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

[RiceisNice]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you started around 2.3 or so, right? That's probably why you didn't hear much about it, as it was ancient history by then. But early on in the first few months, there were people talking about how different the Relics felt compared to their FFXI counterparts and how they wished they were more "meaningful" they were.

Near the end of 2.1. And I was directly referring more to why people disliked the initial step (and thus in response to the feedback, it was taken out)

Several posts back I talked about ways the Anima saga incorporates some player feedback, in response to someone else. Is the whole thing a response to feedback? No. But some of that feedback has been contrary to part of the very purpose of the questline, which so far as we're aware, was one of the more successful aspects of ARR's design. Lots of people built and completed Zodiac weapons, so it's more than likely that SE considers the core design of the quest to be fundamentally sound, which is why Anima generally follows the same model as the Atma-onward Relic/Zodiac questline, but has various tweaks.

While it follows the same model, it's also trying to follow the footsteps where if zodiac required 2.0 content, so too does anima, a 3.0 quest, requiring 2.0 content (versus revisiting 2.0 content) But again, beyond the first step, none of it seems reflective it, and especially so since it all came out at the same time rather than step by step. It also doesn't help that even though they're following the model with tweaks, it doesn't necessarily follow why it's done that way. For example they want you to redo dungeons with your main job. What is the point of that when you're also given the option to unsync? For Step 3, it follows similiar to zodiac that you need to have a large sum of tomestone currency which can be gained in numerous manners. Because it' a universal currency, it can be done on any other job, and you have the option to express it through Alexander clears for tokens. However, why put beast tribes and 2.x hunts as options as well? honestly, I'm right here now typing this message because I'm waiting for a beast tribe FATE to spawn for the last 25 minutes, except Southern Thanalan is dead for FATEs so I'm due to wait for a while because the FATEs won't cycle. This also directly goes back to the immeasurable amount of negative feedback with animus FATEs which seemed to have a much longer respawn rate than any other FATEs in the region, despite said region being a popular area (giant seps and CCH specifically).

I'm lumping all the relic quests together, because this is how it was represented to us.

but it's a side effect of the fact that the grind is longer, which is something freedback specifically asked for back during the early days of 2.0/2.1. Feedback at the time suggested that players didn't want Relics to be something for an alt job but rather something for a main job. Does that clarify a bit what I'm referring to?

It does explain that, though at the same time this doesn't appear to be that big of an issue. Despite that they've accomplished just that beyond the initial relic by making it require much more time investment. And hell, they've essentially done the same right now with eso (weekly lock for an AF weapon, it even shares model with the relic weapon), so it feels like backwards thinking. Or at the very least, I have trouble grasping their thought process because every other design works toward the idea of relic being special/for the main job.

I'd have to dig around and see if I couldn't turn up interviews and the like from like 2 years ago to really get you confirmation on this, but if it's really important to you I can try to. I'm horrible at Google, though. There might be some information in older Live Letters, but the addition of the Relic questline was also discussed in various media interviews, and I honestly have no idea which of the countless ones conducted around that time have the bits from Yoshi-P that I'm thinking of..

It's really not too important, because at this point Yoshi going back on his words isn't unusual to me anymore, considering that he's done that on multiple occasions. One thing to note though is that the relic weapons in 2.0 have always been referred to as "Zodiac weapons", but not even the questline itself never refers to it until the animus stage (with the zodiac braves). That at the least has implications that they intended this to be a questline that would be added on down thee road past the zenith stage.