Stop the Drink Collab Mounts.

Can you just stop with the nonsense!

Stop putting mounts behind these stupid ass drink collaborations.

First it's the dumb green Mountain Zu mount, that you get from Mountain Dew, a drink that's not particularly popular in Europe and hard to find in stores, and especially since you had to buy very particular flavors of the drink, flavors that are unavailable.

And now it's the dumb ass looking pig King Porxie, from Gong Cha drinks, another brand that doesn't exist in Europe, it's impossible to get those codes here where I live, this is so incredibly dumb.

You have to make the mounts more accessible, as a mount collector this hurts the collection, since they're unavailable where I live. These limited collabs are beyond stupidity, who the F at Square Enix thought that this was a good idea?

Just stop these stupidities. OR Pick brands that are ONLY available in Europe.

Yeah, they would be smarter to do collabs with companies and brands that are more widely available on a global scale. You know, considering there's players across the world who play this game. Otherwise, it come across as disrespectful to their customers when they drop the ball like this repeatedly. And otherwise, they should really stop making them such a pain to participate in like that Butterfinger receipt crap. Maybe this stuff works in Japan for all I know, heck, I see The Pokemon Company running promotions like this all the time IN Japan, but I can assure you SE it's awful to deal with elsewhere.

They really should just add them to the market place after a while so that promo participants can show it off for the first 6 months. Like they did with the pizza emote I believe.

Just adding my +1 to this...

There's one Gong Cha store located where I live, and they aren't even participating in the promotion, meaning it's impossible to even order the drinks and get the code.
And that's the official store listed on the Gong Cha website.

My feedback to Square-Enix is this:

Stop with these FOMO promotions. Put these mounts simply on the item store, and people who want it will buy it.
These events are organised horribly, exclude the majority of the world from even participating and create tension and frustration between people because content for a subscription based game is unobtainable.

Having unique in-game rewards for people who were able to attend a particular one-time-only fan convention or other event in a particular geographic location at a particular time is a very Japanese thing, that just doesn't translate well once the audience becomes global. A hardcore JP gamer might get on the train from Osaka to buy merch in Nagoya, but you can't with a straight face tell your players in Latvia that they can get an exclusive mount only by traveling to some small store location in Belgium.

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Originally Posted by Eyrilona

Having unique in-game rewards for people who were able to attend a particular one-time-only fan convention or other event in a particular geographic location at a particular time is a very Japanese thing, that just doesn't translate well once the audience becomes global. A hardcore JP gamer might get on the train from Osaka to buy merch in Nagoya, but you can't with a straight face tell your players in Latvia that they can get an exclusive mount only by traveling to some small store location in Belgium.

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I would be totally okay with mounts or minions being exclusive to large events such as the Tokyo Game Show, or E3 or GamesCom.
Because those are large enough events that would warrant this, allow a lot of people to grant access to it.
But a collaboration with a bubble tea store that has stores in 7 countries in EU, with not even all stores participating?

Ideally speaking I'd like to see none of it though....FOMO is bad and should be stopped.
Just put it on the ingame store...

It be nice if this game didn't consistently crossover with the shittiest/most obscure things.
Mountain Dew tastes like sewage, could we not pick a better beverage?

Could even expand it to the came crossovers, Fall Guys already died off of relevance by the time the crossover happened, and when was the last time anyone actually thought about Yokai Watch

As an interesting and benign side effect, as an EU player on the NA servers, I have been through this enough times now that I actually seem to have become much less susceptible to FOMO. I used to be an absolute completionist, but the overprices statues, limited art books codes, and impossibly shoddy third party collaborations have made me stop caring. I have seen several other players riding their Mountain Zu mounts lately, and I'm just, "Okay.. I am actually fine with never adding that to my collection."

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Originally Posted by Eyrilona

As an interesting and benign side effect, as an EU player on the NA servers, I have been through this enough times now that I actually seem to have become much less susceptible to FOMO. I used to be an absolute completionist, but the overprices statues, limited art books codes, and impossibly shoddy third party collaborations have made me stop caring. I have seen several other players riding their Mountain Zu mounts lately, and I'm just, "Okay.. I am actually fine with never adding that to my collection."

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As someone from the EU I agree.
It’s a mount in a game full of mounts.
I don‘t really care for that stuff.

Is it annoying how they handle that stuff?
Sure, make it so mounts are included in the official soundtracks of the game or something like that.
But I‘m indifferent enough on that to not be bothered by this whole thing.

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Originally Posted by AstreaLove

You have to make the mounts more accessible, as a mount collector this hurts the collection, since they're unavailable where I live. These limited collabs are beyond stupidity, who the F at Square Enix thought that this was a good idea?

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No, they don't have to make the mounts more accessible.

Collecting comes at a high price and with risk.

The real stupidity is thinking you have to get every single mount that is released for the game. There is no reward for collecting every mount (and promotional mounts wouldn't even be included in the count if there was). There is no profit to be gained from the time and effort you spend because the mounts can't be resold once you add them to your collection.

But if you want to stress yourself out over not being able to get a mount that's already in game (sans crown), that's your decision.

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Originally Posted by AstreaLove

Can you just stop with the nonsense!

Stop putting mounts behind these stupid ass drink collaborations.

First it's the dumb green Mountain Zu mount, that you get from Mountain Dew, a drink that's not particularly popular in Europe and hard to find in stores, and especially since you had to buy very particular flavors of the drink, flavors that are unavailable.

And now it's the dumb ass looking pig King Porxie, from Gong Cha drinks, another brand that doesn't exist in Europe, it's impossible to get those codes here where I live, this is so incredibly dumb.

You have to make the mounts more accessible, as a mount collector this hurts the collection, since they're unavailable where I live. These limited collabs are beyond stupidity, who the F at Square Enix thought that this was a good idea?

Just stop these stupidities. OR Pick brands that are ONLY available in Europe.

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How about you don't throw a temper tantrum like a spoiled brat and simply accept that you can't have everything in life?
Of all the problems this game has ... this ain't one of them. :'D

The thing with these promotions is that the reward is only an incentive to go. The real purpose of these is publicity. FFXIV gets publicity for regular Gong Cha customers and same vice versa.
As a mount collector myself, I just added the rule of no store bought/promotion mounts. Only in game mounts is what I collect and most of the ranking websites don't even count real life money mounts either.

I also find it rather strange to bash the mounts themselves then ask for you to be able to get them.

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Originally Posted by Granyala

How about you don't throw a temper tantrum like a spoiled brat and simply accept that you can't have everything in life?
Of all the problems this game has ... this ain't one of them. :'D

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A squeaky wheel gets the oil. And maybe it's not important to you, but it is to others and diminishing their complaints doesn't make you better than them.

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Originally Posted by AstreaLove

And now it's the dumb ass looking pig King Porxie.

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For a Mount that looks dumb you sure seem to be upset you can't get one. I dont see how this is any different than Japan only collabs.

Its not just EU for this one. Gong Cha only exists in like 21 states. I'd never heard of it before this promotion lol. Kind of a meh oh well for me but still sucks a bit to see.

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Originally Posted by Oizen

It be nice if this game didn't consistently crossover with the shittiest/most obscure things.
Mountain Dew tastes like sewage, could we not pick a better beverage?

Could even expand it to the came crossovers, Fall Guys already died off of relevance by the time the crossover happened, and when was the last time anyone actually thought about Yokai Watch

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Yeah this confuses me too?
I would have assumed that Square Enix of all companies would have enough of a reputation and leverage to get interesting brands and franchises for collabs on board.

I mean personally I actually really liked Fall Guys (Yokai Watch...not so much) but I had the biggest WTF moment when I saw that crossover because their brands are just...so different? I wondered who came up with it in the first place. The Fall Guys aesthetic is the completel antithesis to FF... (Again, I'm glad it happened but it's still a real head scratcher.)

I've not had a chance to visit my local Gong Cha yet (I walked past it on my way to work today when it was closed. By the time it opens I don't have time to stop in as I have to catch a bus home), but I didn't see any collab posters in the window, and even their Aussie site seems to make no mention of it (Apparently they posted on Instagram, but I don't use that site).

The thing that gets me tho...apparently the codes are both on physical cards (in 2024!) and extremely limited in number. Like...you try to drive people to a tea shop to buy three drinks (And bubble tea is pretty sugary/unhealthy as is), but then only give a small amount of codes on printed cards? Like...how hard can it be to just have a fresh code printed on receipts? I've been seeing that there's already people buying and scalping the codes.

Also, the collab keyrings are not available in Australia (But they are in New Zealand. *HUHN!? cat meme*). Gee, Square screwing Australians again, why am I not surprised? >.<;

They should stop doing these because they’re always promoting unhealthy drinks.

People cheered in the audience when he announced the Mountain Dew collab.

People go crazy for the recoloured Zu.

Isn't this kind of thing inherently shameful? It's like "Hey, for your next adventure, make sure to bring along your new party member Ronald McFreaking Donald! Its crazy to me that people have any interest in brand deals.

There are more than 10 Gongcha outlets in Singapore and they are not even participating. SEA treated like its non-existent, as usual even though SE has the Singapore flag on the website itself.
Imagine paying for subscription but SE doesnt put in any effort for a good collab.

(I made a forum account just for this, feels so near yet so far away)

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Originally Posted by Jojoya

No, they don't have to make the mounts more accessible.

Collecting comes at a high price and with risk.

The real stupidity is thinking you have to get every single mount that is released for the game. There is no reward for collecting every mount (and promotional mounts wouldn't even be included in the count if there was). There is no profit to be gained from the time and effort you spend because the mounts can't be resold once you add them to your collection.

But if you want to stress yourself out over not being able to get a mount that's already in game (sans crown), that's your decision.

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Agreed. There was a bit of "i have to get every single X in the game" then it relaxed down to "I have to get enough of XYZ to qualify for the in-game achievement" that is associated with that type of thing, which is 100% doable with exclusively in game items.

I got the Mountain Zu mount because it was actually kind of cool, and Diet Mountain Dew counted for the promo.

I'm skipping this Gong Cha promo because the nearest store is about an hour by car ride. But my best friend from college lives about 10 minutes away from one store, and she was excited because she even managed to get the keychains, so I'm happy for her.

I think if the reward is an item ingame then it should be earned ingame through a collab event.

And if they want to do collabs with brick and mortar businesses then they should stick to physical goods and merch.

These kind of events are also an issue for players with multiple characters, where even though my sister was able to buy Mt Dew for me so I could get codes only one mount could be redeemed, so now I have one character with the mount and 15 characters who cannot get it... They clearly aren't thinking these promotions through.

Who cares? Mountain Zu is a Faux mount and piggy will probably be obtainable from some twitch collab. You won’t be able to collect all the mounts anyway as there are lots of 1.0 and pvp mounts

I was NOT interested in a pork mount and I dislike sweet tea (the flavor is cloying for a Westerner), BUT after reading this rant I'll do everything to own a daddy pork mount.

Know this: there is nothing I would not give to take that Porxie Mount ! NOTHING!

edit.

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Originally Posted by KillaKilala

Who cares? Mountain Zu is a Faux mount and piggy will probably be obtainable from some twitch collab. You won’t be able to collect all the mounts anyway as there are lots of 1.0

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1.0 had NO MOUNTS, we walked and walked and walked until a moon fell on us. The only 2 mount (obtainable at the end) were a chocobo and a gobbue.

They're polygons in a game. Whoop de do. Even if you got the mounts, you'd ride them around for maybe a week, then promptly forget about it. Just like cash shop mounts, and every other mount in the game aside from the 1-3 a person gravitates toward.

One day, this game will close down, and all this fuss will seem extremely silly in hindsight.

EDIT: I will say that Europe does get a bit shafted when it comes to giveaways. I will admit to that much.

The Amazon collab for the butler/maid outfit was the best. Very accessible at least in the us. I don't know how it was in other countries, but with amazons growing reach I'm sure something could be done to make it accessible to a more global audience. Plus the people could pick what they wanted to buy in the gaming category.

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Originally Posted by Titor

The Amazon collab for the butler/maid outfit was the best.

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It was well executed as a promotion because they send the reward to every character on your account, but points out a different issue in that the mogstation equivalent is not account-wide.
My boyfriend was playing during the promotion, so he gets the sets for free on any new character he makes.
Meanwhile it's been over a hundred dollars for me to get it on only some of my characters...

its not really "fear of missing out" when you're only missing out cause you cant do sht about it

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Originally Posted by koko-on-da-forumz

Isn't this kind of thing inherently shameful? It's like "Hey, for your next adventure, make sure to bring along your new party member Ronald McFreaking Donald! Its crazy to me that people have any interest in brand deals.

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Yeah totally agree. +
If collabs are too obvious they ruin immersion.

It's not really about the rewards, but rather the accessibility of the events/promotions.
SE isn't handling these types of events particularly well. They could've picked better/more accessible options to collab with, that way more people could've participated.

If it were handled better, then people wouldn't complain. Oh and also, each drink is between 8-10€, and you need to buy 3 of them, 30€ is more than any other store mount.

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Originally Posted by AstreaLove

Can you just stop with the nonsense!

Stop putting mounts behind these stupid ass drink collaborations.

First it's the dumb green Mountain Zu mount, that you get from Mountain Dew, a drink that's not particularly popular in Europe and hard to find in stores, and especially since you had to buy very particular flavors of the drink, flavors that are unavailable.

And now it's the dumb ass looking pig King Porxie, from Gong Cha drinks, another brand that doesn't exist in Europe, it's impossible to get those codes here where I live, this is so incredibly dumb.

You have to make the mounts more accessible, as a mount collector this hurts the collection, since they're unavailable where I live. These limited collabs are beyond stupidity, who the F at Square Enix thought that this was a good idea?

Just stop these stupidities. OR Pick brands that are ONLY available in Europe.

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As a player in India (Ikr so smart of me for being on the NA forums as a completely different country) I cannot express how frustrating it is that i 99% cannot get the keychains for the new drink Collab. Why can't they Collab with something more global like McDonald's, KFC, I dunno, coca cola? Maybe I'm just expecting too much from a million dollar company lmao but it's more hilarious how the mtn dew mount was basically just a recolour and the porxie mount is just the normal one you get via Tribe Quests but with a crown on it. Thought they'd do something more creative but this is XIV so