SUGGESTION: Add Equippable "Auras" as Visual Rewards for High-Difficulty Content

It’s no secret that rewards for higher-end content, such as Criterion Dungeons, the 40-offering "The Final Verse" Quantum Deep Dungeon, and other challenging modes, feel underwhelming compared to the effort and mastery they demand.

This is unfortunate because the content itself is exceptionally well-designed. The encounters, mechanics, and environments in these modes represent some of FFXIV’s best work. Players love the challenge, but many agree that the rewards do not match the quality of the experience.

A potential solution is to expand character customization by introducing a new cosmetic category: Equippable Auras. These would be visual effects that surround a character, like radiant energy, elemental glows, or particle-based effects, and could be unlocked through high-end challenges.

This concept already exists in several successful MMOs. Games like Phantasy Star Online 2, Mabinogi Heroes (Vindictus), and Dragon Quest X have introduced aura or aura-like effects that signify player achievement or rarity. Even global titles like Diablo III, Path of Exile, and Guild Wars 2 feature equippable aura cosmetics as prestige rewards.

FFXIV’s engine and art style are more than capable of supporting such effects in a tasteful, lore-friendly way, imagine elemental, holy, or void-themed auras tied to certain trials or dungeons. These would provide an exciting, purely cosmetic incentive that reflects both effort and skill, without affecting balance.

In short, “Equippable Auras” would give players a new and meaningful reward vector, a visible mark of dedication that complements the already outstanding high-end content and deepens FFXIV’s identity as a game of expression and prestige.

I bet my soul if they introduce something like that, it will go directly into mog station. And maybe once in a blue moon there will be significantly inferior, time-limited in-game version.

You can have them provided I'm given an option to turn them off so I can't see them, because I can already tell that something like that is going to be annoying to load into, especially as the aura graphics start stacking up in crowded areas.

You keep your flex, I keep by FPS, everyone wins.

Although I'm OK with glowing ultimate weps in LL but I'm less OK with glowing auras, which would look strange in town or if I'm near a shadowy zone in a crowd.

Doesnt have to be something "annoying" like a glowing aura.
Skill Animation Skins are imo a better alternative to this.
Golden Bahamut Summon Skin for clearing UCOB without dying or eating a damage down, Feo Ul EOS Skin for clearing PT Solo or Q40 e.g.

Just give us animation overrides for certain abilities for jobs Squeanix. There's unlimited potential for all jobs to have their own quests to get various overrides throughout the game, new and old.
And heck, allow us to get a quest to swap and idle pose from a job with the opposite gender. I love the PLD and DRK male idle poses :<

id like limsa to not get even more atrocious

No to aura's
yes to alternate job animations/vfx for doing certain content

I'm all for more rewards, but not glowing auras. The overuse of glowing energy stuff throughout games and media in recent years has become tiresome IMO.

If you do that, you would have to have an option for people to be able to turn them off in their graphic settings for a number of reasons. 1. It would cause more load for some people's hardware, which is unwanted. 2. It would be annoying to some people playing this game to see someone glowing like a Super Saiyan and all times. 3. Some could see it as a little elitist with the glow of a sort of "I'm better than you" sort of mentality