For me, a good relic step is one that forces you to, or, at least encourage you to participate in content you might have put down to help you in completing the relic weapon.

If I were to provide some examples, the book step for the Animus step of the Zodiac weapons was a good idea conceptually and definitely something that could have been improved on. Whether it stayed as a list of things to complete or change it up so you have to complete X amount of Y things, both would be fine. Another example is the collectathon for the first Anima weapon (the step after the Awoken stage). There were various methods to get the items, some from beast tribes, beating A1-4 etc. but you could pick and chose what you wanted to do and quicken it up if you wanted to. You could do these small things daily and eventually get it, and it doesn't take up much of your time.

Another step I enjoyed is the Umbrite step, more specifically, collecting the Crystal Sands. You get given a note of the items you need in order to exchange for a Crystal Sand, these items come from various different locations in the game, so you could, again, pick and chose how you wanted to go about it. Yes, Umbrites were tome sinks, but, doing the step slower, you will easily keep up with the tome requirement to fuel the Crystal Sand, not to mention the RNG in the second half that could speed up the completion.

Light farming is also something that could be considered well made. Go and do content, doesn't matter what it is, you get rewarded. Again, another step that you can put as much or as little effort into as possible and you will eventually complete it and honestly, a variation of a light grind might have made the current Phantom Relic step seem more meaningful. First, why only 4 elements? Seems odd to miss out Lightning and Ice despite them being primary elements in FFXIV, bring them all back. Next, I would have made all duties give 'light' to a random element, skewed towards your lowest element. If you had filled an element, then it would not be picked for the 'random' element. The next thing I would do is assign each duty and zone a specific element or 2 and at the end of that duty, you would get additional progress based on that element. This 'bonus' progress would not be transferable, so now you have to take that into account if you want to maximise the gains, though it will also only come into play once you get closer to finishing anyway. It is still a light grind, but it is presented differently. Also, the unstable Aether in OC is an excuse so that each Fate/CE gives a random element, so it doesn't matter what zone you are in and it is universal.



Hopefully this gets across more of what I want from a grind. Collecting tomes is nothing special and whilst it can be part of a step, there has to be something else to accompany that grind. Something that makes that step stand out from the rest so that this is a weapon you earn, not a weapon you just stumble upon. The RNG grind (with some RNG protection) from the first step would have been fine for all weapons and it could have been the case that the required items for the second and onwards relics were reduced, either 2 or even 1 of each Demiatma per weapon. Without the distinct grind for each relic, their status is lessened.