Roulette raids are easy and most of what you get is so old you can be carried easily as a worst case scenerio.
Printable View
If you look back at the old relics that were so highly praised by those wanting a grind and hating the EW tomestone relics, what were those specific duties and bosses, etc.? The things that would have made up the roulettes back in the day, plus some fate grinding!
So you’re right in that it’s a tomestone grind (and fate grinding for the first step) dressed up as something else, but really, so were all the past ones. I’m just happy it’s not an “artificially extended for the unlucky by RNG” grind. I’ll do the daily 4 roulettes, and maybe do some of them more than once on days I feel like it, watching the numbers go up and seeing steady progress.
I sympathize with those who had wished there was an OC component to the relic… but with only two zones, where were they going to put it? The first step already used all the fates and CEs. Maybe if Forked Tower had actually had its originally planned but scrapped Normal mode, you could’ve done that repeatedly for bonus Aetherwell farming. But as it is, making FTB part of the relic would kill the relic altogether, and it seems like they realize that.
I thought relic weapons were supposed to be casual content? That's why the weapon will never be as good as a raiding weapon. All it takes is your time. It doesn't require you to do anything "hard" in the game because that would be absurd. Just time.
They may as well take these out of the game because nobody can win with any design that goes into these weapons. They've tried more grindy, they've tried to make it easy, and now they have tried the middle road, and there's still haters. You literally cannot please everybody, and this is one of those times where not everyone is going to agree, no matter how these are acquired.
Also, this IS an MMO. You are going to have to cooperate with other people at SOME point if you plan to make any kind of progress.
So what is it do you want them to do with these relics weapons if dungeons don't work, item grinds don't work, fate grinding doesn't work, having to get crafting mats doesn't work. At some point you're going to just have to accept it for what it is and move on from it.
Only the roulette is required, so you do not even need to have the current fights unlocked. You can smack A1N and A2N all the way if you only have those unlocked.
It is the same for the alliance raids, you can only do LotA and Syrcus (through the roulette, not direct queuing) and complete the aetherwell.
Don't worry about it, it's a roulette like any other, and people will help you out if you're rusty or lost. Just ask nicely and be open to receiving advice. Your roulette also won't queue you into anything you haven't unlocked and everything is normal mode only, so some muscle memory might come back to you if you used to run them often.
The more you run them, the more you'll remember and/or learn, you got this!
Giving an actual good reason for crafters/gatherers to actually use their skills and provide for people building relics is awesome. You don't have to make everything yourself, that's why we're in an MMO :D You grind gil, buy the item (or mats and talk to a crafter to make it). It's a win for combat oriented characters that have money to spare and crafters that have a goal to work towards.
Setting aside the rest of your post for for a moment i want to address why grinding tomes when you come back for more relic weapons is completely fine.
it's not boring, that's the best QoL change they ever made to relic farming. We get the sort of challenge for the relic grind that people crave, but repeats are streamlined through the use of tomestones, so people don't have to invest serious time into grinding for a second, third, forth, etc. relic weapon. I know of several people who consistently grind for EVERY relic in each expansion and i can only imagine that not needing to spend 3 million gil and weeks upon weeks of light farming on 20+ jobs is a godsend.
Because they simultaneously want something challenging, but only in the things they want. They asked for something harder and the devs delivered, so now they are complaining that it's not fair and it is too hard because they neglect crafting/gathering and how dare Squeenix try and make them do content. (that last bit was sarcastic).
The devs are damned if they do, damned if they don't. Nothing they do or add is ever good enough for some of these people and the ones who act the part of contrarians are often the loudest minority on the forum and on social media.