Returned like last week to the game with Zenith and now working on my first book towards Animus. Personally the FATE wasn't a problem for me as I play casually and often read stuff as I wait for FATEs and DF etc. At first I thought the 9 books was too excessive, it actually wasn't hard for me to earn enough Soldiery for the books.

Currently I play perhaps 3-4 days a week, about 3-5 hours each time, only doing the low level roulette, main quest roulette, beast tribe dailies for Soldiery and my personal feeling is this:

If you want to catch up quickly in iLv to do the latest raids, you shouldn't be relying on the relic anyway. You should be farming CT for iLv100 gear anyway, which will let you roll on the iLv100 weapon token. Then upgrade it to iLv110.

The relic line has special meaning, that's why it takes special steps to get, and I don't really want to see the steps nerfs to oblivion that it no longer feel special. Yes we can speed it up by upping the drop rates etc., but going through each of the steps is part of the journey of getting the relic up to date, isn't it? If you disagree and just want the relic done asap because it's just a weapon, then the relic series isn't for you anyway.

Back on topic, I do agree FATEs need some change. As it is now, I have absolutely zero motivation to join FATEs unless required as an objective. That means FATEs as a game content is a failure.