Originally Posted by
Hasrat
ARR was certainly rough, although I can appreciate why, as an attempt to sorta reward every aspect of content you could get into. And honestly it's still a bit of a ballache today. But, I can't really recall any step of HW that required millions of gil, or high level crafting. From what I can tell/remember, the only such step has been completely mitigated by offering those items from Grand companies. There's still some long grindy steps, but none of it is really gated behind non-combat content.
I have nothing else to add to this discussion. Except, it seems like relic grinds are always going to be a point of complaints. I'm not sure it's even possible to make them in a way that pleases any/everyone, while also still being challenging/rewarding (or, at the very least, time consuming).