Quote Originally Posted by Theodric View Post
Personally speaking...I have a disposable income and have bought items such as the Odin statue and every mount put on the Mog Station thus far. Despite that I'm concerned by the sheer number of items showing up on the Mog Station. It's definitely increased over time. I would much prefer many of the items to be available in-game. It feels like there's so few in-game rewards to work towards as it is- especially those that are 'mid way' between easy to obtain and a nightmarish grind.
Bolded is definitely a matter of question right now, though the Mog Station being a suspect isn't really a strong one. For a game that tries to cater to many tastes at once, it sure does come up short on that feeling of reward, specifically in non-combat related goods. I mean, yeah, they could have always thrown those Mog Station stuff into the game, but do you really think it'd improve things as far as feeling rewarded?

That's not to say that the game doesn't give us things, because it does, but I think there are at least two things that contribute to the lack of feeling rewarded. 1) The fact that a lot of the new goods we get are either simple "talk to NPC and buy it for small sums of gil", craft or buy it off the MB, or they're part of an already widely acknowledged tedious grind like with MGP. The MGP comment is partly due to how there's already a lot of mass MGP needed items that are mostly overlooked (like Triple Triad gambles or direct cards). 2) They're too narrow of a crowd pleasing item, like hairstyles.

It feels unusual to complain that we can find items that are new as easily as talking to an NPC and spending a few thousand gil on it to get it, but that is all part of a contributing factor to it. I'm not arguing that method of doing things should be removed, but rather that we're also missing that drive to earn a reward. I guess it's the fact we can expect it that dulls it.

My view on the bolded section is that the devs haven't managed to grasp proper rewards for the effort needed. A bit off topic, but I actually think the upcoming PvP season rewards is a step in the right direction to getting that feeling back. When you can simply buy something (especially for chump change), you dull out the impact of it. Likewise with simple tome/MGP/currency rewards, they also dull out the impact of being rewarded when you can measure the span of time until you receive it, most of which is a matter of minutes, if not hours.