EW Relic Grind is just a streamlined version of ARR/HW Grind

[Sequora]

I know it’s a relic weapon, but I wish I could still earn tomestones while leveling other jobs.

If you have a level 90, they could either let you choose your reward, or just reduce the number of tomestones you gain.

[AmiableApkallu]

Maybe what I "miss" (EW is the first expac where I've had the opportunity to work on a relic when it was current) are steps where you have to be on the job the weapon is for. That alone would help distinguish them from ye olde tomestone currency-du-jour vendor weapons.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

“Making your own relic step” with the least efficient way to grind tomestones isn’t content I’ll say that again, and how am I making her point stronger, I offered 9 ways I’d like to grind a relic considering the prevailing argument around this relic is “do it yourself”, she offered one of those 9 ways as a possibility despite it being so inefficient you would literally have to be forcing yourself to do it at the expense of any other route and then completely ignored the other 8

The anima relics had steps in which you had 8 different options for progressing a particular step and that pulled from all the games content, using roulette tomes as a patchwork “see you can do whatever you want” isn’t content

Isn't it though? You're just doing some repetitive task -X- amount of times, literally the exact same thing so many steps from old relics required. The only thing different from choosing to grind However many runs of a variant dungeon for an EW relic vs grinding Deluburum 15 times is Square's authoritative voice saying you're not allowed to have fun any other way on the latter and must do it his way. At the end of the day, you're still doing some sort of repetitive task -x- number of times.

I also like how you used HW relics as an example when back in their prime and I did them on content before any nerfs to each steps, several steps had farming a sole instance for poetics as the infinite easier choice compared to all others they may as well have been obsolete. Nothing came close to spamming ARF 50+ times. You could easily mirror that experience in today's relic by the exact same Variant grind I mentioned, do a single instance x amount of times for y resource. Also plenty of the HW steps only had tome farming as an option, what are you on about? (Umbrites, 5x aether oils, Archaic enchanted ink) or as an insanely more efficient option compared to how else you could get the items in question (Pneumite, unidentified items)

You gave a list of options you'd want to do besides roulettes, I told you quite easily how you could turn one of said options into a full blown relic grind if you so chose. You could also grind PVP till you have 1500 tomes since they give tomes when playing at 90. Get a relic by 100 floor clearing Eureka Orthos three-four times. You could exclusively get the tomes from helping people get their first time clears of savages in PF for the hardest relic ever obtained.

People create self-imposed challenges for themselves all the time in video games, it's nothing new. If you need Yoshi-P's absolute authoritative voice telling you to go spam Crystal tower 15 times or grind FATEs till your eyes bleed, then enjoy your roulettes. before the current step, I had 4 amazing manderville relics and have done a grand total of like, 5 roulettes since 6.3. You want a grind? go out and reach it. if you want to complain about the lack of that authoritative voice telling you "no fun allowed do it this way", have fun, I'll be in the middle of getting another relic after I finish this next Eureka Orthos solo run.

As I said before, it's why I laugh at half these complaints. Making your own self imposed challenges before you allow yourself to buy a relic is such a trivial thing to do for anyone with a slight bit of restraint that's wanting grinds. You can make the exact relic grind you want, you just don't have Square's voice telling you you can't anymore.

But I'll just go back to eating my popcorn as I browse these forums for my daily amusement.

[Eorzean_username]

People create self-imposed challenges for themselves all the time in video games, it's nothing new.

If you want to be this reductive, then XIV doesn't need an MSQ — in the old days of MMOs, players were just "characters" who had to invent their own RP and reason for exploring the world. You could do that too, rather than relying on "Yoshi-P's absolute authoritative voice telling you to go help orphans in the Void".

Likewise, XIV doesn't need any structured content at all. The developers can just put mobs in the open world, and it's your responsibility to create your own imaginary motivations for attacking and defeating those mobs.

————————————————————

At some point, part of what differentiates a "game" or "RPG" from LARP or VRChat is that there's some amount of rules and structured goals that the player is challenged by, and attempts to navigate in response.

And yes, in the sense of structured goals and rules, "You want X item, but it can only be obtained by doing these specific activities" is in fact a different player experience than, "You want X item, and it can be obtained by doing almost anything, so just play the game normally and get X as an incidental consequence".

————————————————————

Your comparisons for HW neglect aspects like navigating the Crafting stage of the HW Relic (which, at release, was a significant bottleneck, and also made Crafters feel like kingmakers), that accumulating enough of the Tome items or Light was a prolonged and goal-driven process (not completed on login), and that steps like Crystal Sand offered you so many ways to complete it that players were actually creating Pro/Con lists and flowcharts for the different options, and the preferred method of grinding it changed multiple times in response to other game system changes, even long after HW had been left behind as primary content.

————————————————————

You're also neglecting that "self-imposed challenges" only work when everyone is held to them.

If the Blue Mage Morbol Mount could be obtained by Unsyncing the duties with level 90 friends, would you consider it justified to tell BLU players who find the achievement underwhelming, "Well you can choose to MINE it, so it's your problem for not making the self-imposed challenge that you're looking for".

That something could be more challenging does not empirically make it so, and for a lot(?) / some(?) players, that in turn directly affects how satisfied they actually feel with whatever they're obtaining.

[DixieBellOCE]

The reality of Endwalker relics is that they released in the 'next expansion' state, after all the nerfs and reductions from materials to tomestones.

[Hallideus]

After several expansions wherein various iterations where you actually had to do some work to get that feeling of fulfilment after an arduous, time consuming quest that you could either chip away at gradually over time or go ham and grind it to your heart's content... because it was one of, if not the best weapon you can get for your job?
To go from that to welfare relics, with no real grind at all, is just indefensible really no matter how you spin it.