Power as a function of reward, and not of time. Variations + Challenge = Reward

[Jeeqbit]

certain activities would literally translate to more tomes at the end (or % reward increases).

contextually intelligent like mentioned above, for example you referenced minions and maybe the game is like "oh, you don't have the tetra card". Make getting cards a bit more reliable (still some grind, but add some more hope in there ). Coins of fate that let you narrow down glamour opportunities, etc.

Those would be alright since EXP and tomestones are easy to increase, and minions are virtually a 2% chance while cards can sometimes be that low as well, where you can take 50-100 runs to even see a drop.

Part of the issue is that SE rarely does intelligent systems that would "recognize when you don't have a reward and make that the one more likely to drop". If they even revisited old systems much, this sort of thing isn't even in their track record to do. It may be slightly complicated and ambitious, but it's probably a days' headache at most for a programmer to work through any issues with it.

The problem with this is it destroys growth.

I think the problem with all this, is that some players only value one thing in games: power. They do not value other rewards (such as mounts, minions, TT cards). Because most of the grinds in this game are for mounts, they feel there is no content in this game.

So if you make power result in more/faster mount/minion/TT card drops, you don't solve anything for the players that want more power progression, because they don't care about said rewards.

The only thing that seems to satisfy people who play for power progression, is gaining directly more power as a result of their playtime - such as gear, tomestones, augments, materia, Lost Actions, Logos Actions, pomanders, relic weapons, that sort of thing.

And in this case it's unlikely gear, tomestones, augments or materia would cut it when it's so quick and trivial to get it at max level within a matter of weeks after savage release for many players, and of course SE does not do most of the other things outside of special instances areas.

However, I can agree with simply "playing well" increasing rewards to motivate people to do that.

I had thought of that but I think the OP system is better as it allows the game to accelerate without destroying it's balance.

Maybe we just need to accept that old dungeons are for new players or for leveling our jobs and once we've done that, we should ignore them if we don't enjoy them. SE could harness them and make scaled up, more challenging versions of these dungeons with less telegraphs, and it would involve minimal effort for them to do it, they just don't seem smart enough to harness their old content for some reason. Same with their old raids: there are 61 old savage-level raids that are ignored by over 99% of savage raiders and 38 old extreme trials. Only the "MINE community" cares about them. SE could make a roulette that chooses one at random each day or each week and scale them up, like with PvP, but they don't.