I'm fine with the rewards from challenging content matching the difficulty. In the case of Steps of Faith, they opted not to include a reward to match the challenge, and instead reduced the challenge. I think they were concerned about "no soldiery bonus" farm groups forming in party finder if they added a rare TT card or a pony.

I beat Steps of Faith on the 2nd day after 16 tries. Nobody knew wtf they were doing that first day. By the second day a lot of us had been hammering at it for 24 hours straight and had figured out their roles. All it takes is 3/4 of the party knowing what they are doing to let this fight be easy - because it's a mechanics driven fight, and those six people are needed to run the mechanics. But when you had those six people rage quitting as soon as they got it in trials roulette, you lost all that experience.

New players who want a challenge will get it in Heavensward. Old players are already passed Steps and got their challenge.