I think score-gated drops in quest are a detriment to the community

If items are only available if a certain score is achieved, it's going to encourage people to find other players who are good and only play with them and discourage playing with randoms. Additionally I can see this leading to hostility and/or people leaving if their team seems sub-par or mess up a lot, even if they stand a good chance of completing the challenge. If my team has zero score halfway through we're probably not going to get the S I need so why should I stay when I can just leave and start a new game? I can see this contributing to toxic behavior, people quitting, and hurt feelings.

It used to be that I could hop in a random and since there wasn't any real penalty to death as long as everyone didn't die at once. If they weren't shooting me in the back but helping out some they were still better than having a literal traffic cone for a teammate so it was no problem. It also felt great when someone who never got to beat the boss got through it all! Now though having someone who may not be as experienced just simply picking up credits and but making the common mistake of dying a lot means they are worse than a literal traffic cone as they are lowering your team's max possible score.

There is certainly some merit to having score affect rewards but I don't think gating the drops in the way is the way to go. In particular I think having the rewards be random but score gated is a major problem. Not being able to get a good group for that S item to finish your outfit could get really frustrating and drive people to the toxic behavior I've mentioned. However maybe manipulating this randomness and having score increase the chance of getting what you want in some way might just be the thing to do. Grade increases the likelihood you get a specific drop you want? Or maybe reduce the chance of a duplicate, which means only after a while of playing getting a lot of iteme a high grade becomes more beneficial to you. The bottom line is having no chance to get the item without the grade you want could make bad games not worth doing or finishing.

As an aside to this point, I also don't like how it encourages super safe gameplay and wasting time picking up credits. One thing that was hated about XCom EU was how enemies got a huge advantage if you stumbed on them on your turn. This encouraged moving slowly and trying to let enemies find you on their turn and detracted from the actually interesting strategic gameplay. Running around shooting terminals and picking up credits for 30 seconds at the end of each level is going to get old real quick.