Why is "It's something to do" apparently a valid defense?

[RiceisNice]

It was 3 weeks of tomestones to get the i90 version (900 Mythology), and the prior step wasn't week-locked at all. So you could have the i80, base relic within 2 hours of hitting 50 if you already had a level 50 job to prep the tomestones with. The first job obviously took longer, as you had to gear up first for Titan, but the 2.0 Relic was less about deciding "Okay, this is my main," and a lot more about thinking "I guess I need a good starter weapon for my new job" because the effort needed was so much less than it would be in the future.

Getting the base relic always did seem like something to get your alt job started, considering that at the time, there was no way to gain weapons from tomestones alone (which only begun with tomestones of law and poetics after 2.5). Eithercase, it's definitely not the case now since people are straight up getting alt weapons from law tomestones or even primal tokens. The 2.0 relics was something I looked forward to in order to get my job started, if only it's to get a title and a weapon that would match the identity of my job. And once you were beyond the first step and the amount of time investment needed to get it going, you pretty much would invest your time on the relic you were getting your main for.

This led to two avenues of complaints: one coming from raiders who felt T5 wasn't worth it (it originally only gave i90 weapons itself), and the other from (I have to assume) FFXI players who wanted the Relic to "mean something" as it were.

This is more on itemization for the item drops rather than an issue with relic specifically (at the very least, it's a far stretch to blame the relic as the source of the problem, versus the raid giving lower leveled rewards). IMO the relic is fine the way it is as far as ilvl is concerned (and I do wish they would incorporate raiding elements into it to justify it being BiS or equal to raid gear). Beyond that though, it really does feel like all it is a weapon model at times...especially when I got the yoichi bow on my BRD