The general problem is the difficulty of areas that give good heat (Arenas, danger zones, etc. Firestorm is easier although still a bit difficult) without the appropriate gear, (Quicksilver danger zone, you only brought a Flourish, Voltech, and an Argent. Good luck!) in comparison to T2 ones.

In terms of time spent aswell, because of the whole difficulty of T3, runs take longer. On certain cases it might be much faster to just run RJP instead of FSC.

FSC does give much better loot/heat/crowns, sure. But there's several problems you can face on it or T3:
-Latency. Get hit 3x more often than you would if you had none. T3 is a death wish, if your latency gets high.
-Framerate issues. Charred Court specifically lags like there's no tomorrow. Changing graphics settings usually does nothing, since it's a memory leak.
-Lack of gear. You're going to get eaten alive if you have no fire resist.
-Lack of experience/skill. Don't go telling me your first FSC run was perfect and you didn't need any revives. If you really didn't, then, well, damn. RJP is much easier on first timers and all.

Also remember that the good heat and crowns are on the second stratum of a tier. And the difficulty, aswell. (For T3, depths 24 - 28) Now, I challenge you - Use whatever best gear you have available and try out some random depth 24+ danger zones or arena levels. Unless you're somehow lucky to have brought great gear for those areas and a skilled team, it's not going to be pretty.

So, in general? T3 isn't worth it. (Other than FSC) Even if more profitable, it's way too difficult and gear-specific, not to say status effects get way more broken. (Shock? Instant death. No joke. I'd often get shocked by mechas on T2, and take several hits, on most cases surviving with some trouble. Getting shocked by Trojans on T3? Attempt to retreat, paralyzed, jumped and mobbed by zombies, dead. Mecha Knights and arenas? Shocked, mobbed, dead.) RJP, on the other hand, is really easy and you can really just do it with any gear you might have available and there's no need to worry about status effects. (other than stun, but stun isn't that bad on T2) For the rest of T2, it's essentially the same, if you're using high end gear.

Its not even about difficulty, Its about time everything is a lot stronger so it takes a lot longer, Especially cidatel with countless rooms of 3 or 4 zombie waves, Again not difficult but time consuming.

Then you compare Vanaduke to Jelly King, Even as messed up as the nerfs left jelly king you can still "profit" from the jelly token weapons while doing a run that is easy,fast & profitable.On the other hand you have Vanaduke that only gives out Items that can only be traded-in for E-peen points which a lot of us have no use for.

A generic full tier 3 run will give better heat than a generic full tier 2 run, yes. However, the problem is in the scaling when it comes to the initial transition between the two.

RISK VS. REWARD -- it's completely screwed up in tier 3. The last level of a tier 2 run always yields far, far, far more heat and crowns than the first level of tier 3. The difficulty, however, slightly increases. This makes tier 3 "unworth" doing until you can actually reliably get below the t3 clockworks terminal and survive, and without spending a ton of energy and time to do so.

When heat and crown rewards go down and difficulty goes up, that's the wrong direction to go in. You shouldn't have to go to level 26 before noticing the difference. The very first level of t3 needs to be comparable to the last level of t2 .... or, at least, midway through t2, if they're worried about all the "grind" being taken out and farming becoming too easy.

It definitely, certifiably, absolutely needs an adjustment. RISK VS. REWARD -- that's the magic MMORPG formula, and it's badly out of whack in this case. When it's easier, quicker, and a lot more profitable to do the last half of tier 2 than the first half of tier 3, there's essentially no motive whatsoever to do tier 3 unless you're going right for the core. When there's no incentive to investigate content, that content goes unused. I doubt this is what the devs really wanted, so yes ... some sort of better reward for t3 needs to be implemented. Perhaps not even the heat and crowns factor. Maybe a higher chance of rare spawns? More material drops? SOMETHING.

Foxhound, two things:

Did you read my entire post? I specifically said that I don't necessarily think that it is the heat and crowns that should be adjusted. That's one.

Two .... the basis for my entire argument is not that heat and crown rewards should be a continual uphill climb as you decrease in depth, but rather RISK VS. REWARD. I would submit that the difficulty jump between Tier 1 and Tier 2 is like a crack in the sidewalk compared to the five-foot leap of faith that tier 3 requires. This may be due in some part to the colossal length of time it takes to get out of 4* gear and into 5*. Whatever the reason, it's not the same at all.

What's more, tier 2 almost immediately starts panning out with higher quality loot, many 3* and even 4* items. On the flipside, tier 5 holds on to its 5* items stubbornly and cruelly.

TL;DR version: something needs to be changed, not necessarily heat and crowns, but SOMETHING. Also, Tier 1 to Tier 2 is NOT comparable to Tier 2 to Tier 3. The difficulty jump is larger.

When people basically live their entire game end careers, even after getting endgame equipment, in mid-level content, something is wrong with the end-level content. This is MMO 101, guys. Not to say that it isn't a common enough mistake in a newer game, because it very much happens to lots of titles .... just that such things need to be adjusted (and usually are).

T3 is more fun.