OC is a soulless cash grab designed for sub retention and is not fun

[Granyala]

tomes as a system are inherently uninteresting, it’s basically buying a relic weapon with Gil. It doesn’t make thematic sense nor does it “feel” fulfilling. You can argue I’m putting way too much stock on feeling

Yeah, you totally do. The Atma grind feels no different to me than a tome grind would, except with more frustration attached due to the dogshit RNG element, so I do not see any sort of progress for hours.

3hrs of CE's yesterday, got 2 drops right at the start then 3 hours of nothing.

BOTH systems end up in being a simple transaction of "gimme items, get fancy stick".

Guaranteed Atma shards from all sorts of content would be better, yes. But ultimately, apart from how the item looks it would be no different.

Frankly put: Rowena with her vast network of experts in materials, ancient civilizations, collectibles, rare treasures etc being the source of raw materials, instead of us managing everything ourselves is actually a lot more believable. We are just the WOL. We are not experts in many fields and we are ultimately just one person that can't just scour the entire frikkin planet for some ultra rare goodies.

You know, I've always wondered why they didn't involve crafting in the relics

They did in the past and it SUCKED. It basically meant that most players had to do a gil grind to pay outrageous prices to the few crafters willing to deal with the annoying to create items.

I still remember putting my relics on hold for several patches because I refused to pay these prices (and my omnicrafting wasn't quite there yet).
I guess it would work better today, now that crafting is less annoying to deal with (and that my crafters are capable of creating the items no problemo) but AFAIK most players would still face a simple gil-grind, as being an omnicrafter is too hardcore for the average player.