But they at least gave you the idea you were doing a variety of things according to some plan that would have some narrative connection to your relic weapon getting more and more powerful with each step. The EW relics were more like, "Oh, every time you hit 1500 tomestones from doing your dailies, trade them in for the next relic step." It was a total non-event.
EDIT: Addendum; Maybe it is just me, but for the sake of immersion I would even rather buy into some crazy grindy anime trope like having to hit a training dummy with the relic weapon a thousand times as a Stage 1 thing (like those, "perform a thousand sword swings until you understand the fundamentals" training memes), than just getting the next stage whenever I have 1,500 tomestones and a quick talk-to-npc quest.
