How to make the 3rd raid difficulty work

[Cetonis]

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Anecdotes ignoring scale. The number of groups putting any serious amount of time into getting speedkill rankings is in the (low) double digits. Mayyybe two hundred players at best, probably less. Similarly miniscule numbers of players do the other things you linked. That's not worth making an entire piece of content for.

Several thousand people each put the time in to clear Gordias and Midas Savage. Thousands more spent a lot of time trying. Those offered unique, extra-powerful weapons at the end. Zero complaints about said weapon existing. I don't recall substantive complaints about Coil gear either. It was just the story issue.

The catch-up gear process is about fairness to people wanting to start raiding on the next tier, and about incentivizing odd patch casual content, not about responding to desperate cries over raid gear exclusivity.

If you're SE, why in the hell would you put a bunch of effort into a whole new piece of content, and then run the risk of people not caring by offering some pure vanity reward for it? When there's absolutely zero downside whatsoever to making the reward more enticing.