Why did you lie about increased rewards?

[tank2fish]

I feel like everyone is talking around this point but not speaking directly to the issue, and if the devs really have such a hard time understanding and translating player feedback, we need to be more direct and clear with our criticisms. I also need the people who habitually go "no everything is fine!!!" to understand that people criticizing these decisions LOVE THIS GAME. They want it to be the best version of itself it can be, which is why they are complaining. Because these things can be BETTER. The game can be better, for everyone at every level.

That said, Yoshi-p in a past live letter said we would have 50% more rewards for this criterion. That did not happen, the spirit of that promise is not what was delivered. This change to the rewards for criterion was "in response to player feedback," which should concern everyone regardless of how you feel about the rewards because in no universe is this reward structure addressing the feedback on any level. It is solving a problem no one talked about, and no one asked for, while entirely ignoring the most common and widely reported complaint.

Regardless of whether you feel those complaints are warranted, this should worry you. They say they are taking player feedback, but this criterion makes clear one of two things. Either:

1. they are taking our feedback and entirely disregarding it (which, while bad, it is their game and they will develop it however they choose to)

OR

2. the feedback they are receiving is being completely mistranslated and missing the mark when it is delivered to the devs

Over the course of Dawntrail, numerous people have been completely perplexed at the content delivery, from the story to OC etc. It is like they are developing and responding to feedback that has been twisted or altered in some way away from common community criticisms, whilst disregarding other complaints. Even looking at a glance at the most active threads in these forums, one of the most common impressions is "Who asked for this?"

WHO asked for the ester for a previous expansion, instead of current gear upgrade tokens? WHO asked for current content to render past content pointless? WHO asked for rewards to be removed from variant to lock behind a higher difficulty gate? WHO asked for us to have the same or fewer rewards? WHAT does Yoshi-P consider "rewarding"?

People have asked for the reward and gearing structure to be revised and looked at. To be made easier for gearing alts, to give us more options to get twine/glaze at minimum. This is just yet another fumble in an expansion of fumbling, addressing problems that no one highlighted and creating solutions no one asked for.

[Jeeqbit]

My understanding is that the promised increase in rewards was in general, from the expansion overall. To be honest, we've been through most of the expansion now and I have been thinking that I haven't seen this apparent increase in rewards anywhere. Not in a way that I find noticeable, at least.

All I know is that Yoshi-P sticks a mount behind things to make people do it. A good example of that is mentor roulette, where he felt that if he didn't put a mount behind it then people might not bother becoming a mentor at all. It's an old school mindset, to be fair, because farming the new mounts or minions is a sort of traditional MMO thing that was always easy to observe in any MMORPG. However, it's not necessarily something that everyone does or values, at least in 2026. The real meaning behind chasing a mount or whatever is that when you do it, usually others are doing it as well for the same reason and you are essentially doing it together, often with people you regularly see doing whatever is the new content.

For your answer to the "who" asked, I'm pretty sure I can guess. Yoshi-P ponders things a lot. "Hmm" is a common thing I see in interviews he does, then he goes into a pondering mode posing all sorts of hypothetical questions and thinking of the answers. So he is almost certainly both the one that asks and answers.

For example, it will almost certainly occur to him that content gets old and participation significantly reduces due to the FOMO nature of a lot of content in this game, and the obvious solution to this is to make the rewards obtainable from the new content as well - hence Bozja, Occult Crescent, deep dungeons and GC coffers significantly devaluing a lot of previous mounts and minions. This is an example of what a director is very likely to ask and answer to themself.

Of course, this ignores that a lot of players may value that scarcity, but it is actually pretty natural for a game director to think about the majority of players, so us valuing the scarcity is probably not something that logically comes to mind when designing the game.

(Slightly correction though, from my understanding there is still a mount from variant - it's just that it's the Advanced version of Variant)

[JadeCurtiss]

They didn't lie. There are more rewards, the caveat being they're either recycled or worthless.

[Sunhwapark]

They didn't lie. There are more rewards, the caveat being they're either recycled or worthless.

Perhaps they are planning on rebranding to Recycled Studio 3.

[Kaurhz]

I think from my perspective it feels like they are developing the expansion how they want to... Which is their prerogative being their game and all... But as far as feedback goes... It feels like it is an afterthought, and when it is implemented as an afterthought you end up with some of the patterns we've been seeing through this expansion.

Like, be it with the rewards from Occult being saturated with old Eureka and Bozja rewards, which does very little for the people that interacted with the content at that time, and really only serves to significantly devalue older content, which in the process puts the game in a perpetual cycle where older expansions only really lose incentive for newer players... Thus exacerbating an already existing issue for said players.

Then you have situations like Cosmic where capstone mounts e.g., "High Mobility Vacuum Suit Identification Key" being re-skinned several times in the same expansion... Only serving to take away incentive for actually aiming for it, when all you're getting is a re-skin.. I'm a sucker for DoH/L content, but I am not doing that when it's just a re-skin.

They are sort of listening to feedback (If re-skins and old rewards constitute as 'more' rewards) ... But they are doing so in the worst possible way, where they are trying to solve one problem to create other problems -- and arguably bigger problems elsewhere.

[Turtledeluxe]

CS3 lie? Sky is blue? More news at 11?

Also why does my character have headgear on when there has not been a login since end of February and it wasn't on a few hours ago?

[Doki]

There's more fireworks, more umbrellas!

[Destati]

*Rubbing temples* I get it, making new assets costs manpower and time. Billion dollar company notwithstanding, CS3 doesn't have countless team members. They are humans with limited resources and time constraints.

HOWEVER, the amount of reskinned rewards this expansion is really bumming me out. Just when I thought they were reusing the "eat x" emotes a little too much, they introduced the neotunics, which have been yet another convenient thing to slap a new texture over. We just got the silly idol shirts (is anyone actually going to wear those?) and I noticed in the database there's an "Aunt Tii's taco shirt" on the way too. One of the new variant dungeon mounts is a reskinned magic carpet (which granted the original version is from the Mogstation, so I guess it's nice to have one available for free in game). And then the mount for the new PVP mode is a reskinned snowman from the Starlight event a few years ago.

And then we have the face mask that's tied to completing all the routes in the new variant dungeon. So... not only is it not a mount like it has been with the other ones, it's just a random reused accessory that doesn't even really go with the theme. Hell, I would have preferred a reskinned mount to this (and that's why I initially expected the magic carpet mount to be tied to this, but I guess both mounts are tied to the harder modes??).

I'm still going to run the new dungeon when I have time because the art style looks neat and I really love the glam that comes from it, so at least I can look forward to that. I'm just baffled by their reward choices. We got the cute gerbil, the silly lantern, and a pixie that carries you around... now a face mask... yippee...

[Laerune]

Anyone else rememeber new EGI glamour?

[ForteNightshade]

They didn't.

What they've chosen to do is either recycle rewards from old content or make it so the bulk of them can be obtained through gil or grind and harder content simply lets you skip either. Pilgrim's Traverse has a lot of rewards, for example. But the Quantum version is "you get them faster!"