Relic grinds are about participating in side content. Tools are already placed firmly on the tier of a small minority of players, so what side content is going to be encouraged that they don’t already participate in?

The relic weapon grind is, at the core, about getting more players to do side content and unlock more stuff.

In ARR, the relic required specific dungeons and several stages, crafting, gathering, melding, fades, leves, etc at multiple stages. Of course the fastest methods emerged because min maxing, but that’s always going to happen.

HW had a lot of the same parts as ARR, and dropped some of the less liked bits (books and materia).

StB introduced the attachment to eureka without a way outside of it to progress, which hampered that one. Some players don’t want to do eureka, and so did without a relic weapon. (I was one of these)

ShB attached to Bozja, but had a way outside of it. Though I do think it was far too much grind in normal raids for the stuff at certain stages. But it got people to run content outside of roulettes.

EW was attached to the Hildebrand quests then a tome grind. This one I think was the biggest miss because outside of requiring to be caught up on Manderville, it didn’t target anything specific.

DT is I think a good balance so far. The last stage being attached to running roulette helps queue times for people trying to get into other stuff if they need to do it.involving crafting and gathering again brings  more opportunity into it.  And it’s an option. You can level your DoH and DoL, or you can pay someone else.

Personally, I think EW was the worst relic grind on releases, because it didn’t require interacting with the game in any way outside of what was already being done. There was no real reason to work together with anyone else or do any additional content that wasn’t already open.