Personally, I do not think there should be any side content prerequisites for relic related content. Ivalice being required in ShB was as big of a mistake as requiring all of Hildibrand: it forces players to potentially interact with content they do not find enjoyable for the sake of generating a lead in to a long grind fest. In reality, doing the side content the relic is based off of should just provide the player with alternate dialogue and additional context more than anything.
What I find most appalling is the community shredding itself over differences of opinion. It is rather telling when people who enjoy particular pieces of content refer to it as "making this group suffer" when they are told they need to do old side content to do relevant content, particularly related to relic which is something people do play the game to grind out. Understand when I say this, it may seem targeted at a specific group of players, however it is not, there are other cases of this that I have witnessed through the years of me playing the game where people refer to it as such.
Personal attacks on other community members will not help out the community, let alone this discussion. It shows specific people do not really care about the game and its development. Rather, for these individuals, all they care about is watching players that do not do specific pieces of content that they enjoy suffer through it.
While I know the devs would (hopefully) never do this, consider if the requirement for the relic was completion of the previous Ultimate Raids, or even Savage Raids. It is a rather extreme example but sometimes these examples are required to show why making specific arguments are inherently flawed.
