Wisdom of Nym: Speculating on Final Fantasy XIV’s new relic weapons

So how, exactly, are we making this thing this time? That’s what I want to know.

It’s not exactly a secret that Final Fantasy XIV’s initial set of relic gear that you get at the end of the MSQ is meant to be upgraded. It can’t be dyed, and it has the “Weathered” prefix, which is usually the sort of thing that indicates we’ll be getting an upgraded form later. This is all part and parcel with the way the game has always worked, and there’s no reason to assume it’ll be different now.

All well and good. So how are we actually going to be upgrading it? Having an idea that we’re going to be upgrading it isn’t the same as knowing that upgrade path, and it’s clear enough now that there’s going to be some to-do associated with it. So let’s theorize a little bit about this because there are a few potential routes.

Option 1: Buckle up, bucko, it’s Eureka 2.0

I’ve pointed out in the past that we have never been told that we will get another set of Eureka zones as we did in Stormblood. This is true. However, we’ve also not been promised that we’ll get three beast tribe quests or that we’ll get a new Deep Dungeon, and yet everyone is pretty certain those things are happening. For that matter, we were never promised five major patches, and yet I think most players would probably take any bets about that.

So it’s entirely possible that all this weathered gear will be improved by… well, another Eureka set. Here we go again, second verse same as the first, and so forth. It only slightly suffers from the fact that, well, no one really liked Eureka the first time around; it did eventually get its fans, but the whole set of systems it was built upon took a long time for people to gain interest and it never really lit anyone on fire. Even the very last installment got some praise, but a lot of that was directed at “why couldn’t it have started like this.”

Having said that, it’s also entirely possible that this sort of critique would actually be integrated into the new zones to start with. It’s entirely possible that we’re starting our new Eureka-like exploration with development that already understands where the original Eureka didn’t go quite right, and things will be… well, let’s just say better.

I don’t know how plausible this is, of course. I think that we could definitely have a better overall Eureka experience in from launch now, but I don’t know that people would really want that, and I don’t know if the team would really consider that a fun thing to recreate. Much like Diadem, it’s possible that Eureka wound up as a good idea that’s worth mining for future ideas, but it didn’t quite work as intended.

But it’d be wrong to say that this definitely won’t be the way the new system works. Heck, if they announce a new series of areas with a classic Final Fantasy XI area name like Promyvion or Dynamis, I won’t even be surprised.

Option 2: It’s time for a new FATE grind, oh boy

The addition of the Shared FATE system gave people good incentive to level up with FATEs and grind them up at launch. The first two relic weapons gave people a reason to keep doing FATEs even at the level cap. And sure, you’ve got gemstones to grab, but realistically you’re not going to need those forever. They won’t stay super-valuable or rare, and once you have the one-time rewards and no more levels to get FATE, participation drops off. It already has, by and large.

So here’s a place where the classic function of the relic weapons could come back to be useful. We all know this is the case, right? The purpose of this content requiring FATEs and so forth is to help offer more incentive to do this stuff? That’s not really controversial at this point, right? Because there it all is.

On the one hand, this is kind of what the whole irregular tomestone event thing is meant to accomplish: giving people a reward for bulking out content participation without having to provide new rewards. But there’s no reason we can’t also expand the system in this direction as well, granting us new motivation to take on old leveling content even at the level cap.

Now, the obvious downside would be that this is a half-step backward from having content devoted entirely to relic weapons. Some people will be cranky about that, and arguably for good reason. But at the same time, it’d serve a similar purpose and some other people would be happy that this grind does not require creating an entirely new and different grind for people to suffer through.

I mean, we all accept there’s going to be some grinding no matter what. Although I do wonder how this would handle armor enhancement.

Option 3: It’s something totally new!

So let’s say that it’s agreed Eureka was a bit of a bust. But we still have space in the development budget for a new zone, and the new crafting and gathering content doesn’t require an exploration area like Diadem. Maybe what we wind up with is something new, akin to Eureka in that it’s the relic content but entirely different in that it serves a completely different purpose and mechanism. It’s not really Eureka-but-more except in the sense that it’s a new zone with its own system.

For speculation purposes, of course, this is wading far into the marshes. After all, how do you predict what’s going to happen for content that literally doesn’t have precedent? It could serve as all sorts of things, and all we can do is speculate based on the past, which would suggest that it’s going to be content that’s more about time invested than challenges overcome; the “challenge” is the grind, not the difficult clears along the way.

As much as this option is somewhat a matter of admitting “it could be almost anything, who knows,” I have to admit that it’s kind of my favorite option. We can reasonably predict that we’re not going back to getting two dungeons every patch, so that seems to suggest development cadence is staying similar to Stormblood in that regard; at the same time, it feels like we’re not just going to get a do-over on Eureka when the first go around didn’t light people on fire.

So.. some sort of zone with its own leveling system, but not the party-based FFXI homage of Eureka, then? That sounds reasonable to me and definitely doable, but we just don’t know at this point. And probably won’t know until closer to the actual relic rollout, at that.

Feedback, as always, is welcome in the comments below or via mail to eliot@massivelyop.com. Next week, I want to talk a little about running out of space. No, it’s not about housing; it’s about how much more space the game has yet to cover and how it matters.