Eorzean Evening Post: Relic or Riot .

Final Fantasy XIV’s newest patch, 3.15, dropped last week. As it sometimes goes with MMOs, this one sparked some very intense feelings and conversation. Just about everywhere you looked, there were flames and salt.

What could have caused so much unrest within the FFXIV community? Honestly, it doesn’t take a lot to get a MMO community worked up about things, if you know what I mean. But those who are upset may have some valid points to make.

Why? Well, patch 3.15 released the new, long-awaited Relic weapon quest line.

 

A Relic Reborn

To understand the core of the issues players find with the Relic weapon quest line, you have to go back in time to learn a bit about the original Relic weapons. The Relic weapons of FFXIV are similar to legendary weapons in other games, being something that a player puts a significant time and effort into building. These are usually end game weapons that sometimes rival the ilvl of raid-dropped pieces, though they aren’t always best in slot.

The first iteration of the Relic quest was actually really cool. It sent you out on an epic quest to restore a broken-down legendary weapon, which you fused to a newer weapon and rebuilt through trial by fire. And I do really mean trial. Back then, trials like the Hydra and the Primal hard modes were relevant content, and it lent to the feeling of completing something challenging, but obtainable.

After that quest, the Relic continued to have new releases in small patches, giving players further ways to upgrade it as the overall game’s ilvl slowly crept upwards. I’m not quite sure what happened to the epic scope of the quests that revolved around the Relic. It was suddenly less about cool battles and more about gathering things over and over again.

I don’t like to toss the word “grind” out there very often. But the community began to equate the Relic quests with grind, and I wouldn’t fault them for calling them that.

The Atma quest required players to run lots of FATEs for a low rate drop of Atma. The Animus quest required players to save up many, many Tomes to purchase several books of tasks to complete, such as dungeons, FATEs and leves.

I honestly don’t even know what came after that, because I didn’t start my Relic quests until the Atma quest line had already been nerfed at least once. I never got beyond the saving Tomes for books – I needed the Tomes for upgrading equipment far more than for spending them on a bunch of books for one weapon.

I know the Novus quest required a ton of materia, Light and Alexandrite. All of this equaled to lots of time and money investment. And that wasn’t the end of the quest line from my understanding. As I said, I lost track of it all, but I can grasp that to finally craft the Zeta took a mind-boggling amount of patience.

 

Relic 3.0

We all knew the Relic quest was coming in this patch. Some folks were disgruntled after the amount of time and effort that went into their original Zetas, and at how it was quickly made obsolete at Heavensward’s end game. The devs promised that those who struggled through the end of the original Relic 2.0 would get a leg-up on the new Relic weapons, but I don’t know that it smoothed over the rough feelings completely.

Given what people had to do to get the 2.0, I didn’t have high expectations for the Relic 3.0 quest. I knew FATEs would somehow be a part of it because they had been a part of the 2.0 Relic quests.

Heavensward FATEs have (sadly) been ignored for the most part, at least on my server. I think part of that came from the lackluster amount of experience they gave at the expansion’s launch. Even though that’s been rectified, players seem to totally ignore FATEs in favor of dungeons, or whatever they do to get to level 60. Given the fact that I actually enjoy FATEs (I know, sue me), this was a bit of frustration for me as I try to level my fourth job from 50 to 60 in Heavensward.

So, it came as no surprise that step 1 of the new Relic quest was about doing FATEs for crystal drops. The best part of this section of the quest is that you can run these FATEs on any job you want, not just the job you accepted the quest with. That means, for example, you want to work on you Dragoon Relic, and you have a level 50 White Mage who needs to level, you can use the White Mage to run the FATEs and capture two chocobos with one Gysahl green.

This has been a pleasure for me to do so far. I enjoy the more lively FATE train in areas that never saw much attention. Last night alone, I earned 4 of the needed crystals for about an hour and a half worth of playing, so the drop rate isn’t that bad. I also leveled my White Mage from 51 to 53 since the FATE train has started, which is really my major goal while there is still this much FATE activity.

Part 2 of the Relic quest is to complete a list of dungeons, a number of which can be run in an unsynced party. Some of these are the original hard mode dungeons, so they’re not likely to be anything new to folks.

This list isn’t too long or too annoying, to be honest, and once it’s done, you come out with a shiny new ilvl 200 weapon. This weapon is about the equivalent of what you can get for running all those Eso roulettes. Seeing that some people have finished the first two quests already, it’s a much faster path to an ilvl 200 weapon.

 

The Riot

So, with all these positives, what is it that people are actually angry about? That would be the third step in the quest line. That’s where people generally feel that the grind gets real. You’re required to earn tokens for four different items to complete the quest.

It’s a pretty complex quest, and includes a lot of time, some high quality crafted materials and some materials created by crafting specialists. To be overwhelmed by a full list of what all is involved, click here.

While there are several ways to go about earning these tokens – Poetics, Law, Beast Tribe quests, treasure maps and Alexander normal runs – players are still up in arms about the sheer amount of what they need to do to bump the weapon’s ilvl to 210.

While I can see a few positive sides to it – I always wanted to complete all of my beast tribe reputation levels anyhow – I can also see why people are annoyed. First, folks were pretty burned out by doing the grind for the first Relic weapon, and don’t cherish the thought of doing it again. Second, there’s a lot of missed opportunities here, and if you look around at forums and Reddit, you can see some of the suggestions they offer of what these quests could have been.

It’s apparent that the aim of the Relic quest is to nudge players to do content that isn’t being visited often, like the FATEs. For example, I would have liked to see them make the Crystal Tower raids relevant again – and I know that some of my Free Company members agree on that. Right now, there’s no reason for people to run CT, and new folks who never got to experience it are left out in the cold.

I saw someone mention adding Coil as a possible option. That’s another bit of content that newer players are left out of because it’s hard to find a party for it. While I personally wouldn’t be overjoyed to be forced to run Coil, I can get behind making it an option.

So, while I appreciate the ability to pick your poison in this case, and they’ve made it so that folks who aren’t crazy about running dungeons have a chance at it through Beast Tribe dailies, I can also see ways this quest could have been more epic. While the overall public feedback has been harsh, that doesn’t change the fact that I’m seeing lots of FATE parties and many people out there giving the Relic quest a shot – at least, the first step of the quest.

Then there are players like me. I’m just happy to see activity in the world again, and am more than happy to ride the FATE train to level some of my jobs while working on earning crystals. I’m not too worried about getting my weapon to ilvl 210. Just being able to by-pass the Eso dungeons for an ilvl 200 weapon is worth it to me.

I also know that in a few months, this will all be in the past, and a shiny new set of gear will be twinkling in everyone’s eyes. So, my response to these sorts of things is to find the fun in it (it’s a game), and make progress where I can.

This is being written before the Live Letter will be released on December 23, where hopefully we will hear some of these concerns addressed by the team. Aside from that, enjoy the current Starlight Celebration event and have a happy holiday!

Related: Column, Eorzean Evening Post, Final Fantasy XIV, MMORPG, Patch