What was they thinking when they did variant dungeons and criterion

[Avoidy]

In a way, the new dungeon setup reminded me a lot of island sanctuary, in that I enjoyed it for a very short time, but now that I'm done with it I can't see myself ever returning. This is sort of problematic in the long term, because when enough people reach that "I don't want to go back anymore" stage, it makes progression difficult for people who arrived late to the content. Luckily Variant (i.e. the ez mode) skirts this issue by having viable solo options, but if you wanted to do the EX/Savage modes of it, you're sorta screwed. Good luck getting people to do that when the rewards might as well not exist, and anyone who did it for the challenge already did it and got that out of their system.

The issue though, is even with better rewards, this game basically implements rewards and then never changes them even when the environment shifts and those items aren't desired anymore. So if your goal is to create content with really strong staying power and you're an XIV developer, you have a difficult task ahead of you because you need to design content that's not just rewarding now, but will continue to be rewarding several years from now. "Glams" as rewards tried to solve this problem, but with Variant dungeons in particular, those rewards can be sold on the market and they're obviously getting cheaper every hour. It's easier for most people to just... buy the glam/minion/mount/etc. than it is to grind the content, so that's what a lot of people will do. I feel like the best solution they could offer, would be to include some item that people always desire no matter what, like crafting mats or something, and then when the next patch comes out, change the crafting mat with the needs of the player base. But then this creates the question of, like, "well okay but do we do this for all the other forgotten content that exists? Where do we stop?" and it's rather daunting.

The devs were probably thinking it's much easier to just make good one-time rewards and then call it a day like they've always done. They did it with island sanctuary, which is dead now. They did it with bozja, which is dead now. They did it with Eureka, which is alive with bots now, and so on. XIV is full of content, but there lacks a reason for doing most of it. And the solution is unclear. It is definitely a problem though. One that -- if solved -- could potentially revitalize several parts of the game all at once.