Long ago, during pre-alpha/beta stage, YoshiP had numerous interviews and Relics were sometimes brought up. During that time, he often repeated the same thing. That Relic weapons were always designed to be a staple to the game, for your Job and he wanted them to remain relevant. Now, relevant does not mean Ultimate. His idea has been, which he is now showing, is to scale the weapon with your character as you get stronger, so to does the weapon.

All we know for right now, is that the end result of the 'Zodiac' weapon plan, is to get to a point where players who have it will be able to adjust some of the weapon parameters making the weapon unique for each player's style. What that entails, we don't really know yet, because he hasn't said. It may mean further tilting of stats one way or another, such as in my case with Stardust, vit, int, det and spell speed. It may mean I can move vit points into more int points, spell speed into det, or it may mean we can change attributes completely, trade vit for crit for instance, who knows.

I truly believe that the Relic weapon will never be the strongest weapon of the game, ever. The only reason it's in a Purple field is to represent that it is something special beyond the blue, green and pink fields.

YoshiP is, supposedly, a big MMO gamer himself and has said that many times. So he's been involved with numerous titles (again supposedly, I've never seen an actual playlist) and knows how they operate, what players want from them, etc. I believe it's with that knowledge and what several people from this community have already said in the past, is that they want the hardest challenges in the game, to reap the greatest rewards, in term of weapons. Unless something shifts dramatically one day, I think it'll remain that way.

Now, if the Relic weapon Did become the strongest weapon at some point and all the people who simply scoffed and gave up on it back at this stage find themselves behind years worth of work because they didnt want to bother with it for, as many have said "easier" content for acquiring weapons, such as Leviathan Ex farming, or even Second Coil farming. I'm going to laugh, a lot.