Mog Station and Accessibility: How We Got Here

I see a lot of people frustrated that all the best glamours end up on the Mog Station, but I think there is a connection here that often gets overlooked. For years, players have complained that rewards are locked behind content that is 'too hard' or 'too time consuming,' whether that is Savage, Ultimates, or even just higher-end grinds. And every time those complaints get loud, Square Enix has fewer reasons to put desirable rewards in challenging content.

The Mog Station, on the other hand, is completely accessible. It does not matter if you raid, craft, or even log in much at all. Anyone with a credit card can get the rewards instantly, and that means no backlash about difficulty or time walls. It is the safest option for the company, even if it feels like a lazy one to the players who actually want incentives in the game itself.

On top of the complaints coming from players, the Mog Station offers Square Enix a way to offset the loss of profit from the overwhelming amount of people leaving this game. It also perfectly explains the content drought. Why make content when so many people complain about how difficult it is or say it is a waste of time and they only want the rewards? The community has done this to themselves and there is nobody to blame but the players.

This is me asking Square Enix to stop catering to the people who do not play the game. They might be subscribed, but they are not the ones actually engaging in anything more than story and glamour. Time and time again there are threads complaining about content being too hard, about exclusive rewards, about everything being locked away. This has reached a point where SE's hands are tied because they live by the notion that every single piece of feedback has to be addressed. Why? At the end of the day, this is an MMO, not a dress up chatroom simulator like IMVU. Rewards should be exclusive, not everyone is entitled to them.

In fact, the constant complaints that every single character looks the same come from this exact problem. You want unique character looks? You want interesting rewards? Then start focusing on the content being provided. Start adding in real rewards to the game once again. Give people a reason to leave their comfort zone and hop into grinding Savage even if it takes them months. That is what keeps an MMO alive, not endless accessibility and not Mog Station band-aids.

People often argue that Savage is "too hard" and that is why most players avoid it. But if that were true, then why is participation at its lowest point now, when the content is easier and more accessible than ever?

Shadowbringers (5.x):
~1.2–1.5 million active characters
12–15% tried Savage (~150k–200k players)
6–8% cleared the final floor of each tier

Dawntrail (7.x so far):
~990k active characters
~5% or less tried Savage (~45k–50k players)
Only 1.5–2.5% cleared the final floor (M4S), depending on region

Participation has dropped by more than half, and clears have fallen by about 70%. The content itself is not harder, in fact Savage has been streamlined and softened with every expansion. The real issue is that Square Enix has spent years ostracizing the raiding community, stripping away incentives, and refusing to attach meaningful rewards to high end content.

Instead, they cater to a vocal minority who are not running the content anyway, and the result is what we see now: an empty endgame, dwindling clears, and no motivation to engage. If the players who actually thrive on challenge are pushed away, the game loses the community that sustains it long term.

Can I ask, where did you get those stats from?

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Originally Posted by Exmo

Can I ask, where did you get those stats from?

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From Lucky Bancho's census, which tracks Lodestone profiles and raid clears. It is player made, but it has been used for years as the best reference for participation trends. It only uses information that is already public on the Lodestone, nothing private or pulled from the client.

Edit: I am aware that some Lodestone profiles can be set to private, which means those characters are not included in the statistics. However, it is safe to assume that the same percentage of the population has kept their profiles private across expansions, so the trend still holds. The data is clear enough to show that both players and Square Enix are wrong to believe that simply making Savage raids more accessible automatically means more players will do the content.

"Items are locked behind microtransactions because the playerbase is lazy to do hard content" is the funniest defense of corporate greed I've seen in a while. Making cosmetics Mogstation only doesn't make them more accessible, especially not at the ridiculous prices. A good chunk of people can't afford to drop 30 EUR on every single outfit, especially said outfit not even being account-wide. Meanwhile, getting together a small group of people to run old content unsynced after it's outdated is something anyone can do.

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Originally Posted by PercibelTheren

"Items are locked behind microtransactions because the playerbase is lazy to do hard content" is the funniest defense of corporate greed I've seen in a while. Making cosmetics Mogstation only doesn't make them more accessible, especially not at the ridiculous prices. A good chunk of people can't afford to drop 30 EUR on every single outfit, especially said outfit not even being account-wide. Meanwhile, getting together a small group of people to run old content unsynced after it's outdated is something anyone can do.

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So you're saying that gear that is instantly available for real world currency is less accessible than waiting 2-4 years to farm unsynced content that still requires a full group of 8 people with a basic understanding of the mechanics? You do realize that people on the PF trying to farm glamours are still struggling in Savage unsynced with groups of 8, right? I didn't once defend the Mog Station problem, I'm explaining why it's happening, and you completely ignored the point of my post. I can assure you that more people playing this game can afford the 30 euros than are willing to sink months of their time into clearing endgame content that currently has no rewards, which means it is more accessible, but less desirable.

And I want to point out the fact, since you completely missed the point of the post, that actually adding rewards and incentives to clearing Savages will not only boost the community morale, which results in more subs, which means less Mog Station glamours, and more in game glamours that are highly sought after. It is as simple as adding casual glam coffer drops from the last boss and more mount options.

Think of how many people were running The Copied Factory when it came out just for the 2b coffer, let alone the fact that each piece of battle gear from that raid looks amazing. People are still running it to this day even though the majority of the playerbase has the 2b coffer. It is almost like the content had rewards that were worth the effort and dedication of running it over and over again.

Firstly, Square Enix did not put things on the mog station "because people complained about them being from Savage".

They use the mog station as a way to get funds that go directly to server costs and things like that. They said when the mog station launched that it was a fund that went directly to the game unlike the other revenue that goes to Square Enix as a whole, and they double downed on that very recently and said it's important for server costs and such (for context, there are significantly more worlds and data centers than there used to be in ARR, they support more regions and platforms and contrary to belief, they have more employees working on FFXIV).

Some of the mog station rewards are developed for the chinese region primarily, and we get them as a courtesy. Others are MSQ character gear that they do not want us to have, but are willing to give us if we pay. Seasonal event rewards are meant to be temporary, but again they are willing to ignore that if we pay. The rest are just making funds to expand the game and pay servers costs, according to them.

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Originally Posted by Mikuyo

Dawntrail (7.x so far):
~990k active characters
~5% or less tried Savage (~45k–50k players)
Only 1.5–2.5% cleared the final floor (M4S), depending on region

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Those stats are wrong. Most people cite collection websites, but the other 95% of those players mostly haven't logged in for years, so of course they didn't clear M4S.

If you only count players that actually cleared M4 normal, the M4S clear rate was around 29.8%.

According to Lucky Bancho, the clear rates were 55% in JP, 35% on Aether, 20% on Crystal (20% is the lowest most worlds got), and the lowest was 11% on Kraken.

The last set of data is what I checked around the end of the tier. Due to its ease, it had these super high clear rates.

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Originally Posted by Mikuyo

The 29.8% figure for M4N to M4S does sound much higher than the 1.5 to 2.5% of all active characters, but when you do the math it actually comes out to the same number of players.

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2.5% has to be out of mostly people who haven't played for years though. That's what you see on collection sites but it really doesn't make sense when you do a raw normal vs savage division.

Getting % of people who cleared the normal version is the correct measurement. Why? Because if people didn't clear the normal version, then they don't even play the game. What are they even doing? The statistics are high even as a percentage of people who simply cleared Dawntrail MSQ.

Let's grab some fresh statistics:

26,303 players have the M8 glasses. 9,611 players have the M8 savage mount. Source: ffxivcollect
9,611 / 26,303 = 36.53%

48,301 players have the M8 achievement. 9,649 players have the M8S achievement. Source: ffxivcollect
9,649 / 48,301 = 19.97%

Source: Lucky Bancho
Mana: 34-42%
Gaia: 25-33%
Elemental: 22%-32%
Meteor: 22%-25%
Aether: 13%-23%
Materia: 10%-21%
Light: 11%-17%
Primal: 10%-14%
Chaos: 8%-15%
Crystal: 5%-8%
Dynamis: 3%-8%

So let's try doing it as a percentage of people that cleared 7.0 but didn't bother clearing M8 for some reason, maybe due to being an RPer that doesn't engage with content like... at all.

Mana (Chocobo): 2092 / 7244 = 28.87%
Aether (Gilgamesh): 1325 / 9776 = 13.55%
Dynamis (Kraken, lowest clear rate): 20 / 1787 = 1.11%

But obviously, Kraken does not reflect the overwhelming majority of world clear rates, and it's really silly to calculate clear rates of M8S amongst people who don't even do M8 normal because clearly they are too casual, still doing MSQ, or don't engage with content much generally due to RPing. The clear rates will likely be higher in the next stats before 7.4.

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The raids are becoming easier and more accessible, but nobody is raiding. You can see proof of this on any NA datacenter. Even at peak times, there are considerably fewer PFs running Savages, even during week 1.

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Obviously they all go to Aether in NA, Light in EU and Mana in JP. Hence why those data centers have the highest clear rates in their respective regions. Materia actually has a very high clear rate that you wouldn't expect compared to a similarly disadvantaged data center like Dynamis.

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Yoshi-P acknowledged the feedback, stating that the development team was aware of the concerns and intended to consider accessibility for future rewards. While he didn’t provide specifics for the Axolotl itself, he emphasized in follow-ups that the team wants to improve content accessibility and keep the game fun for all players.

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Do you have a link? You can eventually unsync it like people do with Omega.

I must be the odd one because I find current savage as the hardest it's been in XIV's history with actual mechanics I actually needed callouts for because I wasn't able to do them on my own for the first time ever, but also most of the mogstation glams to be among the worst glamours in the game.

Current savage tier is super hard idk why raiders think its easier than before

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Originally Posted by PercibelTheren

"Items are locked behind microtransactions because the playerbase is lazy to do hard content" is the funniest defense of corporate greed I've seen in a while. Making cosmetics Mogstation only doesn't make them more accessible, especially not at the ridiculous prices. A good chunk of people can't afford to drop 30 EUR on every single outfit, especially said outfit not even being account-wide. Meanwhile, getting together a small group of people to run old content unsynced after it's outdated is something anyone can do.

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If cash shop items can be earned through heavy grinding in the game, then maybe I’ll agree they’re more accessible. But as it stands now, they are just not. The corporate greed defense just sounds like a devsplaining to me.

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Originally Posted by Valence

I must be the odd one because I find current savage as the hardest it's been in XIV's history with actual mechanics I actually needed callouts for because I wasn't able to do them on my own for the first time ever, but also most of the mogstation glams to be among the worst glamours in the game.

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I agree with you. The reason I struggle with the new Savage fights is that I understand how the mechanics work but my brain literally can't parse some of them quickly enough to dodge. And I have been very vocal about my opinion that all the streetwear we have been getting on the Mogstation is hideous.

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Originally Posted by Rein_eon_Osborne

If cash shop items can be earned through heavy grinding in the game, then maybe I’ll agree they’re more accessible. But as it stands now, they are just not. The corporate greed defense just sounds like a devsplaining to me.

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I just fundamentally disagree with the statement that paywall means accessibility.

I can't disagree with OP more. As someone who does what I'll just say are business related things for a living, optional items are nothing more than an alternate income stream to squeeze more out of players. It is the extra retainers, it is the same with phantasia's, and it is the same when they tell us our subs pay for content throughout the year like the seasonal events, yet they rarely ever put those rewards back in rotation for the player base to receive again in game, instead putting them on the mogstation for purchase. To me that's the worst of them because they are literally double dipping, in that they are making us pay for them to develop mog station items that we then have to pay for again if we want them.

Also the take about the people unsubbing don't play the game is so off its not funny. I've done a large majority of content in the game and even the things I don't enjoy I have engaged with. IMO Savage and Ultimates can be fun, but the instanced static nature of these fights and that they are all a dance doesn't feel good to me to do over and over. I have been playing the game for about 10 years now but have been taking extended breaks since EW 6.2 and the game just isn't making reasons for players like me and others to stay.

SE NEEDS to start catering more to us or at least a subsect if they don't want the player numbers to keep going down. Spoiler my sub ran out last weekend and i don't plan on renewing it any time soon. And if im a shareholder, and I read anecdotal accounts like that im freaking out on CS3. JS.

I will concede however that you probably are right in that the uptik in mog station items is from the urgency being put on the team more likely due to the declining numbers and in turn revenue. This team keeps SE afloat and they have lost like half of their players. You don't have to be A math student to understand that that is massive.

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Originally Posted by Valence

I must be the odd one because I find current savage as the hardest it's been in XIV's history with actual mechanics I actually needed callouts for because I wasn't able to do them on my own for the first time ever, but also most of the mogstation glams to be among the worst glamours in the game.

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The raids mechanics are typically easy when you break them down one by one, but the game progressively moves towards them being faster and faster. There's also a lot going on at the same time, and sometimes it feels like you frankly need to have eyes at the back of your head to be able to see the hints the boss is giving.

The most accessible round of Savage, imo, was Eden back in Shadowbringers. I don't think Arkadion is easy at all.