The biggest issue right now isn’t just the difficulty balance — it’s that the reward structure in XIV simply doesn’t respect players’ time or effort.

We’re six months into the current tier, Savage is still locked, and the “rewards” for new or side content are almost entirely cosmetic. Meanwhile, the cash shop gets a brand-new outfit every two weeks, yet somehow the dev team is “struggling to come up with rewards” for in-game activities. Come on.
Same case as it was with Criterion (Savage) — for beating such demanding content, you were rewarded with some Materia and a furnishing item. Like… bruh.

Look at Eureka or BA — the only reason people still do that content years later is the Ozma mount. One strong, desirable reward kept the content alive and gave veterans a reason to help new players. Without it, that content would be completely dead.
The same principle should apply to new stuff like Quantum: if you want players to engage long-term, there needs to be something meaningful to chase, not just another 1% drop mount and 99 fragments of disappointment.
Give them a special weapon, a totem for different BiS weapons, shiny glowy armor or weapons — or even something like an untradeable mount, a unique emote, animation, or another meaningful reward.

And honestly, Yoshi-P saying a “50% reward increase” was coming feels like a joke — 50% of zero is still zero.
Criterion Savage rewards were already disrespectful, but with Q40? You can’t be serious right now.

If SE truly wants every type of content to appeal to a wider audience, they need to rethink how rewards are structured — add variety, tie some items to challenge achievements, let side content offer valuable alternatives to raiding gear, and unlock Savage earlier so people can actually help others.
Right now, too much of the game’s reward philosophy boils down to: “you get a glamour or you get nothing.”

And that would be fine — not everyone should get every reward. That’s okay. You should have to earn unique rewards, spend time, fail, and improve to beat the content — but at the end, you need something truly unique to make it feel like your time and effort were well spent.

And considering that the final Quantum 40 fight is at a Savage+ difficulty level, yet the only reward is a title — one that doesn’t stand out in any way (no special font, color, or effects), and can even be disabled in the game settings — on top of that, 99% of players can’t even tell the “value” of a given title — you could say that the reward for clearing Q40 is pure satisfaction and nothing else.

There isn’t a single reason for someone who’s already completed this content to ever return to it. Not one incentive. You can farm the mount, the portrait frame, and the glamour just by running this Deep Dungeon a few times — but Q40, as harsh as it sounds, was dead on arrival.