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Dungeons offer an opportunity to explore additional repeatable content with higher rewards. While each dungeon has a unique reward mechanic (Eternity Cache, Soul Gambler, Vault of Uncertain Fates) the dungeons also provide other increased rewards throughout the dungeon. Temporal Sanctum in particular offers much higher Exalted drop rates, and targetable exalted farming. If a key requirement was removed, the through dungeon rewards would need to be greatly reduced. There is also an important part in “cost of entry”. By having a cost of entry, it increases the desire to optimize rewards - clear more of the dungeon to get more from each key spent. Without having anything spent, there’s no incentive to do anything other than rush the single most rewarding aspect (typically boss) and ignore everything else. This is one of the issues currently encountered with the Monolith. And while we are working on other solutions for the Monolith to provide more than simply rushing the objective, Dungeons work differently, and the same solutions won’t apply.
We currently believe having a cost of entry (dungeon key) is an effective measure for Dungeons to provide value to what can be found within, and allow the rewards within to be more rewarding based on key scarcity. A solution of moving the key to the reward mechanic would also not work universally (Soul Gambler), so such a solution would create an inconsistent experience across different dungeons.
Getting the correct balance for key scarcity and rewards for trying to get value from each key is a very delicate balance, and certainly something we’re looking for feedback regarding to ensure keys are exciting finds and something you ‘always’ want to see drop.