Quote Originally Posted by alibutterfly View Post
As others have already pointed out, Eureka Orthos released today. The Variant/Criterion dungeons are still very new. Why not try to funnel people into that content?
Because they flubbed Variant/Criterion so badly neither would actually work.

Variant is comically simple to the point it can be effortlessly soloed. That isn't to say it's bad content per se because it isn't. The whole exploration aspect worked, albeit with very minimal longevity. Par for the course with this game, evidently. The issue is it means players aren't queuing into Duty Finder necessarily, which is what they want for the relic. Criterion, on the the other hand, is way overtuned to be a relic step. Instead of the more Extreme difficulty they originally announced, they made it equivalent to low tier Savage. This meant it was dead content for the overwhelming majority of players who, while may want something with some teeth to it, aren't looking for a Savage fight. They certainly wouldn't lock a relic step behind it. Not to mention, unless Criterion could be unsynced at a later point in time, it'd require some heavy nerfing to not lock out players as the expansion(s) went on.

Basically, their very shortsighted planning made both a non-option they can only really rectify in the next iteration.