Events need a massive overhaul

Events in ffxiv have been underwhelming ever since I can remember as a player. Occasionally there was 1 (like that infamous Halloween event in january) that was giving a full glamour, in an instance duty and could even be done with multiple players. Latley some events have been suffering enormously due to stagnation

A few examples include
- little ladies day ( no new dresses or emotes just some headgear that's underwhelming)
Valentinos - a quest about gender acceptance with genderlocked rewards (...?) And cutscenes thar are a complete chore I wouldnt even be shocked if people auto played them and went afk. A barding that costs my entire cash stack stack and can't be purchased on mog store.
Christmas- best we go was a good choir minigame 4 years ago glamour also has went to die ever since. A mount that is completely underwhelming and nobody uses
Hatching tide- last really enjoyable event was the chicken catching a good few years ago now. Good glamour died with the spriggan event (mount+ cute coat)
Heavens turn - 1 good reward since 4 years ago at least. Last fun even was mochi pounding and tbh it wasn't very interactive
Moonrise faire - while the jump puzzle is a nice return to an old favourite, defaulting on it every year has really been comming off as an excuse to avoid new content, no really good glam since the hawaiian set 3 years ago

In the middle of content luls these events are supposed to breathe life into the game. They don't get treated half as well as the collabs do (armour weapons mounts and titles to farm) and this results in many people saying "nothing for me" this time.

We have had some really good creative events with a lot of love in them.. but those were all ages ago now and we desperately need fun and innovation back. This year we even saw 2 events squished together to avoid having to put in development work.. and I fear soon we'll be seeing more and more events squished or skipped

If you wish you can leave some creative ideas below for future event ideas

The Valentine's event last year was nice, the two-player instance.
The Rising is usually pretty good.

Not much else to say about the others. Mostly it comes down to if you like the rewards or not. I've kinda been interested in the Papa Gruff storyline over the past few years for All Saints' Wake.

I started playing in November of this last year, and events just haven't been fun to me in the game overall. I think there was only 1 (maybe 2) original event during this 6 month cycle...the rest have all been reuploaded content from years prior. While it DOES give me a chance to "catch up" with the player base that has been active for awhile with these events...I can't help but to feel just let down.

I guess it is the feeling of, "Oh, the dev's don't care enough to try for a new event" more then anything. That and, I want to be able to play with friends with things but when events pop it is always "oh I did that years ago" and then I am just stuck being alone. Sure, there are other players catching up with me, but I just feel like I am basically being told "we don't have time to/care for these events" which just seems strange and stupid to me as an idea for a game development studio to adopt but that is just me.

The only reason I do the events at this point is to avoid needing to pay money for locked glams.

Most of the ones I've experienced aren't well written and are frequently lacking in drama and/or feels.

The one good point with then being bad is that at least they're fast and the story isn't required for anything else.

Other than the crossover events, most of the “story” is just “slice of Eorzean life,” and that’s fine. I’m also fine with the gameplay being fast and easy. But the rewards could be better…

Ideally I’d like to see an outfit for each event, and for them to get more creative! We didn’t need yet another Santa suit for Starlight, and we already have reindeer and snowman costumes. So how about a nice casual winter outfit? Or a fancy holiday party outfit? We have witches, werewolves and pumpkin heads galore for All Saints Wake, but that would also be a good place for some more goth-looking outfits. Even though I didn’t personally care for the Wake Doctor’s outfit, at least it was something different! Moonfire has probably been the best for summer outfits, other than the Phoenix Riser suit I will literally never wear! If they’re running out of ideas, throw a fashion design contest. I’m sure everyone has at least a few ideas of things they’d love to wear!

The emotes in some of the recent events have been really good… I loved the magic wand, and the Valentiones heart emote. As far as mounts go, I loved the Phoenix, but didn’t really care for the pink Goobbue.

Personally I’d want an outfit and a housing item each event. There’s a backlog of furnishing contest winners a mile long! (And failing that, there’s still seasonal decor in the event areas that’s never been made available as housing items.) The emotes and mounts can be less frequent, I’m sure those take a lot more work to put in-game.

Just as a counterpoint: I think some of the issues you raise are a matter of preference. "No good glams in x years for event x" is a pretty subjective take - though I agree that whenever a seasonal event comes up without a new outfit or mount it can feel like a bit of a bummer.

That said, I much prefer FFXIV's "quick and easy" seasonal events where there's at least some changes to it from previous years. Having to run the exact same event 70 times in a week for a 0.1% chance at the reward you want for 20 years and NEVER GETTING THE REWARD in certain other MMOs has given me a pretty strong and favourable opinion of FFXIV's events by way of that comparison alone.

WoW events: At least one event each week + Sometimes introducing time-limited events that are entire playmodes
GW2 events: Full-fledged seasonal events with recurring rewards and multiple minigames to participate in
ESO events: Do X activity daily to earn tickets and get yourself a nice reward

FFXIV events: A side quest that is mostly: "Blah blah blah blah blah" and only one or two rewards are given at its end. And it can be done in less than 5 minutes.

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Originally Posted by Khryseis_Astra

Ideally I’d like to see an outfit for each event, and for them to get more creative! We didn’t need yet another Santa suit for Starlight, and we already have reindeer and snowman costumes. So how about a nice casual winter outfit? Or a fancy holiday party outfit? We have witches, werewolves and pumpkin heads galore for All Saints Wake, but that would also be a good place for some more goth-looking outfits. Even though I didn’t personally care for the Wake Doctor’s outfit, at least it was something different! Moonfire has probably been the best for summer outfits, other than the Phoenix Riser suit I will literally never wear! If they’re running out of ideas, throw a fashion design contest. I’m sure everyone has at least a few ideas of things they’d love to wear!

The emotes in some of the recent events have been really good… I loved the magic wand, and the Valentiones heart emote. As far as mounts go, I loved the Phoenix, but didn’t really care for the pink Goobbue.

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But that's the thing: the quality of rewards is a bit subjective to the player. You didn't like the Pheonix Riser suit, but plenty of other players LOVE that thing. And you think Moonfire has the best summer outfits, but personally I can't stand a lot of them because female versions always end as glorified lingerie which I'd never wear. Everyone's tastes will differ, and the very fact that not every reward will please every player is why they vary them.

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Originally Posted by Khryseis_Astra

Personally I’d want an outfit and a housing item each event. There’s a backlog of furnishing contest winners a mile long! (And failing that, there’s still seasonal decor in the event areas that’s never been made available as housing items.) The emotes and mounts can be less frequent, I’m sure those take a lot more work to put in-game.

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The problem with housing items is that they breed resentment for any player without a house. If an event gives outdoor items, you're screwed if you don't have a house. It goes into storage to satisfy the "maybe someday" itch (so you don't get stuck having to buy them off the store if you want them later), but then every time you look at it you feel resentful that "someday" is not today. Resentful that you were "rewarded" with an item you legit can't use. You've pitched the idea that emotes and mounts can be less frequent, but those are the rewards any player can use.

The overall problem with providing a whole outfit for every event is how much work that is. There are quite a few events through every year. If you offered outfits for all of them, you'd run the well dry really quickly. That's not even touching on the amount of work it takes to create the glam in the system: designing the look in the game physics, fitting it to each race, styling it for each gender, determining how it will interact with dye colors, etc. That's quite a lot of work to take on in order to do an outfit for every event.

The best events I remember have been the Valentione's event, where we entered a duty with 1 other player. There is something altogether different about doing a duty with only 1 other person. It's just more personal and feels like it's proof of a missed opportunity when you actually do it.

Another good event was the Halloween event which has involved games in a haunted house that can actually be failed, and make the players work together to overcome the traps. It was actually somewhat challenging - literally more challenging than any actual dungeon lol. There's nothing quite like this in the game, especially when it comes to casual content, yet right there they proved they are capable of it and doing it well. It was fun, too.

There was a good easter event that involved finding eggs and getting an egg mount. I liked that because it's simple yet it's what easter is about.

The jump puzzles for the Moonfire Faire are probably the most consistently good thing but not personally my favorite thing. It also just seemed to repeat lately.

The times they did the choir thing was good. I think that predated bard instruments? It was a bit of a preview.

But mostly, the events are usually just tedious. I like that they are there, I like the stories, but for whatever reason, I just find them a bit of a chore and put them off in many cases. But you've got to have them in an MMORPG because it provides an additional way to shake things up from the norm occasionally, and celebrate an event you're probably not going to in real life (ie. middle-aged gamers probably aren't going out trick-or-treating like they are still kids).

But the examples I gave are more exciting than just this quick story quest and then 10 different letters or interactions with "mystery" people aka all the grand company leaders, retired scions and significant people you met on your journey, who you find out how they are doing.

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Originally Posted by Kranel_San

WoW events: At least one event each week + Sometimes introducing time-limited events that are entire playmodes
GW2 events: Full-fledged seasonal events with recurring rewards and multiple minigames to participate in
ESO events: Do X activity daily to earn tickets and get yourself a nice reward

FFXIV events: A side quest that is mostly: "Blah blah blah blah blah" and only one or two rewards are given at its end. And it can be done in less than 5 minutes.

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Not sure if they still do them as I quit in Shadowlands, but I liked the "brawls" that appeared in the PvP section every couple weeks(?) that were a modified silly version of another pvp map/mode. Like the one where both teams had to compete to make the best chili by dragging ingredients to the pot while also attacking/being attacked by opposing team.

Other than that I don't think WoW events are that comparable as the events had the same old stuff for years other than a hearthstone with a slightly different animation/vfx. The weekly events were also stuff that granted bonus rewards to content like an extra drop at the end of the dungeon or Timewalking, which is something that FFXIV essentially has on all the time due to replayable level sync dungeons and roulettes.

Also the micro-holidays were intentionally designed to be reward-less fluff so that players would not be concerned with missing out on them.

All that said, I think FFXIV events would benefit from a vendor that sold more of the past event rewards, because as it stands now its almost just a 'free' Online Store item one year in advance.

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Originally Posted by Khryseis_Astra

Other than the crossover events, most of the “story” is just “slice of Eorzean life,” and that’s fine. I’m also fine with the gameplay being fast and easy. But the rewards could be better…

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This. I've always liked FFXIV's take on events because they are small side stories (which somewhat continue from one year to the next, instead of being static and boring) that are fast to complete and usually not grindy at all, so I can finish them without the FOMO preventing me from doing other things in the game (or out of it) if I want to. I hate being stressed doing an event that's supposed to be fun.

And I also agree that the rewards have been disappointing sometimes lately. Not in regards to the quality, which is something that can be a matter of different tastes, but in regards to the quantity or extreme simplicity in several cases.

I could also add another complaint related to how the rewards worked before the cash shop, but that's something that I complained about aplenty and I don't want to get back in the same neverending discussion. But I still haven't forgotten about what you did, SE!

In general, I think FFXIV's events are and have always been extremely dull and disappointing. I come back from playing games like Star Rail and Genshin that have events taking place constantly. Some are small little, special challenges. Some are large, feature fully voiced stories, and are filled with entirely unique game modes. And others are somewhere in between. We just had an event in Star Rail where you got to become a bartender and prepare drinks for monsters basically with a mixology system relatively complex for what is essentially a tiny piece of side content. These events give out lots of character development materials, regular and premium currency, a free copy of a character or an exclusive weapon.

Meanwhile FFXIV has you stuck in ARR zones with like 30 minutes of unvoiced dialogue and some kind of FATE that you do once, and that's most of FFXIV's events for maybe a single emote, piece of furniture, or if you're lucky, a mount. FFXIV doesn't need to run events constantly like those games do because there's a lot more long-term content within the game itself, and I'd argue the game doesn't really need events at all to be fun or successful. But if we're going to run events, then I'd hope that they feel special and memorable. They should feature a much stronger story and content quality that makes these things feel like events you don't want to miss. Sometimes we get something that feels a little more exciting than the usual, but it's exceedingly rare and barely a step up from the norm.

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Originally Posted by littlehobbit13

But that's the thing: the quality of rewards is a bit subjective to the player. You didn't like the Pheonix Riser suit, but plenty of other players LOVE that thing. And you think Moonfire has the best summer outfits, but personally I can't stand a lot of them because female versions always end as glorified lingerie which I'd never wear. Everyone's tastes will differ, and the very fact that not every reward will please every player is why they vary them.

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Oh I get that… but the difference is only getting maybe 1 or 2 outfits a year and possibly not liking either, versus getting them with every event, and hopefully at least one of them is useful to you.

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The problem with housing items is that they breed resentment for any player without a house. If an event gives outdoor items, you're screwed if you don't have a house. It goes into storage to satisfy the "maybe someday" itch (so you don't get stuck having to buy them off the store if you want them later), but then every time you look at it you feel resentful that "someday" is not today. Resentful that you were "rewarded" with an item you legit can't use. You've pitched the idea that emotes and mounts can be less frequent, but those are the rewards any player can use.

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Well that’s definitely in my top 3 things this game needs to improve on! Everyone should be able to have a house, whether that means they fire up some shiny new cloud servers for extra wards, and/or add a new residential district, and/or they finally add an instanced system to offset the ward plot scarcity. Dawntrail will be the expansion of the graphics update… really hoping the next update will be to housing and glamour, two other systems sorely in need of an update. In the meantime, at least Island Sanctuary gives space for the outdoor items…

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The overall problem with providing a whole outfit for every event is how much work that is. There are quite a few events through every year. If you offered outfits for all of them, you'd run the well dry really quickly. That's not even touching on the amount of work it takes to create the glam in the system: designing the look in the game physics, fitting it to each race, styling it for each gender, determining how it will interact with dye colors, etc. That's quite a lot of work to take on in order to do an outfit for every event.

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Other than the dye colors, they’re going to have to do that kinda work for an emote too. I mean, I’d totally like an outfit, housing item, emote and a mount for every event, but I’m trying to be realistic. lol

I’m sure nothing would please everyone all the time. But when some of these events are the only new thing to do in between patches or waiting for an upcoming expansion, people want to feel like it’s worth it. The more rewards they can squeeze into every event, the better.

I just wish events weren't monitized for the future. Imagine a world where SquareEnix wasn't a greedy corporation and you missed last years whatever, and this year, it's coming back, and you can earn it again. I get the idea of every year we gotta make a new one, but it's more in service to that cash shop than us the players, and it shows.

I am REALLY hoping that all of the content we received between 6.1 to 6.5 was so light is that they were focusing everything they had into their soft reboot of the game in 7.0. Time will tell, but we do know that the B team was working the patches with the A team working on something else for 2.5 years. Yoshi has been constantly saying that they were not working on FFXVI so I will take him at his word and hope they are working on something special. With 1.5 months left until 7.0, we will know soon.

What we need is more stuff like mogtome events. Where we can work towards a goal, and get unique rewards. Like Yo-Kai, even though I'm not a huge fan of most of the weapons, or any of the mounts, It's still something to do, and gives a sense of accomplishment for putting in some work. Events in most other games I've played have had tons of useful rewards, and ffxiv really falls short in comparison.

It's like people forget the literal influx of new players

How much effort goes into a seasonal event is directly proportional to how far away that event is from the next expansion. The farther it is, the more all out they go. The closer it is, the more barebones it's going to feel.

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Originally Posted by Tyintheron

Just as a counterpoint: I think some of the issues you raise are a matter of preference. "No good glams in x years for event x" is a pretty subjective take - though I agree that whenever a seasonal event comes up without a new outfit or mount it can feel like a bit of a bummer.

That said, I much prefer FFXIV's "quick and easy" seasonal events where there's at least some changes to it from previous years. Having to run the exact same event 70 times in a week for a 0.1% chance at the reward you want for 20 years and NEVER GETTING THE REWARD in certain other MMOs has given me a pretty strong and favourable opinion of FFXIV's events by way of that comparison alone.

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Pretty much this. I'm perfectly content with the more bite-sized events in XIV than having things in other MMOs reoccur but never actually managing to get the reward. I do the little quest here. I get my goodie. I'm happy.

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Meanwhile FFXIV has you stuck in ARR zones with like 30 minutes of unvoiced dialogue and some kind of FATE that you do once, and that's most of FFXIV's events for maybe a single emote, piece of furniture, or if you're lucky, a mount.

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I can life with the events as they are, more or less... though id want some better rewards/grind... BUT that really drives me crazy, idc for new players, we got more then those old Zones now and its time for some Ishgard, Kugane or even Sharlayan event. Heck half our events are from those places yet we dont celebrate em there...

Having just started the mgp event, I am immediately throwing down the gauntlet and challenging the FF14 team to do a seasonal event that doesn't involve a journalist or children.

Imagine your local fair is in town. You want to join in on the festivities so you head on down to see the fun to be had. You head on down, get through the gate, and while there's a lot of really nice set dressing and the suggestion that there's things to do and things being celebrated, the only way you can participate is by talking to a few of the workers and listening to them vent about their life for ~12 minutes. Hey! but at least you get a booth prize for doing that! You can get a few more goody-bags if you talk to other stall workers as well (maybe). No, the Ferris wheel is made out of cardboard, you can't ride it, and driving the bumper cars if for staff only, you can watch though. Axe throwing shows and demos? Yeah that's totally here, trust me, people are loving it, you can't see it though. You CAN use [FANCY BUTTON] on some staff and get some fireworks though! :^) This is what most xiv events feel like.

The events in this game that have actually resonated with me are the ones that actually take advantage of them being in an interactive medium and in a massively multiplayer one at that.

The halloween haunted house games were great! I'd love to see them really flex that idea and possibly expand it into a light-hearted multiplayer mini survival horror level. Final fantasy spins on games like silent hill or resident evil. Maybe make a cooperative survival mode? You get more rewards/currency the longer your team survives, if you die you turn into a friendly ghost to support the surviving party members? Or maybe repurpose the forlorn system with FATES to spawn special mobs during FATES around the world and have a ghost hunting/busting trains in different zones at every hour? Like have every FATE have a HIGH chance (maybe 100%) of spawning a special ghost miniboss that you have to fight to trigger currency drops from FATES?

I also REALLY REALLY appreciate the addition of THE TOWER in the Moonfire Faire! It's such a fun little activity that you can conquer with the whole server! I'd love to see more games scattered around Costa Del Sol that people can kind of just play around with? Bring back some of the old GATEs like "The Time of My Life" "Skinchange We Can Believe in" and "Vase Off". Have a fishing tourney! Or maybe have a crab racing minigame? (either trying to guess the winner, or doing a minigame where you try to make your crab win against other players) Just little reasons to hang out at the party spot once you've finished The Cutscenes~

The Valentione's event also had a few good ideas with its tarot readings and the little twoman dungeon. Maybe there could be a dancing FATE that pairs you up with a partner and you both have to follow along to dancing instructions at similar timings? Or how about a tunnel of love rail shooter that's like a coop version of "Airforce One"! Or, I don't know, a Fantasy dating reality show where the audience periodically gets to help an eligible bachelor(ette) find the person of their dreams by doing events or quests to help out their favorite candidate? (you can say that all of them eventually break up and go back to the show to explain repeats :P) The "choose the new representative" event was an interesting idea, I LOVED the community engagement that happened from it, unfortunately in practice it was a bit flawed :T Live and learn! :P

Make It Rain is kind of a hard one to do? Since it's nestled in a space that already HAS periodic fun events I don't think it's in too bad of a place.. But! If we're boosting the other events, might as well add to this one! How about spawning something like the golden monsters in maps but around the open world and in dungeons? Anyone who helps kill it gets a nice payout of MGP! For balance sake, probably don't want to make them level with the zone 'cause high levels will just poach them, and you don't want to make them max level because that's not accessible to lowbies, so what if they had a buff that reduced ALL damage to 1, and they need x amount of hits to kill? That would be kind of a fun little rotational puzzle to figure out for lower APM classes. (BLM get ready to ICEFIREICEFIREICEFIRE!!!) Idk if the game has tech to dynamically scale ambient monsters, if they can that'd be good too :P

Hatching Tide so far has been kind of a nothingburger? I legit can't form any memories of the event outside of "dang, she really likes her eggs doesn't she?" which is... not ideal >.< Honestly this event could act just like the mog tome event, finding eggs in various sorts of content, and be fine enough. Though... What if the tasks were delivered in a more cryptic manner? and rotated every few hours? So you'd have a legit scavenger hunt? Maybe have a server announcement for the first person on each server to find the egg source first!

Starlight celebration, hmm.... Snowball fight events/pvp is the easy idea. Snowman building contests? The judge sets a theme that you have to build a snowman to and you have to choose from a selection of assets to decorate your snowman with? OOH How about a short coop stealth mission mini dungeon where you have to deliver presents to the children of whatever city the event is in? You would get a bunch of custom skills to help hide you or help distract patrolling "witnesses" so they don't catch your teammates while delivering The Goods! Yeeaahh!

I've got nothing on little lady's day and heavensturn. Those celebrations don't really exist in my culture (or in the way they do in xiv) so I'm not sure how to go about gaming them up?


TL;DR, Events being parties where you have reasons to hang out at them for the duration of the event, with active gameplay and community involvement > events that are just limited time cutscenes where fun is more implied than practiced.


(In my ideal world, I'd like to see them make achievements tied to your service account so all of your characters can benefit from their major item rewards, that way they can make events have more involved gameplay while still being able to get all the rewards on alts without getting burnt out.)