And some people like myself don't run the content when it's fresh at all because by the time the mount can finally be bought it's already irrelevant and it's better to just wait for drop rate buffs or unsync to farm it.
The mounts should never have been made purchasable with totems to start with.
Can we stop pretending that a lot of systems in this game weren't designed to waste your time just to make sure you stay subbed? Square Enix isn't going to change the formula neither will they change their "Kill/Gather 1000 things in Y / Z" achievements.
This game doesn't respect your time.
But a lot of people won't. So it isn't pointless when those are the people they're targeting since they know everyone else will wait anyway. The idea is they want the good players to keep farming beyond 99 totems, thus helping the less experienced players. If it was available from the start, everyone would just farm 99/50 kills and never touch the fight again.
Put simply, they're playing into FOMO without it actually being FOMO
It's funny to me how a lot more people are starting to notice this now the patch cycles have become longer when it's always been the case. The whole "take breaks!" and "XIV respects your time!" was always PR nonsense.
To drag out your sub time or convince you to resub in six months if you quit. Same as all the other arbitrarily dragged out stuff in this game.
they should make it buyable at release
and after six months the cost should go down to 50 totems