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

[Absurdity]

I read no nuanced discussion about "how to improve it" beyond "Demand Moar Stufz! for meeeee!" in this thread.

No examples of Appropriate Rewards vs. Expected Level of Effort. No discussion about what players expect Suitable Rewards should be. No comparisons of Rewards for other battle content available in game vs. this content.

Oh. And complaints about mounts.

Ah yes, it's only been talked about every single variant release for the past three.

Criterion would be an easy extra avenue for gearing, people have asked for it every single time. People have asked for more gearing options in general.
It comes out 3 months after the raid tier so it should have little impact on the playerpool and in terms of difficulty it is easily comparable to it as well.
Different substats on the Criterion gear would also make it interesting for the people already in BiS, especially when there is an Ultimate yet to be released. Just look at the Chaotic pieces still being BiS for FRU.

I'd even go a step further and add something like that to advanced, maybe not savage ilvl but better than crafted as a sort of in-between option. But extra twines/glazes would be an option too because let's be honest, this far into the raid tier we really don't need to keep heavily gating gear upgrades behind a single weekly lockout.

This also means that you could put some of those cosmetic rewards currently in advanced back into the variant version.

[Aidorouge]

To be fair, I have fun rinsing raiders 'routinely' through new crafted gear, potions and consumables, which on day 1 of a raid patch is massive, and across a full patch cycle bigger still.

So I don't really think casual players are the "good little piggy banks"

For a lot of raiders they will simply be living content-to-content to fund their next raiding escapade.

That only applies if one is a committed crafter though of which a lot of players are not (and if they were, crafted prices would crater as the supply outweighed the demand), so its not like every casual player is made of gil, or maybe they do have the funds but don't WANT to give it to certain kinds of players.

I have over 57 million to my name, and that's not counting the 30+ million that got wasted on 2 medium houses back in the day and any other millions I've spend on repair costs, teleports, and vendors in over 3 years. But I also don't find most prices on the MB worth it, and would rather just sit on the gil then give it to some hardcore player who hates my guts and wishes I wasn't subbed anyway... which then begs the question of where they expect to get their crafted goods and millions of gil if every casual player did indeed disappear tomorrow. (To say nothing of who they're going to flex all their "accomplishments" on if every city was truly devoid of other players just AFKing around.)

[Kaurhz]

That only applies if one is a committed crafter though of which a lot of players are not (and if they were, crafted prices would crater as the supply outweighed the demand), so its not like every casual player is made of gil, or maybe they do have the funds but don't WANT to give it to certain kinds of players.

I have over 57 million to my name, and that's not counting the 30+ million that got wasted on 2 medium houses back in the day and any other millions I've spend on repair costs, teleports, and vendors in over 3 years. But I also don't find most prices on the MB worth it, and would rather just sit on the gil then give it to some hardcore player who hates my guts and wishes I wasn't subbed anyway... which then begs the question of where they expect to get their crafted goods and millions of gil if every casual player did indeed disappear tomorrow. (To say nothing of who they're going to flex all their "accomplishments" on if every city was truly devoid of other players just AFKing around.)

I actually disagree, crafting is massively saturated and easily accessible, even to the most casual of players to be honest... There's nothing that really serves as a hurdle, unless you're for whatever reason insistent that you need the best of the best melds.

At entry level you can simply grab scrip gear, and then plop on entry melds, then run your stats through Raphael, it will do the heavy lifting, and all you need to do is press a button every 30-45 seconds, and this applies even on day 1 of a patch.

Personally, I don't really look at or care who specifically purchases my stuff on the market... The only time I care is when I go through commission for a fixed price, which since the delay to savage hasn't really been a thing for me.

Either way, you must've had some really bad experiences to have this outlook on things... From my personal experience outside of the select few on here that make raiding their entire personality.. I've never had much bad experience in-game... At least to warrant this outlook.

(Edit: this is going off too much of a tangent now anyway)

[Aidorouge]

I actually disagree, crafting is massively saturated and easily accessible, even to the most casual of players to be honest... There's nothing that really serves as a hurdle, unless you're for whatever reason insistent that you need the best of the best melds.

At entry level you can simply grab scrip gear, and then plop on entry melds, then run your stats through Raphael, it will do the heavy lifting, and all you need to do is press a button every 30-45 seconds, and this applies even on day 1 of a patch.

Personally, I don't really look at or care who specifically purchases my stuff on the market... The only time I care is when I go through commission for a fixed price, which since the delay to savage hasn't really been a thing for me.

Either way, you must've had some really bad experiences to have this outlook on things... From my personal experience outside of the select few on here that make raiding their entire personality.. I've never had much bad experience in-game... At least to warrant this outlook.

(Edit: this is going off too much of a tangent now anyway)

The furthest I got with crafting is society quests/levequests/custom deliveries, and that's mostly just to level the jobs for the sake of leveling them, or sitting around crafting thousands of a thing for an achievement. I'm under no delusion that I'm ever going to be making anything that actually sells so I don't invest in them beyond whatever scrip gear I can access (which is Shadowbringers right now) and I don't bother with materia at all. My gatherers are even worse off because I don't like dealing with its type of collectibles so I don't have gathering scrips at all, it's all vendor gear for them. Hell, I haven't even done gathering/crafting quests since ARR (so I'm still missing a bunch of skills despite every Dol/DoH being 90+) because these jobs just never seemed like something I would ever get any value out of outside of weekly quests.

And yeah, I don't really have the best opinion of the playerbase overall, only finding some individuals actually being nice (you included of course). So there is a bit of vindictiveness in there in wanting to avoid interacting with others even when it comes to buying things on the MB. All of those rewards from hardcore content, knowing it was probably farmed by a player who would probably call be entitled scum to my face but still expects me to pay out to them? I'm fine keeping my wallet closed and doing without.

[Daudream]

Wait wait wait wait... so you're telling me, that the reward for clearing all the paths is not a mount or a minion or even an appropriate title, but a facewear accessory that has absolutely no connection to the content and more pressingly is just a old glamour headpiece you can get on the MB?

I don't need it to be a mount personally, but it should be something completely unique and thematically appropriate, like they could have given the Pari's mask if they really wanted to give us facewear... this has to be the laziest reward they've added to this game! it's hilarious and sad!

I'll still do all the paths just because I enjoy the process, but maybe I'll leave that mask to rot in the achievements, just as a reminder you know?

[Ankhira]

I read no nuanced discussion about "how to improve it" beyond "Demand Moar Stufz! for meeeee!" in this thread.

No examples of Appropriate Rewards vs. Expected Level of Effort. No discussion about what players expect Suitable Rewards should be. No comparisons of Rewards for other battle content available in game vs. this content.

Oh. And complaints about mounts.

There's been plenty of suggestions made and plenty of points they can take as feedback. You're just trolling.

[ChaunceyDlamini]

Late to the party, but just found out what the reward for completing all 12 paths is tonight.

Something is wrong at CB3... This makes no sense otherwise. Leadership and oversight is MIA. As soon as rewards were proposed someone should have stepped in and said, "Guys, no, we've already been through this." Just like someone should have stepped in when OC/Fork Tower was being designed.

With as much bad press as Dawntrail has gotten, this is the dumbest and easiest mistake to have avoided. It's concerning.

[DPZ2]

There's been plenty of suggestions made and plenty of points they can take as feedback. You're just trolling.

Just to clarify: the poster I was responding to specifically said “This thread:”, not the multiple threads that have appeared since V&C was first released.

Here are the kinds of discussion topics that would naturally fit within this thread:

Given the current high‑level gearing model, which deliberately includes lockouts for the current raid tier, what kinds of V&C rewards make sense, assuming V&C isn’t meant to bypass those lockouts?

How do Japanese expectations around rewards differ from NA/EU expectations?
Is this a case of “lazy developers,” or is the design philosophy simply aligned more closely with their Japanese audience? Should Japanese developers be expected to deliver everything NA/EU players ask for, even when it contradicts the company’s core design principles?

Those two paragraphs are examples of questions that invite a more nuanced discussion of the issues.

From an NA/EU perspective, the reward structure this time does feel pretty silly; so, point taken.

That said, feedback tends to land better when it focuses on the design choices rather than the developers themselves. Once the tone shifts toward criticizing SE as a whole, the actual request can get lost.

[Oizen]

1.5x rewards bro

[Kaurhz]

Just to clarify: the poster I was responding to specifically said “This thread:”, not the multiple threads that have appeared since V&C was first released.

Here are the kinds of discussion topics that would naturally fit within this thread:

Given the current high‑level gearing model, which deliberately includes lockouts for the current raid tier, what kinds of V&C rewards make sense, assuming V&C isn’t meant to bypass those lockouts?

How do Japanese expectations around rewards differ from NA/EU expectations?
Is this a case of “lazy developers,” or is the design philosophy simply aligned more closely with their Japanese audience? Should Japanese developers be expected to deliver everything NA/EU players ask for, even when it contradicts the company’s core design principles?

Those two paragraphs are examples of questions that invite a more nuanced discussion of the issues.

From an NA/EU perspective, the reward structure this time does feel pretty silly; so, point taken.

That said, feedback tends to land better when it focuses on the design choices rather than the developers themselves. Once the tone shifts toward criticizing SE as a whole, the actual request can get lost.

Just a simple question, setting aside the tone policing going on here...

Given that people have been complaining about reward structure since the inception of the content, and given that the most recent release of the content has only made it worse for, what hope do people really have that "Feedback will land better if it focuses on the design choices rather than the developers" will the feedback actually land better -- Given the fact people were doing this, and the only thing it accomplished was the complete opposite of what people were asking for..? -- Let me phrase this another way... If people for years in the past have been using the 'right' language, and nothing has changed -- Only arguably got worse, then at what point does it shift from being a writer (us) issue, to being a reader issue?

I don't agree with berating developers by any stretch of the imagination -- But beyond a certain point you do have to question the decisions and so on.. as much as you question the content. Like, they insist on people putting feedback here, they utterly insist on it... But in the same vein, outwardly the perception is that the feedback is ignored, because the communication is practically non-existent.