The difference is that 2.0 relics, particularly the first stage, launched with new content which at least dulled the sting of grinding. People have been running Alex for months now, the beast tribe dailies even longer, and the level 60 roulette for law is just neverreap/fractal. There is nothing new or interesting or innovative. The only thing SE could have done to be even lazier would have been to just sell gobdips in idyllshire for 30k Law. Oh but no we get a few cutscenes, joy of joys.

When people complain about 2.0 relics, they don't complain about the first stage because it was actually fun to do. You can fly through it in an hour now, but on release it was difficult and took a lot of time. Chimera and Hydra were unique instances exclusively for that quest. You had to fight the three Primals again but they were completely different fights than in the story, and their inclusion made the Relic quest feel tied in to the main scenario.

This new relic is some straight up Korean F2P MMO bot farm bs. At least when XI made you farm 30,000 whatevers it was for a weapon that would be BiS for seven years and fundamentally changed the way your class played. Here it's just for whatever, do you have anything better to do? May as well do more of the same shit you've been doing all year.