? I do not remember it much, to be honest, but I seem to remember it had this one point which was annoying. SB: Never bothered with it, I hate Eureka and I only did it because I wanted the TT-card, and because I wanted my job clothes to be colourable, which I am still mad they made Eureka-exclusive because SB's job clothes were among the best. ShB: Loved it, loved Bozja, but they should have been more equal with the RNG for when to get items, AND Bozja/Zadnor should have been an option for every step, because even while loving it, it felt bad being there for hours and only getting two grind items, knowing it was faster to do the old, boring content. Otherwise, I feel like they perfected the relic grind in ShB with the options on how to proceed. EW: Boring, bad, lazy, and one of many ways they underwhelmed and disappointed with EW being the conclusion to the decade-long storyline. Since there anyway was little to do at the time, I honestly barely got one relic. My ideal relic grind: Area with the same system like in Bozja/Zadnor, where every FATE/event gives a chance to optain the relic as long as you have the quest regardless of class or weapon. At the same time, there is also options to do old-content FATEs and dungeons, but the RNG should be equal OR lower than the new content, because the new content should be encouraged. The areas should also have some other rewards so that it will stay alive after it is old content, I don't know how Eureka survived but whatever they did. Have the weapons have a story again like in ARR, with some legendary user, or local myths or something about the weapon. This might then demand the FXs to be unique to each weapon, which we now present Square would never bother with, BUT they could get around this by saying that the legendary weapon-users were in a common group of adventurers, or from the same tribe or military, to explain why the effects would be similar. Or they could say that that halfnaked dude appropriated them to make them look cooler and that is why the glow is the same.
I thought you were gonna say Squadrons. The last update to Squadrons was in Stormblood when you could get up to rank Captain in your GC. I liked doing that stuff. I know we have Duty Support now but it's not the same thing.
Larryzaur is so comfy it's like returning to an old friend =w= 💙 I'd also really like to have my chill grindy content - I was hoping it to be out this patch but I suppose I'll have to wait for 7.2 so another four months of raid logging. As you said all the rest of the stuff I'll have done in like day or two lol there's not enough regular player stuff to do. Lots of raiding but nothing like... "Hey lets do this"
For real all i ever do in ff14 is story and relic grind. barely played endwalker at all since it basically had no fun relic to do and havnt touched dawntrail since i beat the story cause i dont have a set work schedule so i cant join a raid group with set raid times so i dont raid.
I think the "easing" of the grind makes more sense from a different perspective: All the people who do multiple or even all of them. And tbf, Eureka started to show the first issues with hard/long grinds for them (SB the only relic set that I for example still didnt fully upgrade besides the 1st one). Plus, with every expac we get 2 more jobs, so 2 more possible relics to grind for. Making them less grindy was only a matter of time. ShB was a step in the right direction tbh, with most steps having alternatives outside Bozja one of the biggest problems of Euraka was somewhat avoided and made the grind more bearable. Going full Tome farm from that standpoint makes sense in the "it's easier" category, though I'd also say it's too easy there. Just make the 1st relic a content grindfest (like earlier expacs) and ease the burden for addtional relics with Tomes (to answer the additional "stress" due to more jobs releasing).
Relic weapons are *why* I play the game. It was the first thing I learned about and it was my obsession up through Shadowbringers. StB Eureka is where I lived for a long time 😅 I still try to pull friends into it whenever they don't know about it bc I miss it so much
Relic will probably come with the field zone in 7.2. Hopefully they bring it forward next expansion because it's a long time to wait for this type of content.
Eureka was the most fun experience I have had in FFXIV, the way players came together and self organized to do the content was amazing and such a great time. Your progress actually felt significant and rewarding, allowing you to more easily navigate the zones. I feel like a lot of this was lost in Bozja with the automated systems, people stopped co-operating and waiting for people to get to the fates etc. Realy hope we get something closer to Eureka again, instead of Bozja.
I wholeheartedly agree. There was a lot of things to enjoy in Bozja like the 3 raids and the solo duels, but I think Eureka was the better piece of content since it was more social and player driven. "Social" is something that has been sorely lacking since Endwalker IMO.
I dropped relics after struggling through the books originally. After dozens of hours of grinding for Atmas. But I liked seeing the new designs and knowing that I could potentially get them. I also think it helped keep the population alive. Even if I wasn't getting them they helped keep players logged in throughout the patch
I appreciate that you are able to constructively criticize without being abrasive. You always add a touch of humor to it, and it makes such a big difference.
Endwalker relic had one good step which was that fight where we ran around as a naked man. To be i agree the relic steps have gone to a more casual playstyle with a we are focused on too much. We had the option to put crafter and gather relic's on island sanctuary but didn't. Endwalker relic steps also took away one other factor which was community. i know SHB and STB had the zones but it made players engage with each other as well. queing up to castrum at 2am hyped on pepsi max is a vibe. But yeah for a midcore ratio its slipped into casual now. Love the video and welcome back! :)
You nailed it. There was something bothering me in the back of my mind about why and when my drive to play the game started to dip. The moment you brought up your arguments about the relic grind it clicked. Thank you for pointing this out and I hope the devs take note of your feedback! I want a reason to log in!
And then after a well structured suggestion and opinion someone will come from the deepest pits of the seven hells with this bs that Yoshi'P said about not playing if you don't want to. I want to, and I understand what Yoshi actually wanted to say, don't push yourself to keep playing the game to the point of burnout, but if every time they do something you reply with "well, yoshi said you don't have to play, go chill and do something else!" Then the game will never grown, never improve, and SE will just do whatever they want
@@omensoffate Yeah people got too sensitive after having the game labelled as a failure with the 1.0 launch and now they defend the game completely and embarassingly. Zepla hating EW and that leading to her fanbase attacking her over it should clue people in that XIV isn't a warm comfy fanbase, its just better at hiding it on the outside compared to other MMOs.
I started ff14 in stormblood, and I heard people talking about how rough eureka was, but by the time I hit max level and got to it there were a bunch of quality of life additions that made it a really enjoyable time for me, kind of a shame that they didn't take the lessons learned form that and bozja and use it to make something even better
We need a new relic system in a form of evergreen content with an ability to make our own custom weapons out of multiple unique parts and special effects at this point. Having pre-defined visual design is okay, but after a freaking DECADE of game existing on the market, we need that next evolutionary step of our relic development moving forward, possibly across future expansions.
I have played this game for 4 years. And I had COMPLETELY forgotten that the saddlebag was a thing until you randomly mentioned it 3 minutes in..... I feel.... so many feelings right now.
Eureka was god damn awesome hands down. Sure the Readmage overrun maps where kind of weird at times - but still. it was realy fun, engaging content that brought people together.
You're expressing what I feel. I can't judge SHB because I was still a sprout back then but midcore content has been absent from FFXIV since Endwalker and it's been painful.
1000000000000% agreed I have nothing to do after patch, and with Endwalker being so bad for relic...I'm just not gonna bother with Dawntrail patches until the Operation Zone drops
As much as I loved Eureka and hated Bozja, I think the best relic grind was Shadowbringers. Why? You had the main route that they intended (Via Bozja stuff) but then you hjad the alternate route (fates, 60 and 70 dungeons, LoA series, PotD/HoH, etc) With the exception of some things like fates and the 60 dungeons which, when done right are super fast and easier than their Bozja counterparts, Bozja offered a more secure and quicker method of these same steps. This made it so you weren't locked to Bozja to complete your relic but you and friends can enjoy older content as well at a 'slower' pace.
You're absolutely correct. If x.1 was when every relic grind started (even if they didn't even introduce a Field Operation Zone until 7.2) it would make the game so much better. There's no reason that they should be waiting until 7.25 or 7.35 to put this kind of content into the game. Even if they made the first step similar to the Shadowbringer's Fate/Dungeon/Raid grind and then pivot to a Eureka Style zone later I would be happy. I am a massive fan of the game, but you're right: I want a reason to play the game between 7.0-7.2, that isn't just doing Raids. They load way too much of the content into the later half of the expansion timeline.
As a Free Trial player, I'll add my two cents in: Relic stuff was pretty cool to do! I did need my non-free trial friends to get me through the Extremes necessary to wrap them up but overall I liked getting them as the strongest weapons I could get & as glams I can just go pick up for a pittance with the Replicas. I'll be real, the ARR books could get tedious but I still preffered it to the Materia Grind. Even then, I actually Reborned all the Relics & helped birth all the Anima weapons, while getting through the Eureka relics is such a Slog. It was much better while I was Progging Eureka's story, but now I'm all the way through & the scalpers in Pagos & beyond just really kill any motivation I have to go there because I'm just prepared for disappointment. I'm hoping Baja will be more fun when I get there.
Woa, Pazuzu was up! I'm the target audience that you discuss here. Endwalker was very sparse for what I was looking for, I'll refrain from commenting on Dawntrail. There are two simple changes that SE can - and should - make that would get me almost infinitely engaged again: - Introduce New Job+ to level a job from scratch again, with the option to pause that level process to return to its max level to do, say, raids. The tech is there in New Game+. I just like leveling, but now I need to create an alt every time I want to re-do that process. That's far too massive an investment. A New Job+ system would be evergreen content, too. - Remove extreme content from mentor roulette. I can't even use it because I don't enjoy extremes. I can do them just fine in terms of skill, but I just don't like doing them. If I can queue up to help newcomers do duties they've been stuck on for 30-60 minutes, then I'd spam the heck out of mentor roulette. Right now it's just wasting UI space for me...
I wish they would add relics for all added classes after 2.0-7.0 in their relic options. Like Sage/Reaper/Viper Eureka weapons, for example. However, that is a ton of weapon designs since each step has a unique model, half with particle effects, but it would be a lot of content to work on for fun or casually.
The thing i miss the most in this game is a real relevant endgame content in the open world, that awards gear or some kind of currency to upgrade a current one, the game is way too much instanced in my op
Relic grinding was something I did with my friend when we were going through ARR and Heavensward and knowing it eventually turns into a pay with tomestones kinda makes me sad. I totally lost my mind doing the grind but it was fun.
Bozja was the perfect amount of relic grind for me personally. A lot of people said that Bozja/Zadnor was not fun and had a lifespan of a butterfly, but I hate long-ass grindy stuff, like Eureka and books. I tried it once, had one relic of each - Im done. but what Bozja/Zadnor also had - alliance raid, solo challenges. Despite what people say - it was interactive. If you want to play chill - hang out with your pals, grind fates, go to alliance raid - you'll get what you want. You want to participate in solo challenges - you actually had to play good and do the mechanics, then learn the boss mechanics or cheese it, if you just want the achievement. The relic design was garbage though, that I can't deny
I agree, I loved Bozja/Zadnor, but I do think they gave them the shaft in regards to the relics. I could spend hours in Bozja and Zadnor, I really loved being there, but spending four hours there and barely getting three of those grind items, knowing that if I did HW-FATEs I would be guaranteed one, kind of sucked. I know I might have been unlucky, but still. Bozja's relic system made me genuinely want to get many relic weapons, even for classes I never use once I am done leveling them, because the system was easy to follow (I just needed the quest, not the right class nor weapon equipped), and again, I loved being in Bozja/Zadnor. Compare with Endwalker, in which I did not even bother because I was so bored by the time 6.5 came out, and now I only get them because it is where I currently dump my Poetics. Considering Endwalker was the end to a decade long storyarc, its patch content/endgame was very underwhelming for midcore players, I feel. Otherwise, yeah, I liked Shadowbringers' grind amount, it just needed to either favour the new content, or balance the RNG.
I never actively did the Relic weapon grind. I instead was more interested in the three armor sets (Resistance, Law's Order, Blades), and wound up with four completed relics as an after thought.
Bozja was the most fun i had during ff14. It's dead content now, but when it was new the boss fights were actually challenging and felt engaging and like a big dance of dodging aoes.
This is quite true. I used to be quite engaged in ffxiv daily in past expansions. For EW and this expansion, however... as i don't do any savage raiding, i just log on, grab a hunt trains to cap, do my weekly 8 man raids and thats me done for the week. Lack of midcore grind means i am on ffxiv less and less.
Larry! Yes! I'm so grateful for this video.. You've literally voiced everything that had been bumming me lately (that and general 14 burnout), especially after seeing latest letter w the producer. In 7.1 most fun and new content you get is all hardcore - new ultimate and chaotic raids. For everyone else there's msq, hildi(?), one dungeon and one alliance raid :( I felt kinda sad about it because like you I love this game a lot! Relics are my favorite content in the game (I love the grind, when you work on the weapon it makes you feel proud), I'm currently working on Eureka and it's so much fun! :) I hope they can improve this content and make it engaging again. I would also love to see more challenging solo content that you can just log in and do (so DD is not an option, it's too long sadly). I hope in 8.0 we're getting long-term pve grind content early, preferably with 8.1. Thanks again for making this video, you literally lifted my mood, cheers!
yeah, honestly, with the now standard 4 month patch cycle, i feel like starting the relics in .1 would help a bit with givng a lot of us a more concrete goal to work towards beyond fighting drop RNG for EX mounts
As someone who joined in Shadowbringers and only got to the Relic grind about a .X5 patch before Zadnor came out, I am actually amazed to learn Bozja wasn't in the 5.1 patch. Also, tying Endwalker relics to the Manderville questlines was a mistake, and I still believe (in my conspiratorial headspace) that it is a direct result of FF16 and Endwalker being developed at the same time.
The Heavensward relic weapon grind was the first relic grind I did in content and it was so fun to do with friends and other people! I do miss it, not gonna lie. (Also decided to actually get the ARR Black Mage relic before the Shadowbringers relic came out, and I feel sorry for those that did it back in ARR days...)
I understand Larry's argument, and I'm all for getting an actual relic with the new field operation instead of whatever Manderville was, but as someone who started the game in 2021, I have yet to run out of fun "midcore" content to grind whenever I want to. Just recently me and my friends were doing some Eureka grinding for extra relics. So while it is a fair argument to make, especially since Larry has been playing since launch, I still think the large majority of players are definitely not lacking in things to do at the moment.
For sure! I envy newer players, having so much content to get through and enjoy all this awesome stuff made over the years. I acknowledge this is a bit “old man yells at cloud” but it’s still something I used to love to do
"large mayority" ? who do you think that is the midcore or casual becuase casual make up about 70 to 80% of modern mmorpg andi can tell you until ew causal had next nothing outside of msq content.
@@anteprs7908 Normal raids, trials, dungeons, alliance raids, crafting and gathering, beast tribes, treasure maps, frontlines, gold saucer, hildebrand, blue mage, ocean fishing, pretty much every event. Pretty much everything in this game except extreme, criterion, savage, ultimate and relic can be considered casual content in this game. Housing and submarines might be exceptions :P.
@@danimyte3021 fishing and crafting/gahtering are in EXCLUSIVE categories they are for all players you can midmax them all they arnet casual/midcore or hardcor content but content for all. normal raid and ally raids have midcore content too some normal raids are to hard for casual content and so are soem ally raids. crafting and ghatering is content for all it not exclusive casual content. hildebrand sure but that 1 hour if not 3 per whole EXPNATION like the msq and dungs are content for 3 hour per PATCH, i said gold saucer.PVP is also liek crafting content for all ot exclusive casual. beast tribels and tresure map sure but beast tribe are daily lim it that can be done in 30 min tops blue mage is debateable and event are not expantion exclusive it only for celebrations..also eureka ,bozja,deep dung, like i said ally raids and normal raids (some not all) and rank pvp(becuase of the ranked otherwise it mixbag).
Even if people technically still have stuff to do, nobody ever stops to think "is that stuff even fun?" Because I sure as shit wont go Big Fishing or do Ultimates just so people can move the goalpost again with the next thing.
As a hardcore player who started during Endwalker, I missed the on-content relic grind train, but I'd still like relic grinds to come back since I have midcore friends I'd like to hang out and do stress-free content with :')
I LOVE EUREKA. I LOVE RELIC GRIND. Thank you so much for making this video, really. I feel like people that don't like Eureka are really loud, and/or the people that like Eureka are just too quiet. WE REALLY NEED EUREKA. NOT BOZJA, EU-RE-KA. (sorry for shouting)
Nah, as a player that falls into the defined mid core group I appreciate Endwalker's relic over Stormblood/Shadowbringers, only downside is they all look the fucking same. I would rather not have to go into those zones that turn into ghost towns after everyone finishes it and has no incentive to go back in, (besides the occasional run for items to sell on the market boards), for the relic and have something outside of those for the grind like ARR and Heavansward. I really hope Dawntrail's isn't tied to a zone like that, or at the very least make good incentives for people to go back in regularly after they've completed it.
I literally couldn’t agree with you more on this whole topic! The disappointment I felt for the EW relic was insane and when I saw that even Yoshi P said he regretted how they approached the EW relic it filled me with confidence that we may have a new good grind in DT - but then 7.1 and no relic…..I’m concerned!!!
I am far from an Endwalker hater, it was the expansion I started in (6.1 or so) and has so many memories for me as I was catching up to current content and then some. The only realy gripe I do have with the expansion despite me still having to do some stuff in Eureka/Bozja to this day, is indeed the absent relic grind. As a Reaper main, it was the first time I was looking forward to what greatness of a grind was to come for my Relic Weapon as I didn't get to have any before and... Syke, it's just tomes! The promised DT content is *a lot* and if they manage to deliver on everything with the needed improvements (rewards structure for Criterion, at this point just copy the seemingly great Chaotic Alliance ones! That stuff slaps and I might even try it for myself as a filthy casual!) it will be one heck of an expansion content-wise, but the delays on *when* we get the content is really bad... 7.1 is looking decent, but again no relic yet :(
I feel that part of the reason they axed the relic grind is because there are many more jobs now that there used to be, and so they want it to be feasible for people to get all of them. But I also think there is a simple way to keep the grind and still have it be reasonable: make it so you only have to do the grind once. A key part of every relic storyline is Gerolt and someone else working on new smithing techniques to create a new powerful weapon. And with that in mind it is as simple as have a daunting first grind when you are helping Gerolt figure out what to do, and then once you've succeeded with the first one he knows what he has to do, and so getting the materials becomes much easier.
I started playing midway through ShB, so EW was the first expansion where I would actually be able to do the relic grind with everyone else. I was so excited for it, and then it just didn't exist. Hoping it improves for DT.
![Lethal Company Music Video 🎵 "Follow The Orders" [VERSION A]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/QeooZB4Z7RA/mqdefault.jpg)
Maybe we should just go do more Eureka actually 🤔
Support on Patreon ► www.patreon.com/Larryzaur
that content is still one of the more fun ones that i regret not having put more focus on
the first relics were a grind now its easy
14 sycophant : 14 isn’t meant to be played every day. Unsub and come back next patch
@@Larryzaur If I were on your server I would join the Eureka adventure! I love Eureka.. though Id probably blow myself up cause I can.
@@numenos3218 i mean if you want to play it everyday you can always make gil
Samurais are missing Sephiroth's sword.
Which exists since ARR cause Gilgamesh uses it against us.
OH MAN YOU'RE RIGHT
I mean I can kinda get WHY.. sword is naturally longer than Sephiroth is, so tryna size that to like.. a Lalafel? That can be a challenge in of itself. Though I think that’s why we’ve slowly seen Samurai weapons get a bit longer (Hingan Shigan is, iirc, the longest Sam weapon atm).
But I def agree Sephiroth’s weapon should absolutely be added at some point. And a proper Buster Sword while we’re at it. We even have a means for it to make sense if they don’t plan on implementing it as a relic weapon: crossover event
@@missleiadragonitemaster7597 a Buster sword is so boring tho, I can see it as a collaboration but they had that opportunity doing its remake releases yet did not do so, therefore don't see it happening unless something VII comes up again
@ To be fair they have an opportunity for when Rebirth comes to PC and/or the final game in the 7R trilogy gets announced. That and there is objectively very scarce in-game direct references to 7 (there’s only like, 3 or 4 music tracks total from 7 and one is bound to the mogstation Fenrir Bike, for example)
DRK has a big samurai blade, its not sephiroths but it works as a replacement if needed
the midcore grindy content in endwalker was... island sanctuary
The problem with island sanctuary was that the progress was tied to the instance owner and everything was designed to be played solo. That style of design killed any "community" aspect of it. Previous midcore content relied on shared instance areas.
that wasnt midcore content but for the first time in ffxiv history it was casual content
@@arazilsongweaver it only problem for ppl who care for this stuff and most enjoyed to have chilled place to rest alone
@@anteprs7908no I play an mmo to play with others not to be in a solo instance
I remember I got my island to level 10 pretty quickly and then never touched it again. Heard there's even new levels to get your island to but it didn't feel very rewarding to me.
So you're saying the grind has become a... relic of the past? 😏
The answer is Garlemald Restoration. I want to kick all your asses on the Botany leaderboards again.
Also I made my own Relic video and god... I miss the bullshit that was Anima needing 60k tomes... for one step
Even as someone who doesn't touch crafting/gathering this was some awesome content!
I personally think Eureka did it best.
Yeah, there's grinding, but nothing crazy. Just join a mob and do fates until you have enough crystals until you reach ozma.
I would shit my pants with happiness if they did garlemald restoration
Are we going to risk another war if we finish restoring it eventually and then introduce Fêtes there as well though? I'm not so sure how they will react to people shearing a Yak in a random street while people in colourful weird animal costumes cheer them on. :D
On the other hand it would be a great chance to introduce a mecha pteranodon mount. Hm...
Unfortunately that's already been written out as a possibility, they want to restore themselves with their own efforts
The whole outrage about "Endwalker having no content" definitely felt like it was the result of there just not being a relic grind at all.
No relic weapons and no field operation.
There was nothing long term. Lots of things you could do in a week or a weekend (Variant, Orthos, etc.), but nothing that requird repeatedly actively playing. The closest was Island Sanctuary, but that was very set and forget - you only needed to check-in once a week once you were set-up. We're still feeling it now - people would typically be using this time to finish off things they hadn't gotten around to, such as the Field Exploration.
Not adding a Field Exploration zone into EW and removing the connected relic grind is one of the the worst decisions they ever made.
I warned people about this when the news was first released. Nobody believed me, and then, mysteriously, people started saying "Endwalker got kind of boring". I wonder why?
@@Sammysapphira They tried to cope by saying "then do the past expansion content" in Endwalker
Come Dawntrail what happened? People who did do past expansion content in Endwalker, now have nothing to do in Dawntrail. The cheap excuse of "do past expansion content" isn't going to cut it anymore.
@@DawnAfternoonnot to mention long term players already did that back during the covid delay before 5.3
list of good things about EW relics;
-made people do hildy, so queues will pop now
-made a ton of money selling tome material items well past their relevancy
-consistently pretty
-forced me to do every other relic out of spite and i had a ton of fun suffering through real grinds
-i made 24 million gil selling a cassie earring
The best thing about it for me was being able to upgrade my weapon on every job. If it was a huge grind just to get ONE weapon, I would feel like I can only really play one job and ignore the rest. I would hate that, as I love to bounce around and play all the jobs according to what I feel like at the time.
Forcing Hildy is arguably the worst thing they did in EW. I love HIldibrand, but forcing 10 years worth of side quests in a row to even BEGIN the relic was not fun, tons of people hated it and I actively hated doing it. It didn't feel fun it felt like a chore I had to do to get the relic, which was then just go buy weapon don't even earn it
Hmm, I am glad you think the EW relics are pretty, cause I thought they were just ... okay.
Another thing: as you mentioned for ARR the relics had a unique glow.. now they are a theme.
Id like a unique glow to my weapon so it stands out.
100% this. Theming was alright throughout since most at least had different color effects, but then Endwalker....literally all the same skins at the final step. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz
too bad no one isnt willing to make a unique weapon for every single growing job in the game doofus
What i found odd about the Mandeville relics is that the middle stages looks like 10x better then the final stage stuff, like warriors flaming axe is so amazing and then it turns into a flimsy looking thing with led lights lol
You mean based on jobs yeah its why I still regard ARR the best Relics as a set oppose to some in HW and ShB scattered about that are any good. ARR their basic designs although basic had very coold gold or steel details then the added glow effect just improved it into what felt like a relic from the heroes of light.
The Summoner wings were so cool and then they just decided to not do that anymore
it's worth noting that Eureka wasn't until patch 4.25, while bozja was patch 5.35. So if we are getting that style of content again in Dawntrail, hopefully we'll get it in 7.2 rather than 7.3
Well, yeah and nah. Bozja *did* start with 5.25, it's just that the start of Bozja was the Cid Dreamscape instance and the relic start just required what was basically a tomestone buy-in of 1000 poetics
i've heard that DT's is (soft) confirmed for 7.2, StB truly is back babyyy
Bozja was delayed because of Covid
we are getting it... but I hope that this time they don't force us into it to do the relic
sure, make it one of the options to advance the weapon for people who enjoy it, but don't push those of us who didn't like just fate grinding and having to form parties in shout chat into it. the way they did relics (apart from the required crafter step) in Heavensward was honestly the most perfect design for steps they've had so far... and I hope they go back to it
@@anthonydelfino6171heavensward still has that fate grind as the first step, though
I am VIBRATING at the possibility of another Eureka grind i LOVE it
The relic grinds were my favorite part of the game, I was so disappointed with the tome grind of endwalker. It is truly a tragedy that they have put less focus on them as time has gone on.
it was to give casual a way to do relics
I personally feel like the SHB relics were close to being the ideal system, though they got things a bit backwards. They offered the better quantity of rewards to the dungeon grind when I think it should have been more incentivized to do Bozja.
However, I also think they should have made Bozja not a strict requirement, and also paced the relic steps to cover the gap between content and also push players back into Bozja and other duties to keep them more alive (Bozja in particular here). The aim with this idea is to give players options on what kind of content and grind they want to participate in, while giving them a regularly updated process to keep up with and keep them engaged in the game over the period of an expansion, especially between major patches.
To this day, I have yet to progress a SHB relic passed the DRn step, nor step foot into Zadnor. I did 3 runs of DRn on release when it took upwards of an hour per run and decided that wasnt for me.
Field Operations are just a really good chunk of long character progression content in terms of relic weapon. It took me a long time to finish Borja relics but because it was a variety of content needed to achieve this, I never got bored with it. Eureka on the other hand, I'm almost done, just need 4 weapons but what Borja improved in Eureka was a bases off, not being able to swap out of jobs outside of battle but solely im camp is annoying, no speed riding map means you are stuck with slow speed forever, and unfortunately all SB relics final step have the same glow effect and nothing unique to the job as ARR and HW were. At least ShB had different colors but those weird themed teeth or flower petals fkd some weapons over. I dont even want to get into the part about how Kirin or Vermillion outfits will immensely help with Eureka if you did your homework or someone tells you to wear it meanwhile you don't need to know anything in Borja beforehand to have a good time and let the game increase your power gradually instead of hidden behind end game field operations like BA to get said Kirin Vermillion mats to trade in.
Wdym? The best way was always to do Bozja. Doing it any other way was even more garbage than the garbage that was Bozja.
I also feel like Bozja was pretty perfect and agree with you on the strict requirement thing and the quantity of rewards in Bozja vs outside-Bozja activities. I was annoyed at having to do DRN for that one step - you have to do it already to advance the Bozja storyline, and it felt pointless and kinda boring to run it multiple times after that. Or at least let people load into DRN immediatelywith a premade party, since everyone PFs it anyway.
@@MissPoplarLeaf "Everyone PFS it"?
When I did my relic grind people just queued in.
Remember when people thought that Criterion was going to be fun midcore content that you could casually hop in to with friends, and it would be a bit more challenging than regular dungeons, but then we got something that was somewhere between Extreme and closer to Savage level difficulty?
lol yeah i was like, ok cool some harder dungeons, but what we got was like cock and ball torture 🤯
and offered absolutely zero rewards.
@@DirectorHatman There are rewards though, you might not like them, but they are 100% there.
Please Yoshi-P, all I want is Heroic Dungeons from WoW (could call them Unreal Dungeons), just upscale the leveling dungeons aswell as the gear so Expert roulette also doesnt consist of the same 2-3 dungeons for months at a time.
@@Boethion We used to have those. Hard mode dungeons. Then they kinda just stopped doing them.
I love the backwards walking Larryzaur, my favorite cryptid (?)
Hey, we have DC-wide random bonuses for Chaos Alliance Raid now! Surely a throwback to the totally awesome light farming.
Yeah no doubt that the relic has to start ealier in the patch Cycle.
IMO the relic hunt in HW was probably the most rewarding. ShB had some of the more beautiful glams, but the payoff after finishing an anima weapon just felt more satisfying. EW was kinda a let down when we found out "oh, just do Hildabrand and you got it" - nothing against Hildy, but it felt like the devs were basically giving them out for the sake of allowing us midcores to finish the expansion w a shiny new completion certificate. hope the DT relic hunt at the very least has something more engaging than EW. also if you read all of this, have a nice day :)
Considering that poetics are kind of useless for long time players, I am glad there is one Relic set (EW) that is literally just a quick dump for excess tomes. People forget that FF14 is going to run for another decade and in ten years when someone new to the game asks what they can do when capped on poetics the easy answer will be Manderville quests for weapon glams.
Now if we get a pattern of Relic weapons being non-content currency dumps in multiple future expansions, then I can sympathize with complaints against the EW Relics.
I hated the HW relic.
Anima is just poetics relic done right, if Manderville made me run a dungeon or 3 i would've been way less tilted about it the whole way through. and not the hildy stuff, either!
@@DeathJest3r i'd argue that EW relics suck because the previous relics are already evergreen and Anima is literally just a poetics dump with some extra flavor.
@@SorasShadow1 When the content was current, it was *not* a poetics dump.
I miss ARR and HW relics where most of them had a unique, individualized effect, starting with Stormblood they started giving the final step all the same effect, hasn't been the same for me since.
Mogpendium is a great system that could be used for relics, a list of stuff to do and you pick what you like among the list.
As long as crystal tower stays out of it. This raid really does *not* need a popularity boost. :D
@@SketchbloppI’ll take crystal tower if it means we don’t have to wait around for _specific_ fates
@@Gloomdrake I daresay there is a lot of wiggle room between "easiest and most popular thing ever" and "most annoying thing in relic history". ;)
I'm with you Larry! Relic weapon should be something everyone can work towards during downtime. Additionally, I wish they make at least the 1st relic step would be the glowy versions of the artifact (LvX9) weapons, similar to how they did with ARR.
but they wherent for everone erueka annd bozja are MIDCORE CONTENT NOT CONTENT CASUAL SHOULD OR WOULD USUAL DO.
I understand the *thought process* that they went with for the Endwalker relics
The idea was that since it's tomes, you can do whatever you'd like to build them up over time
In my opinion, the two biggest flaws with this were:
1. The requirement was entirely too low, to the point that you could get it day one if you were capped already
2. Optimization; players will always optimize the fun out of everything. So "You can do whatever you'd like" became "spam hunt trains and get multiple relics a week"
For Dawntrail, I fully expect them to follow the SB and ShB style relic grind, and tie it to Fantasy Bermuda Triangle when that comes in 7.2
I'm hesitant to say whether I prefer the SB or ShB style specifically
ShB allowing stuff outside of Bozja was a blessing and a curse
On the one hand, you don't have to do Bozja for the relic
On the other, that means Bozja has severely dried up now that ShB is said and done
Eureka still has a fairly active community from my experience, and though Bozja is still *doable*, it feels dead by comparison and the large-scale duties are a chore because of it
SE mishandled bozja because the grinds that allowed not doing bozja were strictly better to do outside bozja for some reason. I'm okay with compromising and allowing another way, but punishing players for doing the actual bozja grind made no sense
@@Delta4Weapons Yeah, if anything, they should have made it that both had 50/50, OR at the very least that the chance for the items in outside content was lower, because I LOVED doing Bozja, I wanted to spend all day there, I sometimes did. However, when I spent four hours there and I barely got any items for the relic, compared to getting GUARANTEE if I did old, outside content, it felt a bit bad. And that last zone had almost nothing grind-worthy for me to do, but I loved it there.
That is exactly why I liked Endwalker relics, I could actually have fun getting tomes. Not mindlessly farm FATEs for hours without end.
The only good part of Bozja was the large-scale duties and it's a shame people don't do those anymore.
What do you mean 'day 1'? Did you really get 21 relic weapons on day 1?
@@Dharengo I didn't say anything about getting all of them
But most people also don't do the omni-relic grind, they only go for one or a handful on their main classes
This is why ShB introduced the one-time steps in the questline, to add a lengthy grind for the first one without making it as bad as ARR/HW for each one after
It could be argued that the one-time step for EW was doing the Hildy questline, but for those of us who were already up to date on it, and for each patch after the first, that doesn't really apply
Yoshi-P said during his Pax Aus 'an evening with' streamed talk that the next field content would be coming in 7.2, so it'll probably be relic grind starting then like Eureka was.
I really hope the devs see this. As someone who is literally your definition of midcore I feel like this expansion there is literally nothing for me coming out. Right after launch was savage, now savage alliance raids... where's the relics, where's the side stuff that non savage hardcore players get? Normal 1 24 man alliance raid? That's cool but, not really that great. a new trial and extreme are fun too, but still, 2 new fights, while hardcore's have 5, no 6 now cause also Ultimate is coming too! They are literally favoring hardcore players over anyone else and that's not really fair. I don't think the majority even do that content
Some of the best memories I made with my FC were in Eureka. I don't have the time and stamina to commit to a raid group these days, so a Eureka experience would be welcomed.
I agree with this so hard. Long-term relic grinds have been what's kept me going between content. I've got all ARR & HW relics completed. I've got every Eureka weapon up through the first stage done, and 6 all the way through Hydatos (won't touch Physeos because I won't do BA). I've got every Bozja relic through stage 2 and 1 in stage 3 (so I can keep passively collecting doodads for the others by having the quest open all the time) and 5 completed. I've got all but 3 Manderville relics fully completed at this point. So, realistically, the only long-term relic grinds left for me are Eureka and Bozja, which I find I only have the patience to do VERY occasionally. Relics should be coming out much sooner in the patch cycles and they should definitely require more effort than EW's did, just to give people some kind of reason to keep logging in between content drops.
i was a shb baby and during that time bc of covid i spent a disgusting amount of time grinding relics so it became my favorite content in the game. i was hyped to see what ew relics had to bring and i was hella disappointed. i think its important for 14 to have this content in the game bc the journey is what makes it feel rewarding and also areas like bozja and eureka make the game feel like a classic MMO where you see people in the world interacting with one another working towards a common goal rather than be a hub-based game. i just hope for the best in the future and wish we got the content sooner
Imagine 20 million people paying $15 a month to play the game and saying "uh we didnt have the time to make a quest that asks you to run Palace of the dead and do some Stormblood FATEs to get meteorites, heres this NPC instead that."
Like isnt the point of the relic grind supposed to keep players engaged, and feed level cap players into low end content for the benefit of newer players/lower level jobs or even just... make the world feel less empty with people running around hitting FATEs and stuff?
How much dev time does it take to make a relic quest, 3 minutes? It literally cant take any longer, you have the actual relic quest itself made still, just add some objectives to it? Why was this not a thing, Yoshi P?
I was so excited to participate in my first on-release relic grind... and then it was tomestones :(
Also missing the relic grind but I would prefer something closer to Bozja/Zadnor instead of Eureka
I agree with you on the endwalker relic issue. Hopefully Dawntrail will bring the old school grinding back
well then the relics will be doen by next to nobody or at tops 15 % of the playerbase.
I think the thing Shadowbringers did well was about halfway through when there was one big INITIAL step for some of them but it became easier for subsequent weapons. It's getting to the point where there's so many jobs and I don't think the follow up grinds need to be as long because there being so many to make naturally fills in the "we need players doing this content" bit because of players doing several relics
They need more employees!! How does this game not get more resources
its simple, sure they could take the massive amounts of profits this game gets and reinvest in the game or reward the devs or hire more people
or
Square can use that money on dumb projects or nfts
hard decision i think theyll do the latter
@@BobbyHopp Could've swore the only budget FF14 has is the profits they make on the game.
Cause they use the game to fund other stuff instead of the other way around.
@@AvengerofWarcraftFF14's income is what funds must of SE, so that's technically true
They've been taking the profits from FF14 to fund dumb projects for years. EW relic quest was the laziest piece of crap I've ever seen in this game. SE doesn't have a staffing shortage...they have a common sense shortage...
I'm honestly surprised that endwalker relics weren't tied to variant dungeons
Right? ARR Hildi is how most even knew about Sildihn lore, so not tying them together when you already have to do the Quests to unlock the Relic was insane to me.
That was my big surprise too. Especially when the biggest complaint about variant dungeons was there was no reason to do them more than once.
Eureka was the most fun I’ve had in xiv, I really hope they’ll bring something like that back. Right now I only log in once a week to do reclears and it barely feels worth the sub.
I really enjoyed Bozja, the CE's, skirmishes, Castrum, Dalriada and DR were so cool! Just would be nice to not a depressing empty zone next time x'D
/sh is pazuzu up?
Totally agreed though. I was wondering what I was doing during 6.1-6.25 at the time, because I didn't remember being this heavily bored as I am at this moment, despite not having any new relics to do either. Then I realized I was busy finishing the old relics. I was doing them on my main and my alt (yes, I do relics on alts if they look good :D ) and hadn't finished all of them when Shb was still current content and grinding all these spare parts and stuff via Normal Raids kept me busy for quite some time. Meanwhile I didn't even have the drive to finish a single Endwalker relic while it was current because I loathed Hildi, I only used the mats I had already unlocked as tomestone dump, I worked on plenty of other relics instead. Finishing Eureka with two characters, running BA for the first time, grinding more stuff for more Shb relics... I even completed another ARR weapon. So now I don't really have a lot of other relics to work on anymore to fill the gap. I need to run Delubrum a bunch of times, but that's about it. I still have plenty of mats in storage for future weapons.
Eureka is one of the best memories i have in ffxiv. I would go and raise people across the map and they would do the same. Those hunt trains, the boss fate and everywhere you see there were red mages.
Stormblood relic i hated the whole desolated area, the logos thing and it was not as appealing as eureka was..
Endwalker relic is joke, heck even dungeon weapon take longer to get than ew relic
We're about to get the new Bozja
I'm 100% confident the new relic will be tied to it
Which makes it funny that the EW relics are the ones that would make sense in Solution 9...
The Wal-Mart book part hurt my soul 😢 I can never unsee it, thank you Larryzaur for opening up old wounds 😂
Same. I really miss the relic grind content. Loved both Eureka and Bozja.
Insanity. I hated the zeta grind so much I never farmed another weapon ever again
Yeah, I'm on that boat personally and I did the second half of the ARR Relic weapon and the Anima weapon when they were old content when it was supposed to be "easier". It was so tedious that I never bothered starting a new weapon again. Did it once and I'm gone. Eureka weapons, I did as many as I could because it was still a grind to get done but I still had several done. ShB and EW relics, I did as many as I had jobs able to get them because they were able to fit into my schedule and were not clashing with other content for my time.
So glad you made a video about this.
Relics have to actually mean something. A journey that can be shared with others so you know what it took to get through it.
I got attacked quite harshly when I critiqued the method of manderville weapons. People really just want things for free/no effort and I don't understand it. What's the point of doing anything if it's just handed out? Feels bad.
To me Eureka and Bozja are the best style of relics. Bozja especially spoiled us field operation enjoyers with 3 full sized raids and over 20+ different scaled boss battles with a spread of difficulty from easy to choctober.
I went back and got all the HW weapons and even that grind felt more fulfilled than the manderville line. (Maybe the real EW relics are the exquisite set from Critereon Savage)
All in all I look forward to Shade's Triangle. Whenever it is that they decide to release it.
It probably depends on how much free time you have. I am happy with manderville (albeit i dont see it like traditional relic and more like extra manderville quests) precisely because it can be put on background and forgotten about at the moment (and is kind of funny). But that is because I dont have time to play a lot because of work. You absolutely have a right to dislike it for it, yet for someone like me its actualyl fortunate it is the way it is. And in spite of how easy it is I only managed to get 2 weapons from it. Another relics I have are grimoires from HW and ShB so yes I understand the disparity.
I really loved Bozja when I had this elusive free time and honestly plan to return on the grind in small portions when I can.
I'd say both styles of content have their place but they should swich them up and balance overall level of content. Which in my opinion they mostly do. Not always sucessfully but they do.
@steelclackers2611 People short on time already have access to shiny relic like weapons. They're called crafted trial weapons. You can buy them on the market board. The idea is to have weapons for everyone. Not take it from one group of players. Endwalker essentially removed gameplay for those who enjoy that style of grindy relic content. It didn't add anything for short on time players that they couldn't already get the equivalent for a little gil.
@kisparks Each time this argument goes "but what about me?". Well, what about you? 🧐 Want all content cater to you specifically are you?
@@steelclackers2611 Yes. It's a precedent set from the beginning since 2.0. You should have to earn rewards otherwise it's meaningless. You want that cool mount? Do the content. You want the shiny armor. Play the game. Want that elusive minion? There are ways to get it. It's called having a game to play. EWs lack of a meaningful, repeatable relic zone or task made for a really shallow expansion if you didn't do savage but wanted to play more than 30 minutes a day.
This game in general just seems to have problems accepting the fact that mmo players in general play for the reward, the carrot on the stick making them log in day after day.
Its honeslty kinda crazy.
they've deluded themselves into thinking that their success is solely because of the single player component and that it "respects players time" that a lot of disgruntled wow players keeps chanting (which, fair, shadowlands was an absolute black hole that sucks up all joy) which they translated into absolute zero grind. Sure, story is a big part of the game. But the rest of the game shouldn't be ignored either. EW was the peak of their hubris when they decided all the focus will be on one-and-done content and pouring massive amount of resource into reworking and implementing trust to every msq dungeon in the game, and shoves all the good rewards onto island sanctuary and mogstation while other content gets scraps and essentially removed relic because hildibrand "relic" is just tome weapon.
Then they probably thought the writing team can do no wrong because of shb and 6.0 combo (when clearly having a competent lead writer is a huge part of it), and DT MSQ happened. I'm not even a giga hater of DT MSQ, but I fully understand why people think it's bad, the quality has clearly been declining since post EW MSQ. So now their main attraction is a bust too. What exactly can they offer now?
@@dividedbyzero4 What theyre obsessed with is the idea of copying WoW and basing the game's focus on high end raiding.
Guys were doing Ultimates again! Guys look at our savages, hey check out this world race stuff, Look Savage 4 man!
Tying into this, I find it absolutely wild that the field zone content and cosmic exploration (probably similar to Ishgard Restoration) aren't dropping until 7.2 or 7.25, nearly 8 months after DT released. These are the grindy pieces of content (like relics, which field zones have been tying into since StB). These are the pieces of content that will keep people subbed. Why are they releasing 8+ months into the expansion drop? These should be dropping day 1 and hooking players from the get-go! And I say this as a savage/ultimate raider, someone to whom 7.05 and 7.1 caters their content. But it's nuts that the long form content takes so long to drop, and more ephemeral content gets priority. It should absolutely be the other way around. Grindy content first and then less repeatable content later on in the expansion cycle. The game's population would be way healthier for it.
I didn't think I liked relic grinds, but I absolutely agree with everything Larry said on this. Turns out, I just didn't like FATEs lol
I love Eureka, and would love another relic zone of that scope
I think what it comes down to is that the actual combat of XIV isn't particularly engaging. Boss fights are, but it's because of positioning and patterns. The game usually disincentivizes grinding monsters in the overworld (unless you need leather or something, in which case it's mindless running in a circle) and FATEs are... that, except you get level synced. If you have EXP or bicolors to farm then it's not terrible, but the actual minute-to-minute gameplay of FATEs is nothing special or particularly engaging.
True though, relic weapons looked the best and are super iconic, like the AST bubblegum sphere
Make the relic grind require chocobo racing.
Honestly The EW relics were pretty much Tomestone weapons, just with extra steps.
I keep telling people this! It was literally just tomestone weapons, but everyone tells me "No it's not you have to buy an item to upgrade the relic". Like yeah dude, by spending tomestones to buy said material you just give to a person and boom free weapon upgrade
I was never in need of the newest Relic weapons, since it was only by Dawntrail that I ever truly made it to current patch, aaaaaaaaaaand I hate Hildibrand with a burning passion, so Mandervillious weapons weren't happening before that in Endwalker.
Please spare me from having to deal with him again to get Ultros & Typhon's blue magic. He has no brain.
i think a relic grind is healthy because it's never the BiS weapon for any job until the end of the expansion. what i think they should do is have a relic grind, then when the last step of the expansion drops that makes the relic weapon BiS finally, they unlock ALL the tiers of the relic to the uncapped tomestone. that way, people who want a grind have a purpose to do it because they'd have each step including any shinies first, where as the people who care about the BiS aspect of it aren't gatekept by content they don't enjoy.
This was my one complaint about endwalker.
We had two issues: relic was just tomes, and no one cared about the variant dungeons even though they were universally agreed to be awesome.
How the hell were variant dungeons, the content we got instead of a Eureka type area, NOT involved in some way with getting relics?
Honestly! I was so hoping for them to be tied in but nope, just get tomes and then go back to afking in limsa :)
I'm basically of 2 minds with relic grinds, as somebody who has done the grind on all of them. On one hand, the number of them makes doing stupidly long grinds absolutely an insane task. On the other hand, EW make them stupidly easy to obtain them all, even though there were more than ever. And now that we'll have 21 relics to grind, I can't imagine the insanity of trying to grind something like the early relics on all 21 of them. Maybe a balance of making the first few a big grind while nerfing steps the more you do? Just throwing out an idea.
The Eureka approach of the first one being a long grind (because you have to level through Eureka and do the quests) and then the subsequent ones being faster (because you're capped in Eureka and can just farm the stuff more easily for more relics) I think was a good compromise.
Did you forget that about 30-40% of the steps for Bozja were one time? I thought it was a decent compromise.
@@SuperEffector No I just focused on Eureka since it had a similar structure and came out first.
Me, still grinding to get the WAR relic weapon through books.
*Yessssss, Suffer With Meeeeee*
One of the best parts of FFXIV is the fact that the devs listen to community feedback. One of the worst parts of FFXIV is the fact that devs listen to community feedback. People complained about things being too easy or too hard, and the end result was the devs catering primarily to both the casual and harcore portions of the community, while the midcore players kinda got neglected as a result. Is it because hardcore and casual players are more vocal than midcore players? Idk. I just know that people complaining every expansion that the relic grind was "too grindy" or w/e was almost certainly the cause of them having the relic "grind" be what it was in Endwalker.
midcore players have been eating good ever single expantion BESIDE ew and now that dt is here offer soon( in some months) ONLY MIDCORE CONTENT with next to ZERO causal content that ew had beside variant dung(and new beastmaster ) ppl still cry it cant come to fast .
@@anteprs7908 no
@@ikeaira8701 no to what?
@@anteprs7908 idk how many times people gotta tell you the same exact thing, but the vast majority of the game is casual content, from dailies, dungeons, a whole 10years worth of story arc that you can even replay, island sanctuary, and so so so much more. In-fact, *the game is severely lacking in Midcore content.* Go ahead, lose it again cause someone calls out the balogna. But you're just wrong, so again: *No.* But maybe you're not as casual as you think you are lol.
@@ikeaira8701 dailys arent anything but queuable msq content agai nthat nto enough i am talking abotu NON MSQ RELATED CONTENT island santuary is casual content but midcore have bozja and eureka for that. at best 60% is casual content the rest is midcore ot hardcore (excluding pvp and crafting and housing that content for all it has no target aduience). saying dung that is just msq is content is beyond sad too. als odung are one type of content not really diverse .
For what it's worth I didn't finish any Relic until shadowbringers. I think Bozja took what was good about the concept of Eureka and perfected it for somebody who is a self-professed mid-core player. There was loads of content to do and there was a lot of little rewards along the way, and it took time and definitely some skill particularly with stuff like DR. My ideal Relic scenario is that they repeat what they had in that expansion but release it with the regularity of older expansions. I did eventually go back and finish the Eureka Relic although I never gotten to Baldacci and Arsenal because it was late and Walker and frankly I'm not that good at the content LOL. I can absolutely see what people enjoyed about it. It took me a while and I really did enjoy the content trains in Eureka but I think for a mid-core approached shadowbringers in terms of the makeup was probably the best we got. Just release it more regularly and address some of the end game gripes.
To me peak relic grind was Bozja (I started the relic grind in EW though been playing the game since shadowbringers), as it had a lot of flexibility to what type of content you could do to get the relics not like eureka where you kept having to spawn NMs to get the 999 clusters you needed. HW to me was alright but it was more of just tome farming and do this specific dungeon or raid x amount of times to get the best amount of progress on that step. ARR.... I've never finished a ARR weapon books just slaughtered my motivation because waiting for a specific fate is just pain. Though thats just my takes on it! I'd love to hear other people's opinions!
I felt like Bozja was the most disconnected on release for trying to get things done, as you were busy getting mettle through fates and getting a slow drip of relic mats off random kills and no clusters at all unless you went out of your way for em. I hit rank 15 (the cap at the time) with 0 clusters. I didnt even know they were a currency. DRn on release took nearly an hour a run and gave 1 token on clear. I did 3 runs and lost all motivation. Still havent gotten a SHB relic passed that step. Never set foot into Zadnor, stil rank 15 today.
@ Very fair, didn’t know Bozja was in a state like that on release. How it is right now I was is a pretty good state and I hope for the new content that’s going to be released it’ll be more like how Bozja is now then how it was on release.
@basicallyaria445 Yeah, I know a lot of people who really enjoy it today, but I could only ever play it with friends. Going in alone with no actions, no currency, and being stuck at level 80 is soul crushing unless I have people to chat with.
ARR relic: I was ok with what I had to do (FATEs, leves, dungeons etc.), but not the repetition of it. The twelve books was torture, because so much was just a repetition and I could only use one book at a time; I don't mind this returning because with more content than in ARR, this opens up old content again.
HW: I think it was ok? I do not remember it much, to be honest, but I seem to remember it had this one point which was annoying.
SB: Never bothered with it, I hate Eureka and I only did it because I wanted the TT-card, and because I wanted my job clothes to be colourable, which I am still mad they made Eureka-exclusive because SB's job clothes were among the best.
ShB: Loved it, loved Bozja, but they should have been more equal with the RNG for when to get items, AND Bozja/Zadnor should have been an option for every step, because even while loving it, it felt bad being there for hours and only getting two grind items, knowing it was faster to do the old, boring content. Otherwise, I feel like they perfected the relic grind in ShB with the options on how to proceed.
EW: Boring, bad, lazy, and one of many ways they underwhelmed and disappointed with EW being the conclusion to the decade-long storyline. Since there anyway was little to do at the time, I honestly barely got one relic.
My ideal relic grind: Area with the same system like in Bozja/Zadnor, where every FATE/event gives a chance to optain the relic as long as you have the quest regardless of class or weapon. At the same time, there is also options to do old-content FATEs and dungeons, but the RNG should be equal OR lower than the new content, because the new content should be encouraged. The areas should also have some other rewards so that it will stay alive after it is old content, I don't know how Eureka survived but whatever they did. Have the weapons have a story again like in ARR, with some legendary user, or local myths or something about the weapon. This might then demand the FXs to be unique to each weapon, which we now present Square would never bother with, BUT they could get around this by saying that the legendary weapon-users were in a common group of adventurers, or from the same tribe or military, to explain why the effects would be similar. Or they could say that that halfnaked dude appropriated them to make them look cooler and that is why the glow is the same.
I thought you were gonna say Squadrons. The last update to Squadrons was in Stormblood when you could get up to rank Captain in your GC. I liked doing that stuff. I know we have Duty Support now but it's not the same thing.
Larryzaur is so comfy it's like returning to an old friend =w= 💙
I'd also really like to have my chill grindy content - I was hoping it to be out this patch but I suppose I'll have to wait for 7.2 so another four months of raid logging.
As you said all the rest of the stuff I'll have done in like day or two lol there's not enough regular player stuff to do. Lots of raiding but nothing like... "Hey lets do this"
For real all i ever do in ff14 is story and relic grind. barely played endwalker at all since it basically had no fun relic to do and havnt touched dawntrail since i beat the story cause i dont have a set work schedule so i cant join a raid group with set raid times so i dont raid.
I think the "easing" of the grind makes more sense from a different perspective:
All the people who do multiple or even all of them.
And tbf, Eureka started to show the first issues with hard/long grinds for them (SB the only relic set that I for example still didnt fully upgrade besides the 1st one).
Plus, with every expac we get 2 more jobs, so 2 more possible relics to grind for. Making them less grindy was only a matter of time.
ShB was a step in the right direction tbh, with most steps having alternatives outside Bozja one of the biggest problems of Euraka was somewhat avoided and made the grind more bearable.
Going full Tome farm from that standpoint makes sense in the "it's easier" category, though I'd also say it's too easy there. Just make the 1st relic a content grindfest (like earlier expacs) and ease the burden for addtional relics with Tomes (to answer the additional "stress" due to more jobs releasing).
Relic weapons are *why* I play the game. It was the first thing I learned about and it was my obsession up through Shadowbringers. StB Eureka is where I lived for a long time 😅 I still try to pull friends into it whenever they don't know about it bc I miss it so much
"Relic weapons are why I play the game" that a first honestly
Welcome back my boy
Relic will probably come with the field zone in 7.2. Hopefully they bring it forward next expansion because it's a long time to wait for this type of content.
Eureka was the most fun experience I have had in FFXIV, the way players came together and self organized to do the content was amazing and such a great time.
Your progress actually felt significant and rewarding, allowing you to more easily navigate the zones.
I feel like a lot of this was lost in Bozja with the automated systems, people stopped co-operating and waiting for people to get to the fates etc.
Realy hope we get something closer to Eureka again, instead of Bozja.
I wholeheartedly agree. There was a lot of things to enjoy in Bozja like the 3 raids and the solo duels, but I think Eureka was the better piece of content since it was more social and player driven. "Social" is something that has been sorely lacking since Endwalker IMO.
I dropped relics after struggling through the books originally. After dozens of hours of grinding for Atmas. But I liked seeing the new designs and knowing that I could potentially get them. I also think it helped keep the population alive. Even if I wasn't getting them they helped keep players logged in throughout the patch
I appreciate that you are able to constructively criticize without being abrasive. You always add a touch of humor to it, and it makes such a big difference.
Endwalker relic had one good step which was that fight where we ran around as a naked man.
To be i agree the relic steps have gone to a more casual playstyle with a we are focused on too much.
We had the option to put crafter and gather relic's on island sanctuary but didn't.
Endwalker relic steps also took away one other factor which was community. i know SHB and STB had the zones but it made players engage with each other as well.
queing up to castrum at 2am hyped on pepsi max is a vibe.
But yeah for a midcore ratio its slipped into casual now.
Love the video and welcome back! :)
You nailed it. There was something bothering me in the back of my mind about why and when my drive to play the game started to dip. The moment you brought up your arguments about the relic grind it clicked. Thank you for pointing this out and I hope the devs take note of your feedback! I want a reason to log in!
Eureka was peak, I'll die on this hill.
i hate how every video has to start with a "i love the game pls dont atack me"
Because most of the people that play this game are insane
I probably don't need to say it but I still do!
And then after a well structured suggestion and opinion someone will come from the deepest pits of the seven hells with this bs that Yoshi'P said about not playing if you don't want to. I want to, and I understand what Yoshi actually wanted to say, don't push yourself to keep playing the game to the point of burnout, but if every time they do something you reply with "well, yoshi said you don't have to play, go chill and do something else!" Then the game will never grown, never improve, and SE will just do whatever they want
Cause the playerbase are rabid AND will attack you for even the smallest of valid criticisms
@@omensoffate Yeah people got too sensitive after having the game labelled as a failure with the 1.0 launch and now they defend the game completely and embarassingly. Zepla hating EW and that leading to her fanbase attacking her over it should clue people in that XIV isn't a warm comfy fanbase, its just better at hiding it on the outside compared to other MMOs.
I started ff14 in stormblood, and I heard people talking about how rough eureka was, but by the time I hit max level and got to it there were a bunch of quality of life additions that made it a really enjoyable time for me, kind of a shame that they didn't take the lessons learned form that and bozja and use it to make something even better
I’m still Coping that they will add a grand company for every major city state, with some unique stuff for each one
We need a new relic system in a form of evergreen content with an ability to make our own custom weapons out of multiple unique parts and special effects at this point. Having pre-defined visual design is okay, but after a freaking DECADE of game existing on the market, we need that next evolutionary step of our relic development moving forward, possibly across future expansions.
I have played this game for 4 years. And I had COMPLETELY forgotten that the saddlebag was a thing until you randomly mentioned it 3 minutes in..... I feel.... so many feelings right now.
Amen brother!!!!
Now we have to wait till summer(7.25) -- 1 year after expansion launch till we get MMO aspect in an MMMORPG
Eureka was god damn awesome hands down. Sure the Readmage overrun maps where kind of weird at times - but still. it was realy fun, engaging content that brought people together.
You're expressing what I feel. I can't judge SHB because I was still a sprout back then but midcore content has been absent from FFXIV since Endwalker and it's been painful.
1000000000000% agreed
I have nothing to do after patch, and with Endwalker being so bad for relic...I'm just not gonna bother with Dawntrail patches until the Operation Zone drops
As much as I loved Eureka and hated Bozja, I think the best relic grind was Shadowbringers.
Why?
You had the main route that they intended (Via Bozja stuff) but then you hjad the alternate route (fates, 60 and 70 dungeons, LoA series, PotD/HoH, etc)
With the exception of some things like fates and the 60 dungeons which, when done right are super fast and easier than their Bozja counterparts, Bozja offered a more secure and quicker method of these same steps. This made it so you weren't locked to Bozja to complete your relic but you and friends can enjoy older content as well at a 'slower' pace.
You're absolutely correct. If x.1 was when every relic grind started (even if they didn't even introduce a Field Operation Zone until 7.2) it would make the game so much better. There's no reason that they should be waiting until 7.25 or 7.35 to put this kind of content into the game. Even if they made the first step similar to the Shadowbringer's Fate/Dungeon/Raid grind and then pivot to a Eureka Style zone later I would be happy.
I am a massive fan of the game, but you're right: I want a reason to play the game between 7.0-7.2, that isn't just doing Raids. They load way too much of the content into the later half of the expansion timeline.
As a Free Trial player, I'll add my two cents in:
Relic stuff was pretty cool to do! I did need my non-free trial friends to get me through the Extremes necessary to wrap them up but overall I liked getting them as the strongest weapons I could get & as glams I can just go pick up for a pittance with the Replicas.
I'll be real, the ARR books could get tedious but I still preffered it to the Materia Grind. Even then, I actually Reborned all the Relics & helped birth all the Anima weapons, while getting through the Eureka relics is such a Slog. It was much better while I was Progging Eureka's story, but now I'm all the way through & the scalpers in Pagos & beyond just really kill any motivation I have to go there because I'm just prepared for disappointment.
I'm hoping Baja will be more fun when I get there.
Woa, Pazuzu was up!
I'm the target audience that you discuss here. Endwalker was very sparse for what I was looking for, I'll refrain from commenting on Dawntrail.
There are two simple changes that SE can - and should - make that would get me almost infinitely engaged again:
- Introduce New Job+ to level a job from scratch again, with the option to pause that level process to return to its max level to do, say, raids. The tech is there in New Game+. I just like leveling, but now I need to create an alt every time I want to re-do that process. That's far too massive an investment. A New Job+ system would be evergreen content, too.
- Remove extreme content from mentor roulette. I can't even use it because I don't enjoy extremes. I can do them just fine in terms of skill, but I just don't like doing them. If I can queue up to help newcomers do duties they've been stuck on for 30-60 minutes, then I'd spam the heck out of mentor roulette. Right now it's just wasting UI space for me...
I wish they would add relics for all added classes after 2.0-7.0 in their relic options. Like Sage/Reaper/Viper Eureka weapons, for example.
However, that is a ton of weapon designs since each step has a unique model, half with particle effects, but it would be a lot of content to work on for fun or casually.
The thing i miss the most in this game is a real relevant endgame content in the open world, that awards gear or some kind of currency to upgrade a current one, the game is way too much instanced in my op
The only open world content that's good is open world pvp
Relic grinding was something I did with my friend when we were going through ARR and Heavensward and knowing it eventually turns into a pay with tomestones kinda makes me sad. I totally lost my mind doing the grind but it was fun.
Bozja was the perfect amount of relic grind for me personally. A lot of people said that Bozja/Zadnor was not fun and had a lifespan of a butterfly, but I hate long-ass grindy stuff, like Eureka and books. I tried it once, had one relic of each - Im done. but what Bozja/Zadnor also had - alliance raid, solo challenges. Despite what people say - it was interactive. If you want to play chill - hang out with your pals, grind fates, go to alliance raid - you'll get what you want. You want to participate in solo challenges - you actually had to play good and do the mechanics, then learn the boss mechanics or cheese it, if you just want the achievement.
The relic design was garbage though, that I can't deny
I agree, I loved Bozja/Zadnor, but I do think they gave them the shaft in regards to the relics. I could spend hours in Bozja and Zadnor, I really loved being there, but spending four hours there and barely getting three of those grind items, knowing that if I did HW-FATEs I would be guaranteed one, kind of sucked. I know I might have been unlucky, but still. Bozja's relic system made me genuinely want to get many relic weapons, even for classes I never use once I am done leveling them, because the system was easy to follow (I just needed the quest, not the right class nor weapon equipped), and again, I loved being in Bozja/Zadnor. Compare with Endwalker, in which I did not even bother because I was so bored by the time 6.5 came out, and now I only get them because it is where I currently dump my Poetics. Considering Endwalker was the end to a decade long storyarc, its patch content/endgame was very underwhelming for midcore players, I feel.
Otherwise, yeah, I liked Shadowbringers' grind amount, it just needed to either favour the new content, or balance the RNG.
It was awful. Delubrum Reginae is an awesome dungeon. And they absolutely ruined it by forcing you to run it 20 times per job.
I never actively did the Relic weapon grind. I instead was more interested in the three armor sets (Resistance, Law's Order, Blades), and wound up with four completed relics as an after thought.
Bozja was the most fun i had during ff14. It's dead content now, but when it was new the boss fights were actually challenging and felt engaging and like a big dance of dodging aoes.
This is quite true. I used to be quite engaged in ffxiv daily in past expansions. For EW and this expansion, however... as i don't do any savage raiding, i just log on, grab a hunt trains to cap, do my weekly 8 man raids and thats me done for the week. Lack of midcore grind means i am on ffxiv less and less.
Larry! Yes! I'm so grateful for this video.. You've literally voiced everything that had been bumming me lately (that and general 14 burnout), especially after seeing latest letter w the producer. In 7.1 most fun and new content you get is all hardcore - new ultimate and chaotic raids. For everyone else there's msq, hildi(?), one dungeon and one alliance raid :( I felt kinda sad about it because like you I love this game a lot!
Relics are my favorite content in the game (I love the grind, when you work on the weapon it makes you feel proud), I'm currently working on Eureka and it's so much fun! :) I hope they can improve this content and make it engaging again. I would also love to see more challenging solo content that you can just log in and do (so DD is not an option, it's too long sadly).
I hope in 8.0 we're getting long-term pve grind content early, preferably with 8.1.
Thanks again for making this video, you literally lifted my mood, cheers!
yeah, honestly, with the now standard 4 month patch cycle, i feel like starting the relics in .1 would help a bit with givng a lot of us a more concrete goal to work towards beyond fighting drop RNG for EX mounts
As someone who joined in Shadowbringers and only got to the Relic grind about a .X5 patch before Zadnor came out, I am actually amazed to learn Bozja wasn't in the 5.1 patch.
Also, tying Endwalker relics to the Manderville questlines was a mistake, and I still believe (in my conspiratorial headspace) that it is a direct result of FF16 and Endwalker being developed at the same time.
I love and agree with all the things said here ❤. I started in EW too so I didn't know this about the timing of relics in Shb!
The Heavensward relic weapon grind was the first relic grind I did in content and it was so fun to do with friends and other people! I do miss it, not gonna lie. (Also decided to actually get the ARR Black Mage relic before the Shadowbringers relic came out, and I feel sorry for those that did it back in ARR days...)
I understand Larry's argument, and I'm all for getting an actual relic with the new field operation instead of whatever Manderville was, but as someone who started the game in 2021, I have yet to run out of fun "midcore" content to grind whenever I want to. Just recently me and my friends were doing some Eureka grinding for extra relics. So while it is a fair argument to make, especially since Larry has been playing since launch, I still think the large majority of players are definitely not lacking in things to do at the moment.
For sure! I envy newer players, having so much content to get through and enjoy all this awesome stuff made over the years. I acknowledge this is a bit “old man yells at cloud” but it’s still something I used to love to do
"large mayority" ? who do you think that is the midcore or casual becuase casual make up about 70 to 80% of modern mmorpg andi can tell you until ew causal had next nothing outside of msq content.
@@anteprs7908 Normal raids, trials, dungeons, alliance raids, crafting and gathering, beast tribes, treasure maps, frontlines, gold saucer, hildebrand, blue mage, ocean fishing, pretty much every event. Pretty much everything in this game except extreme, criterion, savage, ultimate and relic can be considered casual content in this game. Housing and submarines might be exceptions :P.
@@danimyte3021 fishing and crafting/gahtering are in EXCLUSIVE categories they are for all players you can midmax them all they arnet casual/midcore or hardcor content but content for all.
normal raid and ally raids have midcore content too some normal raids are to hard for casual content and so are soem ally raids. crafting and ghatering is content for all it not exclusive casual content. hildebrand sure but that 1 hour if not 3 per whole EXPNATION like the msq and dungs are content for 3 hour per PATCH, i said gold saucer.PVP is also liek crafting content for all ot exclusive casual. beast tribels and tresure map sure but beast tribe are daily lim it that can be done in 30 min tops blue mage is debateable and event are not expantion exclusive it only for celebrations..also eureka ,bozja,deep dung, like i said ally raids and normal raids (some not all) and rank pvp(becuase of the ranked otherwise it mixbag).
Even if people technically still have stuff to do, nobody ever stops to think "is that stuff even fun?" Because I sure as shit wont go Big Fishing or do Ultimates just so people can move the goalpost again with the next thing.
As a hardcore player who started during Endwalker, I missed the on-content relic grind train, but I'd still like relic grinds to come back since I have midcore friends I'd like to hang out and do stress-free content with :')
I LOVE EUREKA. I LOVE RELIC GRIND.
Thank you so much for making this video, really. I feel like people that don't like Eureka are really loud, and/or the people that like Eureka are just too quiet.
WE REALLY NEED EUREKA. NOT BOZJA, EU-RE-KA.
(sorry for shouting)
Nah, as a player that falls into the defined mid core group I appreciate Endwalker's relic over Stormblood/Shadowbringers, only downside is they all look the fucking same.
I would rather not have to go into those zones that turn into ghost towns after everyone finishes it and has no incentive to go back in, (besides the occasional run for items to sell on the market boards), for the relic and have something outside of those for the grind like ARR and Heavansward.
I really hope Dawntrail's isn't tied to a zone like that, or at the very least make good incentives for people to go back in regularly after they've completed it.
I literally couldn’t agree with you more on this whole topic! The disappointment I felt for the EW relic was insane and when I saw that even Yoshi P said he regretted how they approached the EW relic it filled me with confidence that we may have a new good grind in DT - but then 7.1 and no relic…..I’m concerned!!!
I am far from an Endwalker hater, it was the expansion I started in (6.1 or so) and has so many memories for me as I was catching up to current content and then some.
The only realy gripe I do have with the expansion despite me still having to do some stuff in Eureka/Bozja to this day, is indeed the absent relic grind. As a Reaper main, it was the first time I was looking forward to what greatness of a grind was to come for my Relic Weapon as I didn't get to have any before and... Syke, it's just tomes!
The promised DT content is *a lot* and if they manage to deliver on everything with the needed improvements (rewards structure for Criterion, at this point just copy the seemingly great Chaotic Alliance ones! That stuff slaps and I might even try it for myself as a filthy casual!) it will be one heck of an expansion content-wise, but the delays on *when* we get the content is really bad... 7.1 is looking decent, but again no relic yet :(
I feel that part of the reason they axed the relic grind is because there are many more jobs now that there used to be, and so they want it to be feasible for people to get all of them. But I also think there is a simple way to keep the grind and still have it be reasonable: make it so you only have to do the grind once.
A key part of every relic storyline is Gerolt and someone else working on new smithing techniques to create a new powerful weapon. And with that in mind it is as simple as have a daunting first grind when you are helping Gerolt figure out what to do, and then once you've succeeded with the first one he knows what he has to do, and so getting the materials becomes much easier.
I started playing midway through ShB, so EW was the first expansion where I would actually be able to do the relic grind with everyone else. I was so excited for it, and then it just didn't exist. Hoping it improves for DT.