You say this as if event bardings are a common occurrence. The last event barding was two (hell, almost three) years ago, and we've never had more than just a single event barding per expac after ARR.
Printable View
People did complain before, but there were other positive aspects of the game to outweigh the events being bad. Now the quality of everything else but the encounter design(which people still debate about) has also dropped and the patches are too far apart for what they offer.
I like the barding, but we don't even get a hot choco emote from a seemingly hot choco themed event? Also what in the hells am I supposed to do with all these housing items they keep giving us, I sure as hell don't have enough room in my apartment and even if I did I'm not gonna fill my house with random seasonal decorations like a warehouse.
atleast we finally got one of those friggen wall posters. I dunno why its been so long since we have had one of these...
Literally the EASIEST bit of effort they could spend on making those an item. Get template, apply picture they already made
The rewards themselves, there's nothing wrong with them. The issue is that it's the same type of reward. This is my third Starlight-themed barding, yet for All Saints we only ever got one. We got two emotes for All Saints, none for Starlight.
There is comfort in the familiar, in tradition. I like FFXIV's traditions in fact. But relying overly much on them makes things boring and stale. Mix it up a little, give us another spooky barding or mount for All Saints, and an emote like drink eggnog or hot chocolate, or eat a cinnamon roll for Starlight. Or some kind of emote relating to ice or snow, or as suggested in this thread, a sled mount or a framer kit. There must be something the devs can think of.
It's not just a problem of same old same old, it's as OP stated, low effort as well. I've seen less and less effort put into festivals every year. Think of when we could sing in the Starlight choir. Now it's just talking.
This is a symptom of things going wrong with the game in general but that would take me off topic.
Curious how you're spending $45 on Twitch subs, when they're $5 each.
Except people complain every year, at every seasonal event. People probably complained during the 2015 Starlight Celebration too, when it just had reindeer antlers/gloves/boots, and a beard + reused christmas hat model.
Similarly, 2013 Starlight Celebration had a 3-piece snowman outfit, and a basic looking barding (the other sets were introduced in 2010/2011).
Amount of effort spent on seasonal events has always been very similar, if already low to begin with.
If they put titles as event quest rewards, they're lost forever afterwards because you can't buy them like other rewards, you have to do the quest. I would rather that titles go where they'll be available later.
I've got no opinion on the price as I don't know if that's accurate, but if they put the recoloured snowman in the event then you know people would be bitterly complaining at the devs' audacity to make this year's reward a recoloured version of a previous year's reward – and if they made a unique Starlight mount and put it in a Twitch promo instead of in-game, people would fume about that even more.
A cheap recolour of an existing mount is a better thing to see put in the external promo, really. If you don't like them doing cross-promos then you can easily ignore it because you're not missing out on much.