The relic grind in ffxiv is honestly not a grind, it is a slight amount of work. Especially this expansions relic. You can get it in less then a day from the start to the top tier currently. Shadowbringers relic they basically just hand to you.

Compare this to games in the past where grinds were a thing. Lineage with a BIS sword with a 0.01% drop rate on a boss that had long (10+ hr) respawns. Or FFXI's relic which would take a single person playing 30hrs a week almost 2 full years of work to get or a whole endgame guild of 60 ppl pooling resources 45-60 days to get a single person a relic. Those were grinds. Mount farming in ffxiv is more of a grind then relic weapons to be honest.

If anything FFXIV needs more content with Grinds. To keep the more hardcore players active once their weekly raids are done Tuesday night.