Feedback: The Recent Removal of Exclusive PVP Rewards

(( Cross posting this here too for a difference of opinions ))

Hello,

For those of you that do not know, we received word today (in the form of a JP developer blog post) that the minion rewards for The Feast Season 3 top 10 are soon to become un-exclusive. The minion will be handed out to the top 10 of each data center first, but soon after made available to “anyone” willing to aim for it. Please read this excerpt of the blog post for the full context:

“Hello.
Thank you for all the feed back for the Feast season 3 ranking rewards.
We apologize for making players worry about the minions we added as the reward for the 3rd season of the feast. Especially those players trying to collect all minions in the game.
Starting with the JP community, we received similar opinions from around the world so the development team had discussions on the rewards. As a result, we decided to change and expand the way you can obtain the minions from the 3rd season of the feast as follows. (The info shown on the lodestone will change later)
Additions to other acquiring conditions for the minions from the ranking rewards
The minion rewards for solo and party rankings (1st place to 10th place) will be obtainable through pvp achievements that we are planning to add for patch 3.5 or later.
Additions to solo and party rewards for Season 3 (rank 1st to 10th)
The minions that are currently set as the season 3 ranking rewards for 1st to 10th place will still be obtainable as planned and to add to that, we will be adding new "original earrings" as a reward for those ranked players.
We are aware that there are players who are striving hard to play the feast for the already announced rewards, so we made sure those players will be the first to have the opportunity to gain the season 3 rewards. So the achievements for the minions are planned to be added after season3 of the feast is over.
This way, the minions will not be limitted to the top rankers and every player will be able to gain them through that route (achievements).
With that being said, the minions won't be exclusive to the top rankers anymore, so we decided to add new earrings for them instead.
We are really sorry for underestimating and misreading the passsion from those minion collectors out there. Again, we sincerly apologize for making players worry about this matter.
From here on, the dev team will make sure we are careful and discuss thoroughly when it comes to setting rewards that are limitted or difficult to obtain/reobtain. If there is something you notice, please send us your feed back.
Please continue to enjoy the feast and final fantasy xiv!”




We have an issue with this, a big one. By “we”, I mean the greater portion of the dedicated PvP community, particularly those currently competing for the top spots on their respective data centers. I am posting this on the behalf of us all. But before I get into it, let me preface my complaint by saying this:


I agree with the decision that the minion is to be made available to anyone willing to go for it.


I, nor any of the other potential top 10 PVPers (that I have spoken to), care about minions. Most were actually disappointed after the original announcement, but we are even more so now. Our issue is with the “compensation” rewards for the top 10...Earrings.


Earrings are not ample reward for placing in the top 10 of your data center, ESPECIALLY when the reward for top 100 is a mount! In addition, the tier rewards for season 2 were also earrings. Why give us more earrings? I do not understand why such a lackluster reward is even being considered. I will not take up too many more words berating the decision maker here, as I’d rather take the time to offer better alternatives that more justly reward the top 10. To start, please remove the minion reward from the top 10 entirely, and simply add it into the game as you planned to do later.


Idea 1) Bring back the crowns. Jewelry is a pretty poor glamour piece in this game. Earrings especially clip through most hair and helms. Crowns, however, are widely used by all that earn them, and are a proud status symbol of the top 10 from previous seasons. Since the animal theme this season seems to be “hounds”, a “Lone Hound” crown and a “Pack Hound” crown would be a very good substitute for the previous minion reward.


Idea 2) A custom emote. Most (or all) PVP’ers have let their good sportsmanship slide at one moment or another, popping a heavens cracker over a fallen enemy or striking a pose as the opposing team fails to take you down. An emote to display your victory over the competition would be a suitable reward for the elite top 10 of each data center, and is a great way to show off (which if we are being honest, is all what these exclusive rewards are about).


Idea 3) Weapon Glamours. I am stripping this idea straight from Overwatch, but I think another great idea would be rewarding the top 10 players with a token, which can be exchanged for a weapon glamour for the job of their choice (Think diamond weapons, or Gold weapons, etc.) They could even reuse the designs of old weapons, and just add a new coloration and epic glow effect. Because again, this is about showing off to your friends and enemies alike. (( Side note: I think this would also be a great seasonal reward for tiers: Bronze -> Diamond weapons can be bought depending on where you land in that season, and you receive 1 token per season. This provides a large amount of rewards spread out across a long period of time as people aim to collect them for each job. It would also be much more sought after than the current lackluster jewelry tier rewards.))


Idea 4) Unique Player Icons. We have the Mentor crown, we have the RP symbol, but what if the top PVPers had a way to distinguish themselves from the rest? An exclusive icon could be rewarded to the top 10 players of each DC which could be displayed next to their name. A simple reward, yet a status symbol all the same.


Idea 5) Unique Adrenaline Effects. Perhaps even more hopeful than the request for a new emote, I think having different colored Adrenaline’s would be an insane reward that just about any PVP’er would fight their heart out to obtain. What if your buster sword was blue instead of orange? What if your Empyrean rain was gold instead of green? I do not propose that the top 10 be rewarded with new animations, no, just slight color variations of the current animations.


To Conclude: Please consider a different reward for The Feast Season 3 top 10. By taking away the exclusivity of the present reward and offering a piece of jewelry as compensation, you are belittling the passion and hard work us hardcore PVPers. Please stick with your decision to make the minion available to everyone, but please also consider offering us due compensation. I do not believe this is too much to ask. We are not entitled, we are not asking you to hand us something which we have not earned. We are asking for a trophy worth competing for.


TL;DR: The collectors can have their minion, but please give us elite PvPer’s something more satisfying than an earring. We want to feel good about our accomplishment, not cheated.

Yes.

10char.

I throw my full support behind this.

i think its pretty disappointing we even have to make this thread when its painfully obvious to everyone that an earring isn't sufficient as a top 10 exclusive reward, but that might just be me. good post anyway, stefan, as always.

You simply dont waste much time as a dev on items that only the top10 of each datacenter can aquire. You ask for emotes, unique glamor, unique adrenaline effects for a pretty small pvp community... As for player icons, how should other people tell by looking at it, whats it supposed to mean, it is more confusing for 99% of all other players.
I agree though, earrings suck. In WoW top arena player had a pvp mount that was running like 10% faster as the others, something like this would be easier/faster as to model or create systems entirely new.

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Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

You simply dont waste much time as a dev on items that only the top10 of each datacenter can aquire. You ask for emotes, unique glamor, unique adrenaline effects for a pretty small pvp community... As for player icons, how should other people tell by looking at it, whats it supposed to mean, it is more confusing for 99% of all other players.
I agree though, earrings suck. In WoW top arena player had a pvp mount that was running like 10% faster as the others, something like this would be easier/faster as to model or create systems entirely new.

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Many of my suggested alternatives do not take much development time.

I just hope they keep the top100 rewards exclusive and I think while earrings are not really smth for top10 its probably cause of the lack of dev time to make now new rewards

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Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

You simply dont waste much time as a dev on items that only the top10 of each datacenter can aquire ...

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I'm sorry, but this is nothing but a cop-out excuse.

Almost every piece of gear in the game (including the last set of unique PvP armours/crowns and our current adrenaline effects) are just re-skins of previous things. SE has literally been recycling concepts, items, and images from previous patches (or even previous games), since this game was conceived. Development time is minuscule. The most complicated thing to do would be "custom" items/unique adrenaline effects, but even those wouldn't require a long development time (note that our custom relics are also just re-skins with particle effects ... wooo).

The PvP community being too "small" isn't an excuse either. The savage raiding community is small, but they get new and exclusive gear and weapons with each raid. Same goes for Ex Trials, which is also a relatively small community compared to the majority. Even the crafting community could be considered small in comparison to the general population, but they get new recipes with each patch. If SE is going to discriminate against "small communities" just to save on development time, then none of those communities would get new content either.

As for a unique icon that 99% of the population wouldn't understand ... so what? The same thing can be said about titles. Anyone who doesn't or has never PvP'ed probably wouldn't understand what "The Hand of Mercy" means if they saw it over someone's head, but it still exists. Same goes for Raid/Trial titles. If you didn't do the content yourself, then you'd have to look it up. I don't see why that's a problem since it's the way things work right now and no one complains about it.

Quite frankly, SE has never had a valid excuse for shafting the PvP community, and this is just the latest load of crap they've thrown at us. A bunch of self-entitled cry babies who got their panties in a twist over losing a minion is not a good reason for SE to take away one of the only exclusive rewards PvP'ers get without offering adequate compensation. If SE didn't want PvP to be a thing in their game, then they should have never included it and tried to foster a following. Discrimination should not be encouraged for ANY reason, regardless of the community size. It's time SE got with the times on that.

Thing is Stefan this wasn't about the fact that the minion was exclusive, people were upset that ANYTHING was somehow exclusive and out of their reach. So anything cool you suggest you will have whiners. It won't stop, ever.

Well this just made grinding feast less interesting :(

Kinda funny. There are people who will never get savage mounts. People who will never see a single ex pony, etc. But its just the 'thought'...of never being able to get it that seems to be driving these changes. Perhaps moreso with the mount than the minion,,but anyone who really wants the rewards has the time to make a go at it. Just seems to be alotta "I REFUSE to set 1 FOOT in pvp but...I want the reward open to me regardless."

Cum on Yoshi..say et wit meh: "Limited Time Offer."

I think another good thing would be a Title, i feel like there should be a title for Top 10 Players (maybe for Top 100) and another for the Top Player.

Example:

Top 1: Legendary Champion
Top 10: Champion
Top 100: Elite

IMO that's something worth working for, not a minion or a mount that will most likely be replaced once new and rare mounts/minions are released (i'm still using Logistics System after all this time but i still use A4S Mount too), not to mention Season 4 rewards or even later Seasons would be a minion or mount again and would almost make obsolete Season 3 mount and minion since people tend to like more whatever is newer, if you look around you don't see 1.0 players using their exclusive mount anymore at all.

Anyway back to the Title reward, it would be nice if the title was something that you have to keep, for example, you get your Top 10 Title for Season 4, Season 5 arrives but you don't make it to Top 10, so you lose the Title, then in Season 6 would get to try again your chance at Top 10 title.

I think this something that would make players stay subbed for longer since it's something they have to KEEP working on, they could still add other rewards obviously like mounts, minions or glamours, but i think the Title, especially if it can be lost would keep players interested.

^ May indeed be some truth to that. I enjoyed getting the HoM title over all the mounts tbh.

At days end, though no one probably wants to say it, the mounts and top 10 stuff simply fall into the category of epenis. As with any mmo..the rarer the item, the bigger the swing and sway *giggles* But thats ok, its great motivation. Sad thing is, though the devs were on the right foot going into this..they seem to be losing nerve now with negative feedback from pvers.

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Originally Posted by Februs

I'm sorry, but this is nothing but a cop-out excuse.

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Ofc it is, didn't mean anything else.

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Originally Posted by Februs

Almost every piece of gear in the game [] are re-skins

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PvP Skins are usually not reskins, with the exception of the very first tiers some years ago. Its a bit worse for the weapons ye.So why is the last pvp set a reskin? I am quite sure that it is the only way to obtain them.

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Originally Posted by Februs

The savage raiding community is small, but they get new and exclusive gear and weapons with each raid. Same goes for Ex Trials. Even the crafting community could be considered small.

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Since Alexander we have non-savage raids for the masses, with same gearskins as savage. So not really fair just to mention savage raiding community. And still lol, the savage raiding community who actually beat the endcontent may be in the 1-3% on most servers(and these are really only the ones who beaten it....). But even then I would still estimate the pvp community way smaller.
Every Player tries crafting and ex trials and raiding at some point, even if its just for fun. But only very few think 'Hey lets waste some time and play pvp now' .

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Originally Posted by Februs

The same thing can be said about titles.

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You can check 98-99% of the titles in the achievments.


They must be so busy with the addon at this point, I kind of dont want them to waste resources on this anyway. 2 unimportant.

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Originally Posted by RobbieH

I think another good thing would be a Title, i feel like there should be a title for Top 10 Players (maybe for Top 100) and another for the Top Player.

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But there are titles, but permanent ones.

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Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

But there are titles, but permanent ones.

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The idea of having titles you can lose, is that you will have to keep working on it if you want to maintain the title or you'll lose it, i guess i explained that in my previous post. :)

Along with the Title, i think something nice to add would be an icon exclusive to Top 100, Top 10 and Top 1 (different icon depending on Rank), that you would also lose along the title if you couldn't maintain the rank, i think that having something you can lose is an incentive to keep working on it.