let's cut the chase, you have casual weapon, Gerolt masterpiece are now the casual weapon, a casual in1-2 week can get the upgraded version of it at i110.

now let's see what you need to do for get the same weapon via the ..."casual" relic:
- the whole quest with the 5 boss and amdapor (relic - i80)
- the small grind for the oil (zenith - i90)
- the FATE grind for the atma (Atma - i100 without change of stats)
- the 4500 soldiery + the 9 book (3 dungeon, 3 fate, 3 levequest and 100 monster per book) (animus - i100)
- the 75 alexandrite + materia grade 1-2-3-4, if you are extremely lucky only 75 materia needed, if you are not.... well... sorry for you (novus - i110)

all of this for get a weapon i110 when... you can simply farm a bit ST and get a i110 weapon. indeed the relic can be custom and are not over, but after you have the nexus and the zodiac.

Relic weapon was a mess! at the start the two first step was easy, why that? for allows new player to catch veteran that had relic, a lot of legacy had relic weapon!
but after this...we did get seen come some huge timesink step and the trouble is now that you have a few step, instead to really ease up the previous one and allows people to try to catch back... we leave this insanely huge timesink like it is. because don't get me wrong indeed atma can be earn faster, but it's still RNG and well you know what it means. and animus part was long because of the FATE inside the book.

all that for said that this stuff is a mess! i hope they did learn them lesson for the futur. either they slow down the speed they had new tiers (vertical progression is not very good when you bring this much content every 3 month.) or they avoid to create a weapon for the hardcore gamer! make it easy to do is not casual...

ps: and for the god sake, ignore what do the hardcore gamer, you can't make content that will keep them occuped for age it's impossible, no one before you was able to do it and no one after you will be able to do it! aim for the midcore gamer....