(Relics) What is the lowest-development-cost content we'd still find fun?

[Edax]

So, let's say you're a content manager for XIV and have a small amount of development time you can spend to make time-intensive content. This time-intensive content is expected and, though often criticized if overly "grindy", is generally lauded as a well-liked component of the game and an iconic part of its life-cycle. This can be related to Relics, specifically, or anything similar.

Note: If you develop something for the longer term, you can draw in slightly more development time, but have to deal with player concerns over delays. Excuse these delays as you will.

How would you try to create the most development-cost-efficient content you can for the above purpose? What content would you reuse? How would you link these pieces of reused content? How would you stimulate player interest and participation through the means, rather than merely the rewards, of participation?

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Alternatively, from the player perspective alone, what content would you find fun in Relic grinds? Where does the border between "satisfying" and "overly grindy" lie? What can the devs learn from prior iterations of Relic grinds? What novel approaches might they take? To what extent would you forgive delays for greater efficiency or enjoyability in such content later?

Have at it.

Maybe I'd tie relics to treasure maps so it would be more Indiana Jones esque. Not only do you get great loot from treasure hunts and earn good gil, you can earn relics and it's upgrades over time. This would encourages players to cooperate with their own FC instead of the duty finder. But at the same time I would put a system in place to prevent bad-RNG from players getting relics, so perhaps a token system would also be in place so players could manually trade for relics if they do enough treasure maps.

This idea is based of Runescape's treasure map system where all the best stuff in the game could obtained from them.

[Edax]

Maybe I'd tie relics to treasure maps so it would be more Indiana Jones esque. Not only do you get great loot from treasure hunts and earn good gil, you can earn relics and it's upgrades over time. This would encourages players to cooperate with their own FC instead of the duty finder. But at the same time I would put a system in place to prevent bad-RNG from players getting relics, so perhaps a token system would also be in place so players could manually trade for relics if they do enough treasure maps.

This idea is based of Runescape's treasure map system where all the best stuff in the game could obtained from them.

Or here's a modification of my original idea. You get the relic and it has 5 universal upgrade slots. Any upgrade will bring it to the next level but the sequence at what you get the upgrades are not linear. The idea is that you can get one of the upgrades from Fate Grinding, one from Treasure Maps, one from Raiding, one from Deep Dungeons and one from Crafting. Thus fully upgrading a relic would require a whole variety of gameplay.