I've never quite been able to get my head around rewards and curation as it has always been so variable. As above, I've spent hours on writing content and it has come to nothing then posted the odd photo and a few words and had decent reward.
I've not posted anything on Steemit for a while so can't offer a comparison but feel I've been receiving greater rewards on Hive since moving across. I may cross post some items in the future to see what happens!
Thing is, you can't win. If a group got together and only upvoted each others quality fourteen volume reworking of the Rise & Fall of Rome two things would happen.
1. You'd get accused of having sock puppets.
2. Some swine would still come along with an animated gif of a duck driving a Lamborgini and clean up on the upvotes.
I think I'm more disenchanted because Hive is no better than Steemit. If anything, in my case, in terms of rewards I think Hive appears to be worse!