Final Fantasy XIV (Guide in first post)

It is a bit weird timing considering the expansion's several months away, feels like they'd have been better served doing the ad campaign then, unless they're planning to do another.

I mean you do mention it, the corona virus limitations just moved the entire dev cycle out of the window, and they had no leeway for any of it(which is a management problem for sure but it is what it is).

Bozja not being fun is fairly subjective, some people like what they did, especially savage DR. I think it's mostly shit too for me but it feels like a better effort than Eureka, they did CLL and DR and they're doing one more zone, so overall it's more adequate content than four different flavour of FATEs like the Eureka zones were minus BA. They did double it as the deep dungeon replacement and that does kinda suck. As for the ultimate, it was pushed out of the expansion by corona too, they got slowed down a fuckton and they cut the one thing that probably has the least impact on their subs. Sucks for hardcore raiders and suck for people like me who enjoy the race, but that was obviously the content that was gonna be axed.

Crafting is super subjective too, crafting wasn't interesting, or fun before. Like what? Yeah it's simpler now to get into, but it was the exact same shit once you did the very small effort of reading up a Balance guide on how to craft, it just was less intuitive. You headed to Teamcraft, put all your stat, moved the little icons around to get the highest quality, then copy pasted macros and just sat there spamming them. There's literally no difference between current crafting and Stormblood(or HW) crafting, just a lot easier to level with Ishgard. Expert recipes you call braindead but they're the least braindead thing they've added to crafting since like, ever. Cause you can't sim it then use a macro to do it(at least not efficiently).

I think current relic is fine, you can do the new content(for most steps) or you can do old ass grindy content like you're farming light/atmas on every steps, which imo is fine for what the relic is.

They do need better balance between the options however(they did hotfix some of the stuff in that regard) but the first couple of steps can be done in Bozja with farming parties faster than it can be farming FATEs+60dungeons outside but if you don't want to bother actually working for it having a braindead easy option is nice enough.

The crystal tower step can be done in CLL very quickly, just need to camp the spawns, took me an afternoon to do my 2nd relic this way, but I was mostly afk alt tabbed and only checked every now and then for new instances then afked until the spawn timer, so it was a lot more relaxing than running Syrcus 15times.

The one time only step was pretty rough but was hotfixed to be more decent and the last step I think is perfectly fine since it gets you to run new content(DR) or to run old content with an emphasis on running it in a way most people haven't(doing 100+ potd, which a lot of people didn't even know existed since it stops at 100 in random groups).

Overall I'd say it's the "best" relic they've done, in the sense that it doesn't fucking suck dicks to do. It's a lot faster than previous relics, and it gives you 2 different options for each step depending on whether you want to work actively on it or just grind it out while not paying any attention, and that's great imo. It is probably the most "boring", but I'll take boring over ARR atma(original rates)/books or Anima sands(before the buffs) and definitely over Pagos light farming(even after the nerfs and even after the current echo).

Merrith said:

I'm going to disagree on the expert recipes. I think they're just as braindead as other stuff...just a priority system basically and back to using Hasty Touch and Tricks of the Trade like it's ARR or HW.

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I'm not saying they're riveting challenging content, but they're the least braindead type of crafting content they've added, because you can't macro them so you have to actually play the crafting minigame, and it is a bit deeper than the original ARR minigame too since there's more different proc types. It is a priority system obviously so once you figure it out you just go through the steps, but when the comparison is pressing your first macro then waiting for the sound effect to press the other macro, it's not really hard to do less braindead. Still pretty dumb yeah but it's not like crafting was challenging content in the past as you mention too.

Even back in ARR when macros weren't as much of a thing, crafting was still super braindead. The main "difficulty" back then was being able to afford melding because materias were such a pain in the dick to get. I've crafted a fair bit in every expansion(less so in HW cause I got really turned off by the initial implementation of crafting/gathering, which they've completely removed right after, fucking favors and weekly capped scrips man) and at no point was crafting hard or challenging, the "dumbing down" was just removing a lot of superfluous shit that didn't really add anything and making it less weird with so many skills you actually never want to use.

The main "difficulties" in the past for crafting was you had to do leves so it cost a bunch of money, and you had to level every craft to a certain point just to be able to craft properly due to cross class(good luck trying to HQ fucking anything without Byregot) and so people were put off by the whole thing, but they fixed both things so it's more accessible, but these were artificial difficulties, it wasn't fucking Dark Souls when you crafted a piece of Rakshasa or Ironworks or whatever, it was exactly the same shit as it is now, you just needed more time and funds to get to that point.

I think expert recipes go the right way, in making manual crafting a thing again. Not an overly complex thing, but it's fun to actually engage with the crafting mechanics rather than just play Teamcraft for a bit then never touch it again until they update the requirements. I hope they re-use those systems next expansion to make more complex and more engaging expert recipes. I also hope they don't do the Ishgard ranking shit again though, cause that part sucked. And I say that as someone who did get the Saint title, it felt like old school mmo shit where you have to login everyday and drop 8+hours into the game to make meaningful progress, but I could do without that tbh.

Folanlron said:

Another Ultimate is in the works btw, just Covid pushed a bunch of stuff around... It's either Nidhogg or Thordan we have 0 clue "who" the next ultimate is.

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Well it'll be both most likely, since every ultimate combines several bosses and this one is themed after the Dragonsong War, so it'd be surprising if there weren't both Thordan and Nidhogg in it as they're both part of the dragonsong war.

The issue is since it was pushed back, it was also pushed back all the way to 6.1(since they don't release ultimates during a new tier patch), so that's pretty fucking far for new content for the hardcore raiders, and it also means it's likely the next expansion will only have "one" ultimate, on top of the delayed one, so it's still a loss in the end.

They could add a new skill specifically for these(new 90 skill), that's like a one time per craft(or maybe more than one, but limited), no CP no durability ability that will reroll your current proc to another, or if you don't have a proc force one. This way you can affect the RNG. Maybe another skill to "delay" a proc too, like you get a nice CP cost reduction proc, but you just refreshed manip and don't have good CP spending ability, use skill, hold the proc for up to x turns. This way you can hold it and then use it on a 2nd manip or something like that.

Basically still RNG based, but with tools to play around the RNG. Honestly wouldn't be that bad to go this way for 6.0, there's enough base skills already for standard crafting so don't really need new ones, but if they make expert recipes a thing that's more common, having skills specifically for it sounds kinda nice.

That said I don't think expert recipes are great or fun or whatever, just that they're certainly a "new" thing for crafting that didn't really exist before and are more involved that basically all the crafting that came before. Crafting otherwise has been the same shit for a long time.