While surely dramatic and at best arguable in several points... I can relate to OP's grievances.

The relic questline, after actually getting the weapon, is no sort of fun. Hell, it's not even challenging - how anyone in their right mind can call being sent back to farm (or camp at) old content that they've already done a million times (or just plain forced to spend millions of gil) "challenging" is way beyond me. It's tedious, it's mind-numbing, it burns people out, heck it even poisons the atmosphere when an unfortunate first-timer gets into a dungeon only to have a tank rush forward without saying anything or waiting for anything and just pulling five mobs at once because they just want to get through it. And ultimately, it really isn't even rewarding: new licks of paint and a different glow effect, finally an actual new weapon that isn't even BiS (because hardcore raiders would whine about not having the strongest, because why do casuals even need such), so much so that it's 10 ilvl below that. Yes, the frustration is understandable. Sure, it's not compulsory; sure, nobody's holding a gun at anyone's head to do it. But consider this: if you have any sense outside doing math for stats, you'd want to do it, because it's a supplement to your job; if you have the slightest of OCD, you'd want to do it because the quest is there, will be there, either on duty list or in open world above the NPC's head, because it can't be turned off. And yes, people want something to do, but they want to have fun doing it - that's why they play a game. All in all, it takes too long of doing stuff that is simply not fun (and not even challenging), for something that doesn't even feel rewarding. And you know, this is only one piece of such content, that feels more of a job than entertainment.

Sure, there are alternatives. Much harder content that can't be done without people forcing you to watch guides until you know them backwards by heart woken up in the middle of the night - and even then it's an immense lot of practice, IF you even find people to take you on. Because this oh-so-much-friendlier-than-that-of-other-games's community is like that, they expect all the experience from randoms they'd take on, and kick them at the first mistake. (While at the same time forcing people to skip actual in-game cutscenes, irony anyone?)

As for challenge: no, I don't think people in general play games to be challenged. If someone wants challenge, they take up a difficult project at work or do sports. A game can havea challenging difficulty, can have content that is challenging, of course. But the whole of it? On a general level? No. Not after a day at work when you arrive home and want to kick back and relax. And as it was pointed out, the relic is nowhere near being a challenge; it's much more just work.

Also, please don't tell me SE couldn't win here. Between "everything being spoon-fed" and "one year old content still an impossible mess", don't tell me there is no middle-ground there. Quite a few threads have already pointed out that it's exactly that mid-tier difficulty that's missing from the game, and quite honestly it's such a wide gap it shouldn't be so hard to fit stuff in there. (Sastasha HM and the Ultros trial do feel like they're getting there, actually, at least at certain points.)

About crafting: well, not million mats, probably, no. But too many different materials that are gated behind not even a single, but often times two or three instances of RNG, only to keep stuff "exclusive"? Hell yes. And once again, it's a problem, because it's either a) insane amount of work again to get them, or b) insane amount of gil to get them. For something that is, many times, simply an item for glamour purposes, like why on earth should exactly the few pieces of casual clothes be among the hardest to obtain? (Yeah, I know, because they apparently can't keep DoL/DoH relevant in other ways.)

To sum it up. The game's been touted as "casual friendly" ever since (before) its launch. The devs (I think even Yoshi himself) have said that when they come up with something, they consider whether they'd find it fun to do, because if they didn't, then surely the players wouldn't either, so it needs changing. Yet, for I don't even know how many patches now, what have we been given? Incredibly mind-numbing and long time-sinks, one right after the other, that feel more job-like than fun and in several cases, not even rewarding. (Personally, by the time I finished my first atma, well before the nerf - I was so brain-dead, I haven't played for a week, and I can't even say I rushed it, seeing how there were days I didn't even touch it; when I finally beat Garuda Ex on the 9000th try, I almost broke my keyboard, I felt anything but a sense of achievement, because it'd gotten so frustrating beforehand.) Everyone seems to crave newer and newer and newer content continuously. But why? It's taxing on the devs, because the team is admittedly very small. The content itself suffers, with anything ranging from bad design to awful bugs. If someone does do it casually, there already is more than enough (relic, gearing up DoL/DoH, all the logs, ex primals, Coil, etc). And those who burn through them - they burn out, many of them generate a toxic environment with bad social interactions (either in-game or even on here), they complain about not having anything to do. Barely a year old, but the item level is almost three times of the actual character level now, while at the same time there still is several content (even as old as the game itself) that cannot be done via random DFs, maybe only with a great lot of luck. Is OP dramatic? Maybe. Is their frustration understandable/justified? Definitely. And it's easy to see how the relic itself is only a last drop in a glass full of water.