I think among everything, this is definitely a problem. Sage is ONLY about getting top 3, the camp rewards and participation rewards are almost meaningless except for low powered players. Having 9 people get decent rewards out of 75 is a bad event.

Yet, I think this is how sage continues to work in Germany and China and i'm not optimistic about this changing. My merged server is on life support right now so while cross-server sage came a bit earlier than I would have liked, it seemed to be inevitable. But the current iteration needs leaves a lot to be desired.