Decreased coliseum rewards?

In a previous post I gave coliseum a decent review based around how it somewhat benefits players by cutting down on the gear crunch. However I did read from other posts that the reward payouts were cut back and I mostly noticed this with the release of the most recent cast of toons involving rotta. When the first and second coliseum toons released they were all mid gear 12 and 13 and I only spent a few crystals on maybe 1 pack of level up resources during the second event. This new batch of toons didn't even come close with most being just shy of gear 12 or newly gear 12 and requiring all 6 gear pieces to reach gear 13. Not trying to rant just curious if the rewards were in fact scaled back.