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

[RiceisNice]

Right, it's not the case now, and part of the reason it *is* that way is because of some of the initial dissatisfaction with how the Relic quest was set up originally.

...


The fact that it even exists at all was because of player feedback, as the developers originally didn't have any plans for the Relics to grow in power. So it's not so simple as the developers getting rid of the things players liked: the questline as a whole was in fact an attempt to address a number of things the players weren't satisfied with. It has, by and large, actually satisfied its original goals, for what it's worth, even if the forums explode with complaints each time a new step is released.

Even then, a good handful of the steps (with the exception of 1 in regards to atma being done on any job) in animus do not reflect any of the feedback though other than requiring "hard content". Being able to progress on jobs aside from your main has been there since zodiac as well, so at the very least when it came to doing previous content, they carried that over.

Not to mention I've hardly ever seen anyone talk about how dissatisfied they were with the intial relic quest, other than the fact that titan HM was required (and a good amount of it was attributed more on latency, compared to the fight being a legitimate skill check). And they still left out other niches like the weapons being an individual entity rather than using a broad-sweeping brush to funnel it into all the same plot.

Pardon me when I'm implying I don't believe you, but to me it doesn't seem that the initial problem with the relic was how the quests were, nor have I seen any input on making it a main-job investment from the start versus a starting weapon for a capped job. Beyond the first quest, the other 2 steps don't seem to reflect the player feedback by requiring you to go back to old dungeons (which the option of unsync being available) and going even further into 2.x hunts and beast tribes. Zodiac was able to accomplish players pacing themselves with the dungeon drops, high tome cost for the spring water, and GC costs for the cores. There's the tools available to make you do 3.x content at your own pace for the anima items...like the centaruo seals, diadem or even esotaric tomes if they had wanted you to focus on one character.

Edit : I'd also like a confirmation that the developers did indeed to intend for relics to not grow in power (and I mean just that, different from being stronger/as strong as raid weapons mind you). From my perspective of FF games, similiar equipment were always a case of "the weapon evolves with you" sort of deal, as was the case for pretty much any other mmo that has a unique/named weapon as a reward.