Ok...let me level with you here SE...

[Insaniac]

I can't believe after so many years I still haven't learned not to get my hopes up. There are so many glaring problems with these trials for relics and mythics.

Having both stage 1 and 2 trials require the same items is a very bad idea. How could anyone ever be expected to even start on stage 2 trials when 2 years later people are still collecting the same items to finish their stage 1?

Using item trials from NMs that require 18+ people to kill and produce, as far as we know, only one of those items, creates an unreasonable bottleneck even if the trials are reduced to 3-5 items. In their current state they are absolute lunacy. My LS for example would need to kill ADL 400+ times to finish our relics with the current requirement of 20 and even if lowered to 5 we would still need to kill him 100 times. By the time we are done with those there would be 5-10 new relics to complete

You may be holding on to the idea that people will form PUGs to finish these trials. You are 100% wrong. There is no desire to kill these NMs. Their drops are mostly useless. No one kills them now because they are outdated or have been pointless from day 1. Please don't assume that because 18 people that you play to test and develop your game are able to make these kills happen in a controlled setting that any single player would ever be able to put together a shout group for PW or ADL.

Basically, Stage 1 NEEDS to be changed to a kill trial and it would preferably be something that small groups of people could accomplish and it needs to be from content that people actually want to participate in. Old CoP zone boss kills or kills of timed NMs in xarcabard for relics. Odin kills or specific ZNMs for Mythics. You could even set it up like the first stages of empyreans where you are required to complete several smaller trials.

Kill ??? city NM 4 times > Kill ??? CoP NM 4 times > Kill ??? Xarc #1 NM 6 times > Kill ??? Xarc #2 NM 6 times.

That is a reasonable trial. These item trials will not accomplish the goal you set of "A majority of PCs finishing". Less than half, possibly far less than half, of relics and mythics will ever see 99 even if you lower the requirements.