What should the DT relic upgrades steps consist of?

[Arkdra]

It should be tomestones again, just not like, less tomestones than I could have accumulated before patch day so I instantly complete the relic on day 1. The point of the relics to me is to provide something to work on to suck up approximately 25ish hours of play time. Tomestones are great because you can get them doing just about anything so you can progress your relic doing the content you like the most. It just needed to be like, 15k tomestones and not 1500 to complete a step.

If they end up tying the relics to side content, it sucks if you don't like that content. Like I hate Eureka and I barely tolerated Bozja so if the relic is tied to the exploratory zone again, I am going to be mad. I don't like most of the side content in this game to be honest, they'd have to tie it to variant dungeons for me to not roll my eyes at it. But I know there are people out there who would hate that as much as I hate Eureka so that's why tomestones are cool.

[Lyth]

You have to ask yourself what the function of having a 'relic' is in the first place. There are so many parallel weapon systems in place (tome/deep dungeon/exploratory/primal/savage/criterion/ultimate) that provide alternative gearing options depending on the type of content that you prefer to do. There are tome weapons already in place. Why do you need a second weapon where the progression is only based off of tome trade-ins? It seems completely redundant. If they renamed the 'tome weapon' to 'relic' and created a second set of weapons specific to exploratory content, would that suddenly make it all feel better?

Perhaps the solution is to just drop the 'relic' terminology and let people upgrade multiple weapon sets across their respective preferred content paths. Nothing will change from a gearing perspective, and then people will stop fretting over being 'forced' to do content.

[Boblawblah]

You have to ask yourself what the function of having a 'relic' is in the first place. There are so many parallel weapon systems in place (tome/deep dungeon/exploratory/primal/savage/criterion/ultimate) that provide alternative gearing options depending on the type of content that you prefer to do. There are tome weapons already in place. Why do you need a second weapon where the progression is only based off of tome trade-ins? It seems completely redundant. If they renamed the 'tome weapon' to 'relic' and created a second set of weapons specific to exploratory content, would that suddenly make it all feel better?

Perhaps the solution is to just drop the 'relic' terminology and let people upgrade multiple weapon sets across their respective preferred content paths. Nothing will change from a gearing perspective, and then people will stop fretting over being 'forced' to do content.

People like the look

Go ahead, let people have an identical looking item for free, give it zero stats, make it obviously say "fake relic" and watch how many people use it over the real thing.

[AnimaAnimus]

I would be happy if they just need to move away from fate grinds. Even Bozja and Eureka were just fate grinds with a small dungeon thrown in. They need to do something, anything more creative and fun.

Honestly would love something like the mythic in FFXI, but less grindy and with versions of the weapon available in between. I may miss or confuse some steps its been years but, it had you clear all the assault missions to get capt rank, them get the base weapon as a drop in Nyzel Isle, then climb 100 floors of Nyzel Isle to get a runic disc, kill some world bosses, then clearning einherjar and farm some currency from it, The salvage clears + currency farms, then more boss key items, the iirc they expanded it after level increase to include poppable world bosses or something. All of which could be different steps.

I don't mean they should literally remake this and the currency amounts were a bit overboard and they could really shrink that down, but other than that it was great to have so many different kinds of fun and entertaining steps to take in varied, fun and entertaining pieces of content with a well worth it reward at the end.

[AmiableApkallu]

You have to ask yourself what the function of having a 'relic' is in the first place.

Okay, here's my hot take:

One component of a "relic weapon" is that it has some story associated with it. "Relic" might imply "discovering or recreating a weapon lost to time," but I, personally, am willing to be a bit more lax.

The second component of a "relic weapon" is that you need to work for it. It shouldn't just fall in your lap. There should be some point at which you say to yourself, "Why am I suffering for this?"

I haven't completed a Stormblood weapon (yet...), but I'd say that all expacs satisfy the first component. Most expacs also satisfy that second component, with Endwalker being the notable exception.

For that second component to make sense from a practical standpoint, there needs to be a point in the game's lifecycle where the relic weapon is the best weapon you can wield, or at least comparable to best weapon you can wield given the effort to obtain the relic.

[UkcsAlias]

What i would do is create an instanced zone like eureka/bozja. In this content instead of upgrading your weapon, you just need to collect a certain resource. This can be the fates, killing special enemies, special duties. Upon collecting enough and turning it in, it then allows you to upgrade the weapon. And for the job you are playing give you the weapon upgrade directly (if grinding further, you can do multiple weapons this way). Basicly once you completed the content and reached the story end, you can get the maximized weapon already through tomes.

For those special zones, instad of putting the special stats on the weapon, i would instead create a new inventory slot (basicly replacing the belt slot) that tracks upgraded (zone specific) stats in it (no need to bother with melding after all). This specific stat stuff doesnt need to be an actual inventory slot, its just there to display the bonus stats you aquired and not make it tied to any gear (removing the need for a lot of gear pieces). This on that can extend the content to get something well beyond the end of its story, preventing the situation in which to truly maximize the weapon, you are forced into a huge grind. This grind is now only for the instanced 'item'.