Alliance raids have no business being a relic step.

[Arkevorkhat]

Let's be real here, the Shadowbringers relic questline is an extension of the Blades of Gunnhildr story, it's the story of Bozja's liberation, and a core part of one of the few major sub-plots in ShB.
There's no excuse for making it so that the only way to progress is to do alliance raids from already completed stories. Even worse is choosing alliance raids that have generally had an extremely poor reception; Crystal tower has trouble filling to this day unless you're doing a PF for BLU, and the Mhach and Ivalice raids were so dead that people were struggling to get access to bozja in the first place because people would rather strip off their jewelery than risk getting a Heavensward or Stormblood alliance raid.

The decision was made that it was important to the development team that they prop up dead content by making it the only effective way of progressing. (good luck convincing anyone that you did Stormblood FATEs for 35 hours to progress past the roadblock in the current relic tier, we all know you did the Alliance raids like an obedient little WoL). It's been shown time and again that someone high up in the FF14 team has some kinda boner for 24-person content, and that we're never going to be free of it until we, as a community, decide to not run it at all. The only way to win is to not play, to make the metrics on Alliance Raids so terrible that SE decides they're not worth the development time.

[RyuDragnier]

I have no clue what you're talking about when it comes to Crystal Tower "having trouble filling". In Primal DC, it's CT, 24/7/365 in the Alliance Raid Roulette. Like, to such a sickening degree to where people want either the ilvl cheese people do (forcing the roulette to ONLY be CT raids) to be fixed, or for it to get its own roulette so people can actually get into Mhach and Ivalice raids. Which btw are really hard to get into because of either people doing CT for the first time because it's the only alliance raid series required for MSQ, or they're performing said ilvl cheese.

[Kaurhz]

Prop up 'dead content', by locking it behind the relic, so those that still need to clear said Alliance raids, can do so without being impeded by a 30-minute queue? Sounds like a good approach to me, genuinely. The number of people doing a relic makes it the perfect piece of content with which to revitalize older content.

[ForteNightshade]

No offense, but have you done Alliance Roulette in the last year? I can count on one hand the amount of times it isn't Crystal Tower. In fact, I purposely stopped queuing because I was so sick to death of LotA. Queues for Rabanatre and Void Ark are practically instant now. I spammed Rabanatre literally until five minutes before maintenance last night and it still popped within two minutes regardless of role. I even got Dun Scaith and Orbonne—the latter twice.

Either you're queuing at horrible hours or... I really don't know because Crystal Tower hasn't been dead for a long time, sadly.

[Arkevorkhat]

They've taken what could have been a fun and interesting relic grind, and used it to punish us for wanting to get a halfways decent weapon. "Oh, you want to get the relic? Go do the 9 worst pieces of content after the ones we brought forward from 1.0. Oh, and you're gonna need to do each of them 15 times, because we have no interest in actually creating something fun, we just want new players to be able to do content that has no relevant rewards, and that you've proven that you hate already by never queuing for the heavy-handed rewards we stuffed into the alliance raid roulette, because we cannot and will not admit that Alliance Raids are something that we've proven time and again are well beyond the capabilities of our underpaid, overworked designers."

[Arkevorkhat]

No offense, but have you done Alliance Roulette in the last year? I can count on one hand the amount of times it isn't Crystal Tower. In fact, I purposely stopped queuing because I was so sick to death of LotA. Queues for Rabanatre and Void Ark are practically instant now. I spammed Rabanatre literally until five minutes before maintenance last night and it still popped within two minutes regardless of role. I even got Dun Scaith and Orbonne—the latter twice.

Either you're queuing at horrible hours or... I really don't know because Crystal Tower hasn't been dead for a long time, sadly.

No, I avoid them like the plague, because they're all trash and there's no reward SE could ever offer me to get me to want to do them. Not even 2000 poetics, 2000 allegory, and 450 revelation would be enough for me to be willing to put up with an alliance raid.

[Catwho]

As someone who voluntarily rolls into CT raids on a regular basis because it's how you finish the ARR light steps in the least stressful manner (I personally don't enjoy running Tamtara over and over and over again....) lol naw.

[Kaurhz]

They've taken what could have been a fun and interesting relic grind, and used it to punish us for wanting to get a halfways decent weapon. "Oh, you want to get the relic? Go do the 9 worst pieces of content after the ones we brought forward from 1.0. Oh, and you're gonna need to do each of them 15 times, because we have no interest in actually creating something fun, we just want new players to be able to do content that has no relevant rewards, and that you've proven that you hate already by never queuing for the heavy-handed rewards we stuffed into the alliance raid roulette, because we cannot and will not admit that Alliance Raids are something that we've proven time and again are well beyond the capabilities of our underpaid, overworked designers."

Like making Bozja more viable so that I can inevitably go into Bozja and enjoy what a reasonable person could perceive to just be Eureka all over again? No thanks

Bit of Napkin maths, but the sum reward for doing all relics would net me around ((17*15)*100)+((18*2)*100)=29100 Poetics, not inclusive of any bonus I may get. That is enough to get me through an Anima weapon and then some. Sounds good to me!

As someone who voluntarily rolls into CT raids on a regular basis because it's how you finish the ARR light steps in the least stressful manner (I personally don't enjoy running Tamtara over and over and over again....) lol naw.

Can't you solo unsync Garuda Extreme though? Takes like 70 seconds, and grants around 1/3 the light comparative to the ARR Alliance Raids, no?

[Arkevorkhat]

Like making Bozja more viable so that I can inevitably go into Bozja and enjoy what a reasonable person could perceive to just be Eureka all over again? No thanks

Yeah, but what if, hear me out here: the time and effort investments were comparable, so people had the choice of which content they want to do.
I agree that Bozja shouldn't be the definitive way to get the relic, that'd be hypocritical of me, what with all the railing against alliance raids being the definitive way to get the relics. I would want to see it be a case of "You can spend 6 hours grinding Alliance Raids, or you could spend 6 hours in Bozja, and get the same reward." I don't think it should be fast, or easy, Relic gear has always been a top-tier bragging piece, and it's really unreasonable to say that one should be able to complete a relic in an afternoon, but this bullshit of 15% drop rates from Critical Engagements really makes it so that there's no incentive for anyone to do their grind in Bozja, which then has the add-on effect of making it harder to fill a castrum instance (this has of course improved with this morning's hotfix, but it is still somewhat of an issue.)
I get that people have strong opinions about Eureka, and I get that Bozja is getting a lot of second-hand hate for it, but Square Enix really isn't helping that problem by diverting people who would otherwise be in Bozja, helping new players and giving the content a chance at life, to Alliance raids that have struggled to hold onto relevance now that their stories have concluded and their gear drops aren't effective.

[Kaurhz]

Yeah, but what if, hear me out here: the time and effort investments were comparable, so people had the choice of which content they want to do. I agree that Bozja shouldn't be the definitive way to get the relic, that'd be hypocritical of me, what with all the railing against alliance raids being the definitive way to get the relics. I would want to see it be a case of "You can spend 6 hours grinding Alliance Raids, or you could spend 6 hours in Bozja, and get the same reward."

I hear you...

But, to be fair, with the Hotfix it would be just as effective to run Castrum Lacus Litore, granting 5 Loathsome per run, 3 runs per step. You can even do this whilst progressing other steps of the relic due to being able to get the previous steps' memories from within Bozja, and not only that but you can get EXP on other jobs, so you can level those, and arguably make a good piece of Gil. Whilst being insane enough to completely cap my alt within Bozja, I naturally got all the FATE memories inside of Bozja, so that was completed naturally, even managed to snag a nice 18M Gil from the endeavor, and arguably now you could even do Castrum whilst doing it; which would arguably naturally complete the relic up-to and inclusive of the i510 stage.

Bozja works out significantly more efficient if you have multiple goals/stages of the relic to be completed, versus just tunnel visioning.