I personally enjoy criterion. I would like to see more difficulty in normal dungeons (yes, even the MSQ dungeons...), not nearly as much as criterion but anything more than generic bosses with 2 mechanics: a raid-wide, and a tankbuster. Mobs actually doing stuff besides basic circle AOEs is a welcome change too.

Like everyone under the sun has said, it's the rewards for criterion that are terrible. It's the kind of content that's fun to run once, then any time afterward is just for fun. I don't mind the inclusion of a savage mode, but the rewards for even that are lacking too.

I could care less about variant. Waiting around for an NPC half the time and killing yet more basic trash mobs isn't really something I'm interested in, and personally don't care too much about lore anymore but I guess there's that for people that do.

To be fair, I've only run the first criterion which I thought was fun, haven't even looked at the new one so maybe they've changed it. Based on what I've seen from the first one, I like the concept, rewards definitely need a tweak and then maybe people will actually run it.