What makes a good relic storyline / step

[CNitsah]

(TL;DR / Conclusion, for those who don't want to read the whole thing)

Lately, the relics have been a big tension point in the game. I'm not a fan of EW relics. If I recognize they can be easily done for people that just want the glam in the future, which is nice, the way you get them lacks engagement for the current expansion.

A lot of people put the blame on the lack of exploratory zones. I don’t totally agree with that. I think the lack of exploratory zones is strongly felt for another reason : because those zones were easy to go in, easy to go out, long running, non capped content. You had incentives to do those zones. You didn’t have to spend 15 to 30 min to make a pf or to wait the same amount of time for the DF to find a party. It’s the kind of content we currently don’t have in Endwalker. When you look at ShB relics, 9 times out of 10, the out of Bozja/Zadnor option for the relics was more profitable than the in Bozja/Zadnor one, which makes the feeling this was never about the relics, but about having something to do in the down time. The mount, haircuts, fieldnotes mettle for medals and the fact it was a good place to xp your other jobs from 71 to 80 were the true reason people farmed this content. Despite being associated with it, the relics are not the important thing.

So my plan here is to analyze HW, SB and ShB relics, step by step, to discuss what steps were good, and what steps were awful. Both at the time of release, and in later expansions. Because I feel the amount of effort people are ready to invest to get the relic of a current expansion and basically a glam are not really the same. For the sake of this thread, I re-did one of each over the past months to jog my memory (I stopped at Law's Order for the ShB weapon, because, no, it’s just too much of a pain)..

Based on that, I’ll try to define what I think is a good relic step.

I choose to ignore the ARR relics because I only did one a couple of years ago, and from memory, even in unsynced, it was not a pleasant farm. Maybe one day I’ll amend my post, but I doubt it.

I also need to mention I began playing during late SB, and didn’t get up to date with the msq until 5.2. Which means a lot of what I’m gonna say about HW and SB steps at release will be based on what I've been told, and weapons guide and threads on the internet. Don’t hesitate to correct me.