Let me pose this question. Would any of you do the relic grind if it gave you a simple congrats at the end and no weapon to show for it?

Of course the answer is no, now here's the real question. Does anyone else see a problem with this?

The relic weapons existed in other FF games and to obtained them, the content was challenging. It didn't feel like a grind. But make no mistake, killing Shinryu in FFV for the Spear or Ogopogo in FFIV for the katana, was a bit of an accomplishment.

The gear I can buy with tomestones is another decent example of attaining gear (if a bit simple). I actually enjoy running the dungeons in SB, and getting the reward of tomestones is icing on the cake. Why shouldn't the relic weapons follow something similar, if not a bit more complex? Running trivial content, even if its 100 times, is still trivial. The challenge should be in the content itself not the tenacity of the player to suffer through it.

And I don't want to hear this stuff about Japanese culture being different. Shigeru Miyamoto produced some excellent games that featured content that you played through simply to play. You can use the warp whistle, but sometimes you just wanted to play through worlds 2 through 7. That's good design.

Relics should be challenging, exciting, and most of all fun to do. Don't get me wrong, they should require effort. But wouldn't it be nice to complete the quest and say, "damn I wish I could do that again." Outside some of the reputation grinds that some of them had, the Epic Fabled Weapons in EQ2: Rise of Kunark were actually well done. Those quests took a few days to complete. The Artifact Weapon quests in WoW: Legion were interesting if a bit too short.