Sort of... that was because it was a 5 month gap between 3.0 and 3.1 which is nearly twice as long as the standard wait between patches.
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The reason why it was late and also badly done for the first step was that was when they took a 2 week break, so things were a bit behind.
I must be drinking the kool-aid then if you think the rest of HW was badly done. The crystal farming was easy, you didn't need your weapon or be in that job, you were even allowed to skip the first step if you had a relic in the past.
The crafting part and item turn in was probably the only step that was a bit much. The only reason Umbrite became an issue was due to using too much tomes. You either spent it on getting crafting mats for gear or using it for the weapon....and only became more of an issue if you had alts that needed the tomes.
The parts that did require you to go in with your weapon were easily cheesed by then, like A1s, or unsyncing half the content for the first step of the relic. For the rest of the stuff synced - if you couldn't do it for the weapon you're trying to create imo, you shouldn't have been in that job to being with ;)
In Heavensward's case it was late because 3.1 was terribly late in general. Holding the relic back that long was definitely a mistake in that case.
We're still not sure what form the Stormblood relics will take though. Yoshi has stated before that the new relic will be tied to the new Eureka zone. This heavily implies that we won't be grinding old content as we used to but instead grinding a special new form of content designed specifically for the relic progression. It makes sense that the relics are being held back this time as it seems they depend on Eureka and some other things being implemented at the same time.
Get ready for all the sam and rdm relics :)
NOOOOOO (In Vader Voice) i don't wanna endure hell over again
But will end up doing it again....
4.15 hm, so we probably talk about early/mid november. Was kinda hoping for 4.1