Regarding the Atmas, yes, another one of those.

[Vahlnir]

I think the issue is people approach the whole upgraded relic thing like it's the ONLY thing in the game to do.

This is in my opinion 99% of the problem. The Atma portion of the relic quest is the worst part, not really a question for me...but from the beginning it's all what people make it. They designed it in a way that it would take time, so why not go about it casually?

[Tsuga]

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I do the atma grind during beastmen dailies and jump into FATEs as they pop when I'm in the area. I occasionally grind FATEs for an hour or two if one of my friends wants to. That said I haven't had a single atma drop since I used to grind them for hours when the content was new. If the quest were designed to be done on the side then apparently the devs don't expect me to finish collecting my atmas for another 20 months, because I'm only at two so far and took a month break in May. Obviously this isn't the case, but it points out the ultimate flaw of the RNG - what may take one person five days can take another five years. It's a dice roll, and in this case there are twelve of them.

Even if I was one of the lucky ones who got the drops quickly that doesn't make the content any more fun, unique, or interesting. It's a grind of old content for the sake of forcing players into low level areas and drawing out the relic quest progression through RNG. That is not compelling, or challenging - unless you consider staying awake a challenge.

I have plenty of other stuff that I can do in the game, and I enjoy doing it. There is content that is fun, difficult, and rewarding, but that doesn't excuse the atma grind, and I don't think that it's unfair to ask for more compelling content as means of roadblocking progression in the future.