I think it's a bit of both, I was used to him giving 300-400k regularly if he requested two super rare items but the profit margin has dropped down (or at least it did for me the last two days), but I agree usually I rarely have to quit his quests but I've been doing so a lot the last 2 days.

On the plus side I've been getting much nicer items from everyone else and I make a habit of doing all quests I can everyday .

I actually lost sP on his quests yesterday, but I had much better luck today. Just figured it was a combination of event item inflation and bad luck on my part, didn't really suspect anything had been tweaked.

The inflation killed me for his quests today. I was only able to do like, 3. And I lost sP on one of them.