Quote Originally Posted by Mithron View Post
The main difference is the acquisition still. The ARR relic books, in particular, are very good because they have you do a variety and set different content like FATES and dungeons per book. So you can't just do whatever is the fastest Tomes, but you actually have to do a specific dungeon. Then in HW, you have to do specific roulettes to get the item. So you can't just stock pile a bunch of Tomes from doing other activities then instantly get a new relic, though currently you can just stockpile these specific items by repeating the daily/weekly quests for years until you're ready to get a new relic. Which I think is still fine because it's a specific activity for a specific purpose, rather than just automatically having enough from doing expert roulette every day like you naturally do otherwise.
ARR books are not a currency you acquire, but they are a good example of how to progress a relic step. The only issue I ever had with the books were the specific FATEs you needed to clear while in possession of the book. Time is precious and no one should have to waste it camping a zone.

Specific roulettes, roulettes in general, and even tomes are all lackluster means to progress relic steps. A relic for the current expansion should have you doing content within that expansion. This is how having a separate currency works as doing things like the current dungeons, 24-man raids, trials, 8-man raids, deep dungeon, etc. can all award this currency upon completion assuming the quest is active. Relics are a poor, uninventive means to keep old content alive, or to incentivize players to run new content like the Variant Dungeons. All of these should be able to remain relevant by their own merit. Using relics in this manner has been disastrous for this dev team in terms of positive feedback.

Anyone who says relic progression in their current form is due to players complaining about everything removes all accountability from the devs, but this doesn't change the fact that a lot of the playerbase are whiney, entitled brats who you can't make happy no matter what you do. When you [try to] cater to these player types the way this dev team constantly does instead of drawing a line in the sand, this is exactly what happens.