More Variant Dungeons in 7.0? REALLY?

Let's be honest with ourselves here: Reward Structure is trash in Variants. Either they beef it up and give us more stuff that's worth doing it for aside from Materia and an outfit/mount, or it's going to more dead content.

I’m sure they will have proper rewards in 7.0 now that they have worked out the tech on the dungeons. I like them and I would like to see them become a roulette worthy of daily play so we have something different from the two Expert dungeons. I have high hopes for them!

That really is the only problem I have with variants at the moment, I do really enjoy running them and getting the story bits out of them, but the rewards are so little for them that there is no reason to return to them. Moreso because they seem to abandon them after launch, instead of adding something to the rewards of Sil'dih they went and added another separate dungeon with it's own currency for the same amount of rewards.

after the current criterion I have no hope. But variant is fine.

Variant gives mounts, minions, and glams.
It's criterion that's shit.

Honestly was suprised by this. Can we at least get a unique opening boss for each path this time lol

You WILL play XIV only 1 day every 6 months, just play something else, that's what they want you to do!

Wonder if we can keep variant but cut out criterion for other gameplay content instead.

They honestly just need a better savage.
Having a copy paste extreme version where you can't make a single mistake isn't interesting.

You could replace that with an achievement that requires you to clear the extreme version in a limited amount of time and it would be more interesting.

I like variant and criterion, glad we're getting more.

Variant/Criterion are complete rubbish. I'm sorry, but running the same dungeon 12 different ways, 12 times is not fun. I do not care for the story in them, the rewards can be easily purchased on the marketboard, so I ask what is the point of introducing them at all?

I'm assuming everyone is referring to the harder difficulties since the base difficulty gives you a ton of different things. To those dissatisfied with the current rewards for Another/Savage, what rewards would you prefer? Listing what you would consider good rewards is probably more useful feedback than "it sucks."

For my own two cents, just a mount as the reward does seem sparse given the difficulty. Perhaps you could also use the tokens to buy some sort of item that gives the most recent tomestone weapons a particle effect? It wouldn't take as much work as an entirely new collection of shiny weapons for every job but would still be a fun bonus.

Will any "inlfuencer" have the balls to push Yoshida on the whole Variant/Criterion reward structure? (along with other long standing issues like healing and hats)

SE seems to have some kind of internal policy of attempting every new system two times before suspending it (Deep Dungeon, Exploratory content). You can be confident they will cancel the feature in 8.0 and replace it with something even worse.

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

I'm assuming everyone is referring to the harder difficulties since the base difficulty gives you a ton of different things. To those dissatisfied with the current rewards for Another/Savage, what rewards would you prefer? Listing what you would consider good rewards is probably more useful feedback than "it sucks."

For my own two cents, just a mount as the reward does seem sparse given the difficulty. Perhaps you could also use the tokens to buy some sort of item that gives the most recent tomestone weapons a particle effect? It wouldn't take as much work as an entirely new collection of shiny weapons for every job but would still be a fun bonus.

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Some accessories would be nice. Maybe slightly worse stats than the top tier accessories, but with a special stat boost when you're in a party of four or less. Criterion BiS.

I personally enjoy criterion. I would like to see more difficulty in normal dungeons (yes, even the MSQ dungeons...), not nearly as much as criterion but anything more than generic bosses with 2 mechanics: a raid-wide, and a tankbuster. Mobs actually doing stuff besides basic circle AOEs is a welcome change too.

Like everyone under the sun has said, it's the rewards for criterion that are terrible. It's the kind of content that's fun to run once, then any time afterward is just for fun. I don't mind the inclusion of a savage mode, but the rewards for even that are lacking too.

I could care less about variant. Waiting around for an NPC half the time and killing yet more basic trash mobs isn't really something I'm interested in, and personally don't care too much about lore anymore but I guess there's that for people that do.

To be fair, I've only run the first criterion which I thought was fun, haven't even looked at the new one so maybe they've changed it. Based on what I've seen from the first one, I like the concept, rewards definitely need a tweak and then maybe people will actually run it.

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Originally Posted by Hyperia

I’m sure they will have proper rewards in 7.0 now that they have worked out the tech on the dungeons. I like them and I would like to see them become a roulette worthy of daily play so we have something different from the two Expert dungeons. I have high hopes for them!

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Are the effects of copium truly this potent?

You know what variant really need ? Solo LB 3 !

As for criterion i won't touch it until they make it more rewarding.

Its silly content to keep people logging in. Get your mount and weeb glams and move on.

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

Let's be honest with ourselves here: Reward Structure is trash in Variants. Either they beef it up and give us more stuff that's worth doing it for aside from Materia and an outfit/mount, or it's going to more dead content.

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But there you just said it the dungeon themselves aren't the problem, the main drop is with the reward versus the effort to do them. Hopefully they have learned and seeing the responses of the current ones and next expansion they'll add more appropriate rewards for time investment

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Originally Posted by Jandor

Some accessories would be nice. Maybe slightly worse stats than the top tier accessories, but with a special stat boost when you're in a party of four or less. Criterion BiS.

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This is an interesting idea. I think alternative gearing may be what a lot of people are looking for, but I have yet to see anyone else explain what rewards they want beyond just complaining that they don't like the current ones.

Variants for the mounts are dead to me, since the mount requires running many exact paths through them, something that will take forever in in random PUGs. If I was in an organized group that could clear all the paths one at a time, it might be different.

Varients are fine, although I wouldn't be opposed to them dropping gear, even if it's run of the mill Dungeon green loot, if just for Glamour Purposes.

Criterion and Savage should absolutely drop Raid Equivalent gear. Maybe not BiS but considering their difficulty would 5 ilvl below the current raid gear drops but with 5 Materia Slots guaranteed be too much for the Savage drop to have?

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Originally Posted by HyperiusUltima

Let's be honest with ourselves here: Reward Structure is trash in Variants. Either they beef it up and give us more stuff that's worth doing it for aside from Materia and an outfit/mount, or it's going to more dead content.

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Honestly, it wouldn't even have to be huge things, just things people want. For example, what if you could buy the Mandarium Ores with those currencies (at a slightly faster rate than if you were spamming dungeons for the tomes)? This would give people a reason to do them, like how Eureka had PotD/HoH drops for the relics (just no more random low % chance here, you'd just buy them with the potsherds). That would already give people a reason to run them if they want to work on more Relics/quicker Relics.

It would also make the Relic grind a bit more interesting since you'd have these additional avenues you could use. It's so odd that this new content for the expansion has NO tie to the Relic weapons. Even just having the Mandarium Ores (updated with each Relic step to include the latest one as well) in their shops would make it worth doing. At this point in the game, no one needs more Materia. I've done enough Hunt Trains I have close to 2000 of the grade 9 and 1500 of the grade 10 turn-in items, and another roughly 50-100 of each Materia between Expert chest/random drops and having bought a bunch in the past with the cracked clusters. Even people who don't do Hunts often, you have PvP Wolf Marks as another source and extracting from all the gear you've worn over the course of the expansion.

I know Materia is their go-to "extra thing people can buy", but at this point, I can't imagine anyone that actually melds their gear ISN'T already drowning in Materia (or has the money to buy what they need from the MB anyway), certainly not that they'd run C&Vs over and over to buy more.

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Originally Posted by Silver-Strider

Varients are fine, although I wouldn't be opposed to them dropping gear, even if it's run of the mill Dungeon green loot, if just for Glamour Purposes.

Criterion and Savage should absolutely drop Raid Equivalent gear. Maybe not BiS but considering their difficulty would 5 ilvl below the current raid gear drops but with 5 Materia Slots guaranteed be too much for the Savage drop to have?

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So the revival of the ancient concept (Vanilla/BC WoW era ancient, so from the 00s) of "Dungeon Sets"?

Might be worth looking into, but raiders tend to get ants in their pants about anyone else having gear at all close to theirs, and only grudgingly accept it at the very end of an expansion after all content has been released and cleared in the form of the final Relic weapon update, which had to be lower ilevel than their Savage weapons all the way until then otherwise they'd have been even more upset.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Might be worth looking into, but raiders tend to get ants in their pants about anyone else having gear at all close to theirs, and only grudgingly accept it at the very end of an expansion after all content has been released and cleared in the form of the final Relic weapon update, which had to be lower ilevel than their Savage weapons all the way until then otherwise they'd have been even more upset.

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Seems a bit aggressive considering that anything outside of week 1 clears is irrelevant to the raid community and that their gear advantage typically disappears by next patch when the final alliance raid starts giving out weekly coins to upgrade Tombstone gear. It's not like it doesn't take them 8 weeks to get their BiS anyways and half of that might just be from Tombstone gear as well, depending on the class, which everyone will have access to. The upgrade mat for the armor will release in another 8 weeks when the latest Alliance Raid drops with the coin needed to purchase upgrades so it's not even that substantial a time frame to be uppity about. Hell, the raid community sure as hell would not complain if they could have a viable alternative to gearing out a secondary job while gearing out their main for reclears, or even using Criterion Gear as a better stepping stone towards their BiS during that 8 week frame, especially when several members in a static are trying for a Twine because the Tombstone gear is better than the Raid gear.

It seems like a non-issue really.