Tomestones.. Again.. for a relic..

[Renathras]

Why does a relic step become more interesting if I have to grind it for more time?

I think it's more complex than this.

Relics often aren't HARD, but few people have them, because they require a certain level of dedication to get them. If you see a person with an ARR or SB Relic, you know they had to put in some footwork and time for it, even if it wasn't necessarily HARD to do, it did require work. Depending on who you ask, this may or may not put it on the same level as Savage weapons, but it puts it above the level of anything else in the game that isn't Savage or Ultimate, as far as weapons go. And when current content (e.g. the expansion they came out in), they're decent weapons to reward the people for their dedication.

Further, Relics OFTEN have a story of some kind attached. Either to the weapons themselves (ARR, HW), the content they're occurring in (Eureka), or both (Bozja). In ARR, you were first trying to restore an ancient relic of power and learn something of the original weapons and the heroes that wielded them. While this was done somewhat ham-fistedly at times, the fact remains that WHM was rebuilding the weapon of A-Towa-Kant or SCH the weapon of Nyunkrepf Nyunkrepfsyn, the sagely scholarly AST (with a book) who helped many survive the Sixth Umbral Calamity in his arc and led survivors to go on to found Sharlyan. These relics had at least SOME weight to them and lore behind them.

HW and ShB's had a bit less - in the former you're trying to forge a living weapon for Rowena to mass produce and sell for profits, in ShB you're trying to forge weapons for the Resistance to use your prototypes to produce for their troops; but even there, a lot of the Bozja story goes back as far as the 3rd Era when the Bozjans fought against Alleg and is where the GNBs came from in the first place, as well as the Primal queen. Eureka was a bit of a departure in the sense the weapons THEMSELVES had no story, but the content ITSELF did, in discovering what had happened to the Isle of Val and ultimately discovering the truth behind Eureka itself (and Ozma's creation, as a sort of side bonus). In HW, while the premise seems thin and based on greed (from Rowena's part), you actually create a life that you then get to build a rapport with and get to know, and it becomes a full being with time that then pledges itself to you and your adventures.

So far, though, the EW Relics have no story other than one of Godbert's ancestors just......invented them all. And he is slowly deciphering his ancestor's journal to figure out how to make new ones. And then you buy meteorite. Even though we could arguably just go to the moon and find a ton of it there for the picking.

Though not everyone gets into it that much, I think that past Relics have always had SOME story involved - and while this one DOES technically as well...it's pretty thin fare by comparison.

EDIT:

I'm a little confused by this. Aren't the people who complained about Eureka and Bozja different from the people who are complaining now? Honestly I like the way it is now so I'd call it feedback received.

I'd wager there's quite a bit of overlap. We have no actual evidence who was complaining then vs now unless you want to deep dive the forums to read what individual posters were saying then and now.

Often times, people complain, then when they "get what they want", complain about that, too. Some people cannot be pleased, and I'd bet good money that quite a few people complaining then ARE complaining now as well...though there's no way to prove it, in the end, either way.

The only "bad take" is yours thinking the same people who complained about eureka/bozja are the exact same people that are complaining now XD. Like somehow this game doesn't have a pretty big active playerbase.

See above.

And "the only bad take"? Hardly. Blaming this change on casuals is stupid. Most casuals (I'm a casual) liked the old Relic grinds as something to do that wasn't Raiding. If anything, it was the Raiding community in ShB that complained loudly about Bozja because they didn't want to have to do it to have the Ultimate's BiS.

I'm not saying "blame the raiders", but I am saying "don't blame the casuals - they weren't the ones asking for this". Trying to pin this on any one group is stupid. The people to blame are the endless complainers - and there are plenty of both casual and hardcore players that fall in that dubious camp.

While I do like not being locked into a separate field area where I can't queue for anything else, a la Eureka or Bozja, in order to grind out my relic stuff, this does feel... not great.

As others have already pointed out, Eureka Orthos released today. The Variant/Criterion dungeons are still very new. Why not try to funnel people into that content?

Agree with the first point. To the second: Probably future-proofing. CLL and DR have given them endless headaches. Even while ShB was still current, if you didn't get through CLL with the first wave, you didn't get through it. People starting their Relic in 5.4 or later just could not get out of Southern Front.

I think they didn't want a repeat of that, so they didn't tie it to Variant/Criterion or Orthos.

Granted, they could have just made it where you could run those for the part to get it and also run other stuff to get the part...though I guess they effectively DID do this via tomes? /shrug It just feels "not good" (I agree) because of how generic tomes are. They're just this thing we get by doing other things that have no actual presence in the game world. They aren't items and they have no lore payoff. You give them to people for things that you actually want, and those people/NPCs just destroy them out of the game on receiving them. They don't use them to research something or develop something or make something. It's a mere currency you magically get from killing things that have nothing to do with Alleg in the first place for the most part and so wouldn't even have tomes in a lore sense in the first place.

That makes it feel more hollow and empty than, say, combining 10 Unidentified objects you can get from trading in either tomes or parts from Savages or other stuff, and combining those with things that you can get from Crafters or from Grand Companies, to make 4 specific items you need that seem to be lore-sensical to forge a powerful weapon with. Though that's arguably very similar to "farm tomes and buy item - with extra steps", those extra steps seem to give it presence in the world that isn't "I bought some rocks from a guy, here, make me a glowy weapon."