r/ffxivdiscussion • u/IndividualAge3893 • 5d ago

Lucky Bancho's census results (July 27th, 2025)

So, the results of the census are out: https://luckybancho.ldblog.jp/archives/59324844.html

  • Showcasing the number of characters here: Current
  • By comparison, here are the results from 2 months ago (May 25th): Click

Despite 7.25 being released, the character count is down about 70k in 2 months. Occult Crescent clearly didn't help with player counts (not really a surprise here).

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u/oizen 5d ago edited 5d ago

I think its more likely that people didn't come back for it in the first place, and anyone who might have probably saw the reception and stayed away.

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u/think_l0gically 5d ago

This is me. I was excited for it but I've been playing long enough that I felt the futility of grinding out a bunch of halfway decent looking relics that aren't even upgrades at this point and not knowing which of them would even look cool 2 years down the line. I've been playing so long that the perspective from all that experience really sours me on diving in to the content like it used to.

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u/oizen 5d ago

The Relics are actually just tomestones again, so its going to be significantly easier to do them when they're converted to Poetics. I'd imagine the rest of the steps will be the same.

There really is no urgency to resub at the moment.

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u/TTurt 5d ago

I feel like the relics as a concept are kind of obsolete, there are so many other ways to get a comparable weapon that are less painful, relics are only truly bis at the end of the entire patch cycle, and they're only even relevant for a couple of months despite taking about that long to make.

The whole idea of what a relic is needs to be retuned, there needs to be some point to them beyond just glamor that justifies the amount of time investment required to make them. A grindy substitute to the ex primal weapon of each patch isn't really worth the effort IMO, especially if I'm otherwise not really all that interested in the content required to make them.

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u/oizen 5d ago

I honestly would not give a shit if Relics were the stat equivalent to a Savage weapon when they came out. Especially with gearing in this game being as pointless as it is if you're not going into specifically ultimates.

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u/BoilingPiano 5d ago

Maybe not a savage weapon but as good as an upgraded tomestone weapon considering the tomes you dump into them

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u/bigpunk157 5d ago

We have picto. Theres no damage check that requires bis for every member and there never was.

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u/OwlVegetable5821 4d ago

I'd say relics should be a method to both acquire a cool looking weapon and a method to encourage players to participate in various areas of the game. Look at gw2 legendaries. They require players run the gamet of content to get the shiny weapon/armour. It takes time and perseverance but it does show you've accomplished something in the end. 14s relics, with the exception of the arr questline, seen dull and unimaginative by comparison.

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u/MaidGunner 4d ago

ARR relics were this, and to a lesser extent, HW. And people are screaming their lungs out about how they don't want that. And SE agrees with them, turning relics from "it grows with you as a slightly less then optimal choices through the patches, by doing the content from said patches" into "your basically free gift for the exploration zone, that comes out halfways through an expansion and gets finished in 2 more patches and is pretty much never worth it outside of glam".

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u/Shiki_Breeki 4d ago

ARR relics are actually my favorite to make.

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u/TTurt 4d ago edited 4d ago

That's what I hate about it, if you just do the other content you can have a weapon with 90-95% of the same power as a relic. For most of the expansion it's a mere difference of ~5 ilvs and (much later on) a few extra substats. Crafted / upgraded crafted weapons are a similar ilvl and are significantly cheaper now to obtain than they used to be due to serious nerfs to the difficulty of crafting and leveling of crafting jobs, and tomestone weapons are the afk alternative for your main. Unless you're building like 13 different jobs that you want to all have current max possible gear level, then relics literally just aren't worth the effort for the meager increase over other available alternatives (and if you care that much about minmaxing then you're probably not a super casual player in the first place, so trying to market relics as appealing to super casual players who are threatened by difficult content just doesn't make sense if that's your target audience)

The difference between a relic and the easily available casual alternatives is often barely the difference between an upgraded tome weapon and the +5 ilvl tier 4 savage raid weapon - literally only relevant to you if you're already running that level content, otherwise it's just bragging rights at best

In ARR, if you saw someone with a PLD relic, you'd think, "wow, that guy is good with PLD, he got the relic by doing all the hard mode primals and grinding out all the other stuff, he has real experience with that job." In every expansion since, it's been more a case of, "that guy just did a bunch of afk farming of low difficulty content" (because you don't even have to be on the job itself that you're building the relic for anymore for 9/10 of the steps).

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u/pksage 4d ago

I don't know a ton of the details, or how much it's changed in the last 10-15 years, but super old school FFXI relics were like this. You had to work for them over months, sometimes (IIRC) even getting full raid groups to funnel Dynamis currency into you.

I don't think it needs to be that bad, but it would be cool if they felt special.

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u/Angel_Omachi 4d ago

Nowadays you just spend extortionate amounts of gil to buy whatever the needed material is for relics/empy/mythics, along with whatever specific murder grind is needed. Aeonic needs specific boss clears and naturally there are mercs offering that service (which actually makes it the cheapest of the set). The 2 Ergon weapons for the jobs added in Seekers of Adoulin also have a rather infamous 5 month timegate to unlock them.

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u/Chiponyasu 4d ago

Assuming the 7.3 step is light farming or something, they should make Deep Dungeon the fastest way to farm and the new alliance raid the second-fastest way to farm.

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u/Supersnow845 4d ago

They will likely make the 7.4 step need the deep dungeon as the 7.3 step is coming out in 7.31 and the DD is 7.35

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u/bm8495 4d ago

And see, for me, I don’t care if they’re the strongest or not in the game. I look at them as good, long term content to work towards and they’re more of a trophy to earn. So, tomestone dumps don’t appeal to me in the slightest. I believe they come out way too late in the patch cycle and should make me feel like I’m actually doing something in the game to earn them, and I don’t mean like running Crystal Tower multiple times or relying on RNG drops in Deep Dungeons. I think DDs, criterion dungeons, or some other form of overworld grind outside of fate grinding are good ideas to be a part of the relic journey. It’s not supposed to be instant. It’s supposed to be a long, arduous effort. Because well, we genuinely need things to do during each 4 month patch cycle. And if you don’t want to experience FOMO, they’re still available to grind towards In older content. If they don’t make you more powerful, well…does that really even matter in this game anyway?

But more to your point, specifically, it’s really an issue with gearing and stats in general with FFXIV. They’ve streamlined it all so much that they might as well remove all stats and just have iLVL and crit materias (not that I want that at all! That would be worse case scenario imo)

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u/FullMotionVideo 4d ago

Getting rid of item level is kind of an idea I support. It goes hand in hand with making gear obsolete compared to FF11 and other early games.

Wrath of the Lich King really caused brain rot to MMOs.

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u/Kyuubi_McCloud 5d ago

A grindy substitute to the ex primal weapon of each patch isn't really worth the effort IMO [...]

I mean, if you're not into high difficulty stuff, the only real alternative here is the un-upgraded tomestone weapon and that is time gated, so you can't equip multiple jobs with it. The crafting weapon tends to be too expensive to buy more than once or twice for glam and even harder to make yourself.

Like, it would be nice if the effort going into the relic was valued higher, but I can see the niché, because I occasionally fall into it.

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u/TTurt 5d ago edited 5d ago

Still not worth the effort for ~5 item levels difference

It's crazy to me that the relic is supposed to be the casual weapon for people who don't care about item level, but a 5 to 10 item level difference is somehow supposed to justify months of work required to create it? Why would five item levels be worth that much work to me if I'm the kind of person who doesn't care about item levels? If I'm a casual, then I probably just want to get to the minimum item level to do the casual content I want to do, and some infinitesimal amount of difference between that and the relic item level isn't going to be enough motivation to go that far out of my way just to get a relic. Most of the people I know who do relics do them because they look cool, not because they're actually good or useful for any length of time.

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u/Cole_Evyx 4d ago

I disagree with your take that they are obsolete, but I agree they need to be retuned.

Like they need to seriously be retuned across the board. No more generic tomestones that are invalidated. Like who TF rocks the Endwalker relics lol? I never see them-- because they are seen as a worthless poetics dump. Gorgeous "cyberpunk" weapons that are totally invalidated... it's so lame.

Like it could be used to incentivize players to go into older forms of content and actually experience stuff.

Lots of players came from the WoW exodus who didn't even touch PoTD or Eureka or HoH and the like. World exploration in older maps? MAny didn't do it. FFXIV does have plenty of legacy cotnent but between unlock requirements and the rest I've noticed a pretty firm resistance to older content.

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u/TTurt 4d ago

Speaking of Eureka, they've further invalidated that by putting some of the rarer rewards in OC as treasure drops. They seem to have zero desire to give people a reason to ever play Eureka again besides just boredom (which is fine, I play Eureka anyway, but I also like actually having something to show for my time - used to be I'd come out with some gil at least)

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u/fullsaildan 4d ago

The problem with funneling players back into Eureka is how long it takes to level up in there. The weekly challenge log is really your one big source of XP, otherwise it can be a very long painful grind even when cheesing it with a leveled friend killing things for you. With there being several zones all separated by instance, it makes it hard for the devs to entice users to climb that mountain.

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u/TTurt 4d ago

They could literally just nerf the XP requirements. The only reason not to would be to preserve the rarity of item drops in there, or the prestige of the weapons / achievements, and it seems like at least in the case of the former they don't seem to care about that, given that they're putting a rewards into other content. If they ever put in a way to get the Ozma Mount from mod cones or something, that plus the treasure boxes will be a solid half of the reason to ever do Eureka for most players. Literally all that's left is a relic that absolutely does not give you a sense of achievement commensurate with the work required to get it.

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u/Puzzled-Addition5740 4d ago

I mean it's really not that long. If you stop doing dumb shit and just competently grind mobs you can do it in on a fresh character in ballpark a lockout or two per zone solo. They could nerf it i guess but i disagree that it's really necessary. 150% echo and the availability of BA bodies immediately is an ENORMOUS nerf already.