Can we go back to using tomes to get relics?

[AmiableApkallu]

What I always found confusing is that people whine about EW relics being "tome weapons" while seeming to forget how many thousands of tomes go into making ARR and HW relics too. Like, it takes almost as many tomes for those as it did EW ones yet somehow people give them a free pass, or even try to hold them up as the gold-standard for relic grinds we need to "go back to".

The ARR relics have a (substantial) grind in addition to the tomes. The 900 tomes on books, the 1125 tomes on Alexandrite maps, and the 600 tomes on mahatma are the price you pay so that you can engage with some bit of combat content and get credit for it.

Compare that to Endwalker, where you pay some tomes and… that's it. You're done.

[Asari5]

it is a bad grind.

not because of the amount but because its not consistent.
make the droprates 100% and make us gather five or six times so many items.

[Valence]

I'm genuinely curious. To all the people that seem to praise or at least defend the current relic steps that aren't tome based, do you find those steps fun and fulfilling to do? Do you have fun while farming fates? Do you find the fate gameplay enthralling or?

[Daralii]

I'm genuinely curious. To all the people that seem to praise or at least defend the current relic steps that aren't tome based, do you find those steps fun and fulfilling to do? Do you have fun while farming fates? Do you find the fate gameplay enthralling or?

My only problem with the demi-atmas was that verdisgris only had 2 FATEs, a pot FATE, and the "finale" CE. The others I just picked up while casually playing in OC, and while I think it's a massive step-down from Eureka and Bozja, it's at least something that is slightly different from the normal level cap farming.

[Supersnow845]

I'm genuinely curious. To all the people that seem to praise or at least defend the current relic steps that aren't tome based, do you find those steps fun and fulfilling to do? Do you have fun while farming fates? Do you find the fate gameplay enthralling or?

OC is heavily flawed but I’d still prefer it to just running roulettes or spamming hunts

The problem with the whole “tomestones allow you to do what you want” is that the non roulette non hunt tomestone farming options fall somewhere between heavily suboptimal and outright garbage

You don’t feel like you have a lot of choice, you just feel like you are being pigeonholed into roulettes

[Selsix]

I'm genuinely curious. To all the people that seem to praise or at least defend the current relic steps that aren't tome based, do you find those steps fun and fulfilling to do? Do you have fun while farming fates? Do you find the fate gameplay enthralling or?

I can't speak for the current relics as I refuse to set foot in OC for reasons that are irrelevant to the topic at hand but I will -readily- state I vastly prefer ShB and SB style relics to every other kind. Eureka was okay (I have criticisms) but I LOVED Bozja. Bozja to me was the perfect relic grind. Do I enjoy FATE grinding though? Honestly that's not something I've ever even really considered. What I enjoy is "mindless" content where I can say, listen to a book on tape/podcast/YT video/stream and just go through the motions with my brain mostly on auto-pilot. For me, this is incredibly relaxing and I enjoy it. FATE grinding falls under this umbrella so I suppose I could say yes I prefer FATE grinding to tomes as a relic step. Could the grind be more fun than FATEs? Sure, but that's beside the point.

[Burmecia]

snip

We are two sides of coin, because fates being the main thing in fate farming place for SB and ShB relics was the thing which turned me away from those relics. There is nothing wrong in preferring fates of course. Just... awareness that there is fate haters out there, hi.
Whenever i have itch to do some, its short burst. Farming and farming and farming just feels dreadful to me, for example

+ dunno about arr relic since i didnt finish it when the content was current, but i cant remember anima using current tomes. poes and lessers yeah (and GC seals, and Beast Tribe currency). requiring current tomes would make tome steps pretty annoying, imo.

[Supersnow845]

We are two sides of coin, because fates being the main thing in fate farming place for SB and ShB relics was the thing which turned me away from those relics. There is nothing wrong in preferring fates of course. Just... awareness that there is fate haters out there, hi.
Whenever i have itch to do some, its short burst. Farming and farming and farming just feels dreadful to me, for example

+ dunno about arr relic since i didnt finish it when the content was current, but i cant remember anima using current tomes. poes and lessers yeah (and GC seals, and Beast Tribe currency). requiring current tomes would make tome steps pretty annoying, imo.

While I’m not saying your opinion of farming is invalid there is the element of the relic has always been farming content

I’m not saying you said “I don’t want to farm for my relic” but the people who do say “I don’t like farming so that’s why I like tomestone relics” are basically saying they are walking into maccas and asking why they don’t serve KFC chicken strips

[AmiableApkallu]

And did anyone find that substantial additional grind fun I wonder? I know I didn't, I would have sooner paid a 9000 tomes than do another book, dear lord.

To answer that question seriously: Are you talking about when A Realm Reborn was current? Or today, when Dawntrail is current?

Because I have to assume (I'm a child of post-ShB) that it's a vastly different experience today grinding out an ARR relic, when you have flight and can unsync basically everything, compared to back-in-the-day, when you had to run everywhere and grind everything at-level.

Today, I'd rather pay 100 tomestones and do another book rather than increase the cost for that step by 8000 tomestones. Back-in-the-day? I can't say.

[Selsix]

We are two sides of coin, because fates being the main thing in fate farming place for SB and ShB relics was the thing which turned me away from those relics. There is nothing wrong in preferring fates of course. Just... awareness that there is fate haters out there, hi.
Whenever i have itch to do some, its short burst. Farming and farming and farming just feels dreadful to me, for example

You're absolutely allowed to dislike FATE grinds, I myself even admitted I believe they could come up with something more fun. That being said, I would hope you're not defending EW style relics which I like to think most people wouldn't. It's perfectly understandable to think the grind for a relic shouldn't be too extreme or that it should be fun, but EW relics were essentially just given to the player for free for just doing their usual daily roulettes. The problem with tome relics is that those tomes are only coming from three sources:

-Current patch "greater" tomes used to buy current tier equipment.
-Current patch "lesser" tomes only used to buy old equipment and crafting materials.
-Poetics, which are only used for previous expansion equipment and relics.

Using greater tomes for the relic is a horrid idea because it will directly compete with gearing your main and side jobs due to the weekly cap. Using lesser tomes runs into the issue where there really isn't anything else to spend them on EXCEPT the relic. EW had this problem. Once the crafting materials crash due to market saturation, the lesser tomes become functionally worthless, only having marginally more value than Poetics which as everyone is aware are truly worthless. (I shouldn't need to explain why Poetics being used for a current relic is similarly an awful idea.) This meant that nobody did any extra dungeons to get EW relics (unless they were incredibly impatient).

I am of the mind that WHATEVER they do for the relics, be it an exploratory zone or otherwise, cannot double dip on something the player was already going to do anyway. In this example, roulettes. During EW I finished 3 relics and never once did a single roulette more than I had to do on any given day to accomplish this. Adding a relic that doesn't require any extra work is pointless, it feels cheap and unearned (because it is). The player should have to engage with content they otherwise wouldn't be (majority speaking), regardless of if said content is brand new or not. If not exploratory zones or world FATEs, they should send us into a deep dungeon or something. Maybe give Criterions a real point, you get the picture. They should require -effort-. Should that effort be fun? Well, fun is subjective but as this is a video game the answer to that should be yes leaning. Regardless however, they should require work.