FFXIV

Books, but not shit. So give a range of things that can be done in some sort of gamey way, which yeah might end up being "you do this already", but the skin on it is nice at least.

Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but personally I disliked the other relic grinds so much I never finished a weapon. I can just run the content I want with this one, so it's the only relic I've been able to stay current with.

I think I'd prefer it to be kind of Wonderous Tails-esque though, where it guides you into a broad selection of content.

At least one of the steps needs to involve a battle with ~~Greg~~ ~~Gilgamesh~~ Greg

(honestly though, with how late into the patch cycles the new relics come out, I'm glad that at least they're not an unholy time sink on top of that)

As a Shadowbringers baby, I believe I just miss it being connected to exploratory zone, or having a exploratory zone with other players in general. I don't mind it it just being easy to get with tomes all and I think it's really good for other players who don't have time to sink into content. But I wish there was an alternative besides the tomes that's connected to gameplay.

I really really enjoyed Bozja, and my friend push me to explore eureka after, and found myself loving that too. The island's fine but it doesn't have the sense of community that I had found in either zones. And I was just getting really cool weapons on top of it.

I like it not being tied to a subsystem I don't care about. Like, I hate Palace of the dead knockoffs and am not convinced by the deep dungeon we got during EW, if I was forced to do either or both, I'd probably have a miserable time, while, when it's tied to tomestones, at least I can just spam crystalline conflict and frontline for it, which is content I'm happy to participate in regardless of reward. Maybe the tomestone skin is a bit "gamey" for something that should be special, but the gameplay effect of "do what you like for your relic" should absolutely be preserved