New Variant Dungeon: Reward structure is a downgrade from previous ones.

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Originally Posted by Jaltaer

You must have missed the insane meltdowns that happened here and in other places because "waahhhhhhhhh i want the hair but i dont want to do harder content or spend gil i just want the rewards NOW no i dont want to earn them just GIVE THEM to me" over Chaotic.

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Literally zero people had any sort of "insane meltdown" as you describe; contrary to your hyperbole, nobody asked for a free handout. It's entirely reasonable that players were upset that a character creation option was not just simply locked behind a high-end fight, but it was locked behind a 24-man Anabaseios Savage with a very bad FOMO reward system.

It's like the devs are trying to spit in our face.

1) Lets upset the casual players by taking away a good reward ( the only one)
2) Lets upset the hardcore by invalidating their savage run.
3) Lets not listen to any criticism from any player. At all.

Devs, here is some ideas ->
* Don't take away expected rewards / invalidate old ones
* Add gear of raid-ish il with alternate stats ( you made accessory mogs, just slap something on them). Variant rare drops at base tomestone, criterion drops at raid il ( or drops a unique upgrade material for the variant ones). If you really want raid to be better, just make it 5 less il ( at least my alts can use the upgrades because I don't win M9S rolls)
* Some currency to farm the augment items ( or raid books). Put it on a weekly cap if you really feel like it.

If you really don't want to affect the other loot systems ->

* Add an item that adds an extra materia slot to gear ( small materia slot from variant, large from criterion). The casuals will have something to farm, the people still progging the raid ( or reclearing/ parsing) arent going to get mad at the extra dps to make their lives easier. ( and ultimate raiders can just clear this anyways).

*Add an item that puts glowing affects on the armor. Rare drop in variant, bad luck protection currency in criterion

Are the solutions perfect? No. Are they ages better than what we got. Yes.

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Originally Posted by Alahard

It's like the devs are trying to spit in our face.

1) Lets upset the casual players by taking away a good reward ( the only one)
2) Lets upset the hardcore by invalidating their savage run.
3) Lets not listen to any criticism from any player. At all.

Devs, here is some ideas ->
* Don't take away expected rewards / invalidate old ones
* Add gear of raid-ish il with alternate stats ( you made accessory mogs, just slap something on them). Variant rare drops at base tomestone, criterion drops at raid il ( or drops a unique upgrade material for the variant ones). If you really want raid to be better, just make it 5 less il ( at least my alts can use the upgrades because I don't win M9S rolls)
* Some currency to farm the augment items ( or raid books). Put it on a weekly cap if you really feel like it.

If you really don't want to affect the other loot systems ->

* Add an item that adds an extra materia slot to gear ( small materia slot from variant, large from criterion). The casuals will have something to farm, the people still progging the raid ( or reclearing/ parsing) arent going to get mad at the extra dps to make their lives easier. ( and ultimate raiders can just clear this anyways).

*Add an item that puts glowing affects on the armor. Rare drop in variant, bad luck protection currency in criterion

Are the solutions perfect? No. Are they ages better than what we got. Yes.

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Now hold on Alahard is COOKING with this one.

A moment of silent for Alo Savage please...

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Originally Posted by Jaltaer

You must have missed the insane meltdowns that happened here and in other places because "waahhhhhhhhh i want the hair but i dont want to do harder content or spend gil i just want the rewards NOW no i dont want to earn them just GIVE THEM to me" over Chaotic.
They basically can't win - give higher-end content actually decent rewards, you get tantrums from people who want the rewards but abjectly refuse to even consider stepping foot in the content. Don't give it good rewards, you basically kneecap it at the starting line because now there's no motivation to run it for 90% of people. Of course, this could be solved if they stopped listening to the first group but eh, there's a reason babies scream and cry - it gets results.

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But at least people still do chaotic every single day, a year after its release. Because there's bis gear that is still needed for FRU, lots of glams, hair, sellable mount and the mount that you can only get by clearing the duty. But quantum and criterion are dead on arrival, because you can just buy every reward from the market board for a very low price.

Don't understand the complains here. The 12 paths completion is a disappointment for all, it's not about giving less to casuals.
Both mounts are market board tradable and middle version is NOT a hard content, AR level at most, so nothing is being gate kept by the "difficulty".
They even made an elevated ester available in the normal model, which was the sole motivation for people to worked hard to clear alo savage.
Guess what is the only "gate kept" reward this tier from the hard mode? A MATERIA

They should just go in and change the mount to be from completing all the paths. No I don't care if its difficult to do that after the fact. There should always be casual options to unlock everything, even if its delayed. Nothing should be locked to the hardest modes except maybe titles. That content should be about the experience.

The problem with previous variant/criterion dungeons was that the few rewards they had were all tied to the easier modes while the harder difficulties had nothing. Reversing that would be an upgrade, not a downgrade. It's still not great mind you, since AFAIK the rewards are once again single use, niche in their appeal and tradeable - but still. If you want the rewards, you can earn them. If you don't want to engage with the content, that's your choice.

Mounts and similar rewards in normal-level dungeons would just be participation trophies, and IMO a waste of assets that could otherwise be used to offer meaningful rewards that players can chase by overcoming challenges. Normal/variant mode is just there for the story/for fun. Replayability isn't really a problem either considering you can solo it. Incentivizing players to re-run content is more a concern for stuff that requires multiple players to clear.

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Originally Posted by Raim

They should just go in and change the mount to be from completing all the paths. No I don't care if its difficult to do that after the fact. There should always be casual options to unlock everything, even if its delayed. Nothing should be locked to the hardest modes except maybe titles. That content should be about the experience.

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You've got it backwards. Normal/story mode is about the experience, and harder difficulties are about challenge and reward.

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Originally Posted by Raim

Nothing should be locked to the hardest modes except maybe titles.

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In before they start handing out FRU weapons from the upcoming easter/Hatching-tide event because we visit Ryne and Gaia in a flower field.
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I do agree removing the all paths mount in exchange for a sleeping mask is a bad choice, but making elevated ester available from advanced MT criterion is an even worse choice.

I expected no gear rewards since Chaotic didn't offer alternatives until a patch later. They are utterly terrified of invalidating raid and tome gear on patch and it's clear people are sick of it. The least, LEAST they could do is have tome augmenting items drop from criterion once a week. You don't need to make new assets, you don't need to program new systems. Just copy paste them into the drop table. I feel like that is not unreasonable.

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Originally Posted by Alikyros

having ester as a drop from advanced is just a big middle finger to everyone who did aloalo savage. Advanced is ex level at best.

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Because it was DOA content. The Criterion clear rate was so low that it made ultimate clear rates look high. This is a clear attempt from them to revive interest in Criterion, but I doubt it would go their way.