Hey guys! I'm sorry to hear this update upset you; the point of the change was stated as to make premiere relics more valuable (Hence the removal of exclusive fighters).
My personal opinion on the matter is that I'm glad; I've spent a lot of theonite on a large sum of beowulf relics, and getting left with a swathe of duplicate characters has been a major bummer. I take this relic patch as a fix for that issue to a degree, as well as making premieres much more valuable.
My recommendation is to treat character relics as niche buys; or as special rewards from character origin stories!
I, uh, believe he was making a jest because Valentine is not in a great spot right now, haha.