Request to adjust Criterion Rewards

So first of all I don't want this thread to be full of game design armchairing on what the rewards should be. I'm not a game designer and I don't know what goals the team had with this in the first place.

Instead I want to express the sentiment that Criterion is very compelling content that I feel is made more inaccessible than it should be by the general lack of interest beyond its early release. I was really hoping adjustments would be made with the release of the second Criterion to alleviate this but nothing happened so I hope things can be changed on the release of the next one.

As one of the only forms of challenging 4 man content it's very sad to me how hard it feels to find groups in PF for this outside the release period.
And I think at this point it is commonly known that it relates to the reward structure at least partially. While I don't want to suggest anything on how to change it I just want to express that I hope things can be adjusted so more people play this piece of content for longer and also don't get discouraged from slowly working through it in PF.

To that end putting incentives into place that encourage more longevity and also reward progressing through each boss partially would be greatly appreciated. A lot of work seems to go into these and ideally I would like to see this kind of content thrive similarly to savage content in pf and not just become content you can only do by joining community discords for it.

Criterion could have more people attracted to it with a better reward structure of its own but also they could have included variant and criterion as part of the relic, that likely would have made more people seek out the content

Right now criterion is the second rung of a ladder of content that people don’t even really have any incentive to seek out the first level, even though the first level is arguably easier than the MSQ

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Originally Posted by Shenlao

So it seems like not enough people care too much about this so I guess gotta accept that me wanting Criterion to have stronger content presence in PF beyond the release is a hard minority wish. Discord communities it is.

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It's not that we don't care, it's that we've become too jaded at this point to believe CBU3 will change the rewards or add new ones.
When the first Criterion released we've had countless discussions about it's absolutely atrocious reward structure which handicapped the content from day 1 despite criterion dungeons being good content in itself, but come 8 months later and the devs show us they can't be bothered to do anything about it.

So why would I bother wasting more of my breath on feedback that's already been proven to get ignored?

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Originally Posted by Absurdity

It's not that we don't care, it's that we've become too jaded at this point to believe CBU3 will change the rewards or add new ones.
When the first Criterion released we've had countless discussions about it's absolutely atrocious reward structure which handicapped the content from day 1 despite criterion dungeons being good content in itself, but come 8 months later and the devs show us they can't be bothered to do anything about it.

So why would I bother wasting more of my breath on feedback that's already been proven to get ignored?

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Yep, that's pretty much it. Same with Kaiten, healers, and other major issues. The issues are still there, but community has beaten the topics to death, there isn't anything that hasn't been said for 100 times already. It's SE's turn to act upon it.

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Originally Posted by Shenlao

I see I dunno how that feedback was given last time and how many people even participated. I just saw a thread of some months ago on the gearing system getting tons of traction and they did adjust that twice even throughout this expansions. So my hope is if there is enough people actually showing this is a big issue that they'll do something about it as well.
But if it's just only 5 people caring enough to highlight it I'm realistically not seeing this getting any priority.

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If popular ffxiv streamers like Zepla and Mr.Happy have been trying to communicate this exact feedback on the terrible Criterion rewards and its falling on deaf ears then pretty much this is the state of the game.

Vote with your wallets, quit and refuse to resub regardless of ingame house. If they want to fuck around and refuse dialogue instead of pre selected easy questions, answer with the only thing they care about - no more money, no more sub, no more mog station.

I agree Criterion needs better incentives and rewards, but I personally do not believe that attaching the relic to it is the solution. Nor would it give it the longevity it deserves. Putting relic behind Criterion simply creates an Eureka/Bozja problem where post expansion, it's difficult to retroactively find people to queue for the content. When I think of longevity, I'm thinking far into the next expansion as well. Traditionally, with the main exception of Eureka. Relics usually rely on reviving old content in some fashion. For example, you could do Bozja FATEs, or you could do Heavenward FATEs and Crystal Tower. Between the two, the old content was the faster of the two to farm. Plus, some of the routes taken in Criterion is dependent on your party and everyone needs different routes. As much as I believe Criterion does need better rewards, I cannot in good faith suggest it to be tied to the relic.

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Originally Posted by Nav_Fae

I agree Criterion needs better incentives and rewards, but I personally do not believe that attaching the relic to it is the solution. Nor would it give it the longevity it deserves. Putting relic behind Criterion simply creates an Eureka/Bozja problem where post expansion, it's difficult to retroactively find people to queue for the content. When I think of longevity, I'm thinking far into the next expansion as well. Traditionally, with the main exception of Eureka. Relics usually rely on reviving old content in some fashion. For example, you could do Bozja FATEs, or you could do Heavenward FATEs and Crystal Tower. Between the two, the old content was the faster of the two to farm. Plus, some of the routes taken in Criterion is dependent on your party and everyone needs different routes. As much as I believe Criterion does need better rewards, I cannot in good faith suggest it to be tied to the relic.

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The routes you are referring to is Variant Dungeon. Criterion is the linear, higher difficulty one so there is no "lets go X" argument other than what mob to attack first, which absolutely should deserve better rewards.

I was really hoping criterion would be middleground content that we could farm for extra gear outside of buying crafting and tome stuff (or normal raid gear). It'd keep me busy awhile

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

The routes you are referring to is Variant Dungeon. Criterion is the linear, higher difficulty one so there is no "lets go X" argument other than what mob to attack first, which absolutely should deserve better rewards.

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Ah my mistake on that bullet. But my point remains the same that they shouldn't be tied.

I'm honestly surprised they didn't attach the new relic grind to it. What a better way to get people to try new content than to intergrate it into your new dungeon content.

The rewards are very lacking. Not even attaching a glam or mounts can bring people to it. They could have made gear that is a half step into between Savage and unagumented tome gear to bridge the gearing process.

I think people are talking about something different here with attaching the relic grind cause pretty sure the relic grind is meant to be a casual activity.
I don't think attaching it to what is kinda savage tier difficulty content is really a thing that makes a whole lot of sense.
Regardless I think we can pack it up it's pretty clear that there is not enough traction for this thing to matter so if it's even on their radar it's gotta be something way at the bottom. It is what it is.

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Originally Posted by Shenlao

So first of all I don't want this thread to be full of game design armchairing on what the rewards should be.

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"I don't want people in the thread to 'game design armchair' on what the rewards should be."

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Originally Posted by Shenlao

So it seems like not enough people care too much about this so I guess gotta accept that me wanting Criterion to have stronger content presence in PF beyond the release is a hard minority wish. Discord communities it is.

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"People aren't posting in my thread!"

The duality of man.

But in all seriousness, I am going to 'game design armchair' here and say that there should be a gear reward in Criterion. One solution could be to make new current BiS ilv gear as a reward with different substats than Savage or Tome gear that can act as a sidegrade for some slots. (Example: Savage piece has Det/DH, Tome piece has SKS/DH, Criterion has Crit/Det) Another, more boring solution would be to offer Twines and Shines to help with the Tome gearing process.

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Originally Posted by Nav_Fae

Ah my mistake on that bullet. But my point remains the same that they shouldn't be tied.

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Attaching the relic to variant dungeons would be fine since those can be done solo and would still be just as easily attainable in the future.
This wouldn't solve the issue of Criterion and Criterion savage having terrible rewards however.

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Originally Posted by Elkanah

I was really hoping criterion would be middleground content that we could farm for extra gear outside of buying crafting and tome stuff (or normal raid gear). It'd keep me busy awhile

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It should have dropped 650 gear so people who are doing savage could gear up their alts with slightly lesser gear and people who aren't doing savage could have an alternative to tome gear either for alts or to use different stats.

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Originally Posted by Reinha

It should have dropped 650 gear so people who are doing savage could gear up their alts with slightly lesser gear and people who aren't doing savage could have an alternative to tome gear either for alts or to use different stats.

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Criterion gear being another 650 option so people had a third alternative between tome gear and savage gear for gearing options is such a fantastic idea it’s no wonder square decided to pretend like it wasn’t an option

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Originally Posted by Reinha

It should have dropped 650 gear so people who are doing savage could gear up their alts with slightly lesser gear and people who aren't doing savage could have an alternative to tome gear either for alts or to use different stats.

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I'd even go as far as to have it drop 660 gear. The dungeon itself syncs at 665, so basically developers intend you to go in there with BiS gear. I see no reason why it shouldn't also drop there then.
By the time 6.45 hit, savage raids had been out long enough to justify a viable alternative for gearing up, I think. Having savage glamour more accessible is not a bad thing either, and considering there are people out there, who don't even do savage raiding, it would allow them access to BiS gear too. Technically thed don't NEED it for anything, but I know a lot of people who would like to have it, just for the sake of having it.

It's not like they would have to design an entire different set of gear either. They could always just attach currency and a vendor for buying savage raid gear, books, item coffers or upgrade materials and such. If for some reason they were scared of people gearing up too quickly at this point, they could even add a weekly cap to that currency.

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Originally Posted by Xelanar

I'd even go as far as to have it drop 660 gear. The dungeon itself syncs at 665, so basically developers intend you to go in there with BiS gear. I see no reason why it shouldn't also drop there then.
By the time 6.45 hit, savage raids had been out long enough to justify a viable alternative for gearing up, I think. Having savage glamour more accessible is not a bad thing either, and considering there are people out there, who don't even do savage raiding, it would allow them access to BiS gear too. Technically thed don't NEED it for anything, but I know a lot of people who would like to have it, just for the sake of having it.

It's not like they would have to design an entire different set of gear either. They could always just attach currency and a vendor for buying savage raid gear, books, item coffers or upgrade materials and such. If for some reason they were scared of people gearing up too quickly at this point, they could even add a weekly cap to that currency.

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Not on board with it giving an equivalent to Savage or Augmented Tome gear, especially not for Criterion Normal and not before the respective catchup patch (x.1, x.3, x.5 aka the Alliance Raid patches). 5 or 10 item levels below for normal is reasonable enough.

Criterion dungeon rewards are exactly what they should be. Glamour, mounts, minions, and lore. It doesn't need to be an avenue for gear.

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Originally Posted by Xaphire

Criterion dungeon rewards are exactly what they should be. Glamour, mounts, minions, and lore. It doesn't need to be an avenue for gear.

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If it’s exactly what it should be why has the content died on arrival twice now

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Originally Posted by Xaphire

Criterion dungeon rewards are exactly what they should be. Glamour, mounts, minions, and lore. It doesn't need to be an avenue for gear.

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And what are your arguments?

I think it should reward gear.

A group of 4 players is much easier to build and manage than a group of 8. This group can be a group of close friends, while in an 8 player group you have to deal with people you barely know.

This means the barrier of entry is much lower, so the audience for Criterion is potentially bigger than for Savage Raids.

But Criterion lacks the reward. Why spend time learning the machanics when you don't get anything worthwile out of it?

With better rewards, like gear, Criterion could become the go-to endgame for a lot of people who would never touch savage because of the 8 people requirement.

At least the mount is less ugly this time around.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Not on board with it giving an equivalent to Savage or Augmented Tome gear, especially not for Criterion Normal and not before the respective catchup patch (x.1, x.3, x.5 aka the Alliance Raid patches). 5 or 10 item levels below for normal is reasonable enough.

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Criterion normal is a savage. Why shouldn't it at least give upgrade mats?

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Originally Posted by Xaphire

Criterion dungeon rewards are exactly what they should be. Glamour, mounts, minions, and lore. It doesn't need to be an avenue for gear.

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It doesn't matter what your subjective ideal is, hard fact is that PF is having 1-2 criterion parties in prime time few days after it's release. Incentives are clearly not enough.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Not on board with it giving an equivalent to Savage or Augmented Tome gear, especially not for Criterion Normal and not before the respective catchup patch (x.1, x.3, x.5 aka the Alliance Raid patches). 5 or 10 item levels below for normal is reasonable enough.

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Could you elaborate on why?
Is it because you believe 660 savage gear to be some sort of achievement that should remain exclusive to savage 8-person content?
Or is there another reason 660 savage gear exclusivity is important to you, and you do not wish for it to be obtainable by other means besides raiding at all?

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Originally Posted by Xelanar

Could you elaborate on why?
Is it because you believe 660 savage gear to be some sort of achievement that should remain exclusive to savage 8-person content?
Or is there another reason 660 savage gear exclusivity is so important to you, that you do not wish for it to be obtainable by other means besides raiding at all?

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4 person groups are easier to build and manage than 8 person groups and this means Criterion would kill Savage Raids when the rewards are the same.

The reason again is that tomestone gear is just too strong. There is no room between tomestone and savage raid gear for another endgame gear set.

They have to make tomestone gear weaker, turn it into the wellfare gear it is and open up the path for more interesting endgame gearing steps.

When tomestone gear would be 640 and upgrades into 650 then we can have like

640 normal raid gear, 660 savage raid gear, 655 Criterion, 650 24 man raid gear and we even have room for a relic gear set which can be upgraded in easy content with a lot of grind.

But as long as tomestone gear stays 650 / 660 there is simply no reason to play anything else than expert roulette and savage raid and maybe the 24 man raid once a week. And that is the reason the game feels like there is no content.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Criterion gear being another 650 option so people had a third alternative between tome gear and savage gear for gearing options is such a fantastic idea it’s no wonder square decided to pretend like it wasn’t an option

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The third option is Alliance Raids. If Criterion dropped 650 gear, then it would be a fourth option. Eventually the stats would have some overlapping where two different pieces of gear have identical stats and it becomes a "which is easier to get" decision. At the very minimum they definitely should have Coat and Twines to upgrade tomb gear.

I don't think you'd even have to shuffle the itemlevel around too much, simply adding 655 gear to criterion would make it a potential gearing option depending on substats. I'd take a 655 crit/det piece over a 660 piece with tenacity any day for example.

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Originally Posted by Nav_Fae

The third option is Alliance Raids. If Criterion dropped 650 gear, then it would be a fourth option. Eventually the stats would have some overlapping where two different pieces of gear have identical stats and it becomes a "which is easier to get" decision. At the very minimum they definitely should have Coat and Twines to upgrade tomb gear.

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Criterion in the future could be on patch 650 while the alliance raid is one patch behind 650, that way criterion can be used as a stop gap between the extreme weapon and savage gear

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Originally Posted by Tint

4 person groups are easier to build and manage than 8 person groups and this means Criterion would kill Savage Raids when the rewards are the same.

The reason again is that tomestone gear is just too strong. There is no room between tomestone and savage raid gear for another endgame gear set.

They have to make tomestone gear weaker, turn it into the wellfare gear it is and open up the path for more interesting endgame gearing steps.

When tomestone gear would be 640 and upgrades into 650 then we can have like

640 normal raid gear, 660 savage raid gear, 655 Criterion, 650 24 man raid gear and we even have room for a relic gear set which can be upgraded in easy content with a lot of grind.

But as long as tomestone gear stays 650 / 660 there is simply no reason to play anything else than expert roulette and savage raid and maybe the 24 man raid once a week. And that is the reason the game feels like there is no content.

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I see. Well, that is a valid reason, even if it is an opinion I don't really share. People who do not raid for the sake of clearing the raid, but for the sole purpose of gearing up, may not like to see their achievement(aquiring BiS gear) diminished in value.

For me, gearing has always been nothing more than means to an end(and glamour). I would still clear savage raids if they only dropped glamour or vanity items, and I never really cared about what Itemlevel my jobs have, or if other people can get there more easily later on. As long as I take enjoyment out of the process, I'm fine.

I raid because it's fun, and I do not believe to be the only person who does so. Stating that removing 660 itemlevel exclusivity from savage raids would kill them, might be too extreme a statement, but I DO get the point you want to get across.

As someone who does not really enjoy having content gated behind gear requirements, I see no harm in having savage equivalent gear in criterion dungeons tough.

I guess it's just a clash of differing ideals and expectations.

The problem with gear is that gear is only necessary for Savage and Ultimates. There is simply no reason for a casual to need to further boost their item level no matter how much they may desire to do so. The lack of midcore content is a huge culprit for this. For those who want it as glamour, they just simply wait until they can unsync it in future patches. This is an intentional game design choice so that those who do work to earn the gear get a small window of opportunity to enjoy it before everyone else gets it essentially stress free. Unfortunately, until we get more involved Midcore content beyond Extreme Primals, there just isn't a reason to add alternative gearing options for casuals. Let alone with more interesting stats. Gearing alternatives like I mentioned earlier leads to stat overlapping where multiple gearsets have identical stats or one has objectively bad stats (Skill Speed), making it not even an option to consider farming for. Basically, my point is, is that the rabbit hole is a lot deeper than just add more gear because we need more content as a whole to make that gear worth having in the first place. Otherwise, this basically becomes an indirect nerf to Savage gearing. Having 660 gear anywhere outside of Savage would ruin any incentive a casual would need to do that. They already have to wait until the expansion is basically over just to finally upgrade their tomb pieces via Alliance Raid. Which again is still a weekly. If they ever add gear to Critieon, it almost definitely needs to be on a weekly lockout rule. Also, as Tint said, getting 4 people together is a lot easier than 8 people. Do not misunderstand me though, we really do need more gearing options. Even raiders want more options so they can raid on other jobs and not feel locked into a main. But I think the problem is a lot deeper than putting gear into Critieon. Because it impacts everyone as a whole, not just casuals. Not just raiders.

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Originally Posted by Nav_Fae

The problem with gear is that gear is only necessary for Savage and Ultimates. There is simply no reason for a casual to need to further boost their item level no matter how much they may desire to do so. The lack of midcore content is a huge culprit for this. For those who want it as glamour, they just simply wait until they can unsync it in future patches. This is an intentional game design choice so that those who do work to earn the gear get a small window of opportunity to enjoy it before everyone else gets it essentially stress free. Unfortunately, until we get more involved Midcore content beyond Extreme Primals, there just isn't a reason to add alternative gearing options for casuals. Let alone with more interesting stats. Gearing alternatives like I mentioned earlier leads to stat overlapping where multiple gearsets have identical stats or one has objectively bad stats (Skill Speed), making it not even an option to consider farming for. Basically, my point is, is that the rabbit hole is a lot deeper than just add more gear because we need more content as a whole to make that gear worth having in the first place. Otherwise, this basically becomes an indirect nerf to Savage gearing. Having 660 gear anywhere outside of Savage would ruin any incentive a casual would need to do that. They already have to wait until the expansion is basically over just to finally upgrade their tomb pieces via Alliance Raid. Which again is still a weekly. If they ever add gear to Critieon, it almost definitely needs to be on a weekly lockout rule. Also, as Tint said, getting 4 people together is a lot easier than 8 people. Do not misunderstand me though, we really do need more gearing options. Even raiders want more options so they can raid on other jobs and not feel locked into a main. But I think the problem is a lot deeper than putting gear into Critieon. Because it impacts everyone as a whole, not just casuals. Not just raiders.

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Criterion isnt casual content though

Criterion is right around that level where if you were newer to savage the ilvl bump from potential criterion rewards would help massively in doing savage but at the same time is way too hard for people who genuinely aren’t interested in savage

So gear from criterion would be able to be a third option for raiders, especially in those patches with tome heavy BIS that are just boring

At the minimum, Criterion should have a weekly token that can traded for a twine/shine or 2 tokens for a twine and 1 for a shine. This would keep people doing it beyond the initial clear/10 clears for the mount.

As for Criterion Savage, considering how long it takes to gear up alt classes (37 weeks for all roles and that's with supplementing with Savage gear), a weekly token that can be used to trade for a single tomestone piece of gear, 1 token for accessories, 2 for head/hands/feet, 3 for body/legs.

The difficulty alone will make it so not everyone will be able to get the rewards but it will increase engagement with the content while also letting players gear up alt classes faster that they can then use to help with other content.