It's cope. Pure, unfiltered cope. It's justifying why they deserve to have something by invalidating the efforts of others. You just don't take it seriously.
Even without experience, any layman can take a look at the current top 300 leaderboard and see that multiple people have over 1000 wins (nearly 2000 games played assuming 50-54% win rate) in a single season to secure a placement. Which is probably more games than the people who dismiss it all as cheating have on the entirety of the life of their account including all alts combined lol.
If you aren't willing to put in the effort it takes, just say so. Its okay if its not worth it to you, just like grinding the same EX trial boss mechanics 99 times or putting 200hrs into an Ultimate clear isnt worth it for others.
There will never be a constructive discussion here besides encouraging people to express they want the rewards available again then wait patiently to see if it happens. Realistically good information here eventually does make its way to people on the dev team where it matters.
One problem is this isn't a forum for discussing exploits. Even mentioning them is advertising them, so we can't be very explicit talking about them and that leaves room for disinformation. It's not necessarily a bad thing, because this forum shouldn't be about that, so it is what it is.
Ignore people who say returning these rewards is somehow bad. We're still playing the game and playing more in the future for old rewards is a good thing. Moogle Tomestone events are very popular because they return exclusive items from years ago and lots of people return for them.
1) Where did I say it never happened? And why do you then proceed to say that I said it did 0.001% of the time? Make up your mind?
2) If you think the Feast was removed because of win trading, I think you're really fooling yourself. Team ranked was, not the solo mode. Feast has gone because Feast was not successful. Win trading wasn't the problem, the main issue has always been alt accounts being allowed on leaderboards by the way, which isn't cheating, but I'm actually annoyed that it took the devs 10 years to do something about that only in 7.1.
3) Ranked has queue problems because ranked, like in any multiplayer game, is a small minority of players, which compounded by XIV being a MMO with many other things to do in, makes that not everybody is queuing 24/24 for ranked. Queues not being always active just because "win trading is pushing people away"... That's borderline conspi.
4) Are you implying I'm arguing against your toxic conspirationist takes just because I'm aware and profiting of cheating myself? The moment you will understand that you're literally flinging shit at everybody playing the mode with your takes, perhaps we'll be able to talk in a less confrontational manner, but for now, you're being incredibly offensive and crummy.
5) If you're not even playing the mode, I have no idea how you can even gauge or state that the cheating is I quote, "rampant". Play the mode seriously for multiple seasons, and maybe I'll take you more seriously, because right now this is just baseless rumourmongering.
1) Feast was a mediocre mode, good riddance.
2) My post history should be enough to show that I have stated multiple times that I don't give a crap about old exclusive top 100 rewards to make a come back for everyone to enjoy.
3) Nobody is insisting that cheating is non existent, that's just you strawmaning.
Hi. New to the conversation. Just throwing in my two cents:
Bring back The Feast for a single season's length. Top 100 get their choice of previous Feast rewards. Run yearly.
Echoing the sentiment that old Feast rewards shouldn't sit somewhere collecting dust.
Far less people would use ultimate weapon glams if they weren't tied to ultimate content. A huge reason people even want them is because they're rare or hard to acquire, without that aspect the popularity of those things would drop off a cliff.
Same thing with glams, titles etc. People always want to show off their rare things, the rarity is the point. Don't pretend otherwise.
There should be more rewards like that, not less. 90% of the rewards in this game are participation rewards or freebies, people should be rewarded for playing well or being the best. I'm of the opinion that there should be exclusive titles for getting world/server firsts, things along those lines.
MMOs are not designed to be 100% completed. You, nor I, nor anyone ever will have all the achievements or rewards this game has had, and that's fine.
Missing out on things is an intended part of the experience. In SOME cases I think FOMO can be good, just not in casual content. The old battle pass stuff should come back, because it was never meant to be exclusive nor was it any sort of achievement to acquire. Things like The Firmament titles, old Feast stuff, the legacy tattoo, that stuff should remain rare, because rare things should exist in MMOs. I say this knowing full well I'm never going to get some of those things, and that's fine. I wasn't there, and if I was I chose not to compete because I didn't like the content so that's on me, I'll live.
There is no shortage of easy to acquire, really cool/cute looking things in this game, why is it so bad for some rare or exclusive stuff to exist?