RIP Minion Collectors :(

[Bourne_Endeavor]

From a devoleper perspective, you should also look that the skill of the playerbase dont hit rock bottom because you give all the big rewards to the lowest common determinator which will be always gonna lower and you reach a point where the whole game is a joke

Hence titles, achievements and leaderboards. The majority of hardcore raiders and PvPers play because they aim to be the best at their chosen form of entertainment. Look at the highly competitive FPS and MOBA markets. Most everything can be unlocked just by playing yet you'll see thousands of players striving to be top x in the game or unlock all of that content. There's some exclusive rewards in MOBAs but they're fleeting. An example of catering to the hardcore was Gordias and Midas Savage. What happened? Barely anyone touched it-- to the point we saw less than 1% clears. Developers cannot focus on the hardcore over others, especially in a case like FFXIV, where they need to build the PvP community first. As it stands, PvP is on life support. You won't get people into it by putting a reward most won't be able to obtain. You have to incentivize them first, then fuel that competitive urge.

King Stefan does have some great examples for rewards unique to PvP though: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ve-PVP-Rewards

While that's true, there's more to it than that. If the goal is simply to focus on the current state, then yeah... carrot on a stick is generally the best way. If the goal is to make a certain type of content be a prevalent and uniquely memorable thing (PvP in this case), it actually works against it. Why should anyone care about PvP when it just becomes another PvE-esque grind? Why should anyone care about any form of content when it quickly just becomes a dull addition to what already exists and often does the job better? Diadem was a pretty damn good example of that.

Honestly, that should be the primary goal at the moment. As I noted above, PvP desperately needs something to incentivize the playerbase at large. The devs have been going about it backwards, either by making new rewards for each new map-- effectively killing any previous map/mode or through rewarding a select few. The latter only works once you have an established community, though not always. Overwatch, for example, has very few exclusive rewards. Instead, you simply earn a currency and unlock stuff. This helps keep everyone satisfied because less skilled players still have plenty to strive for, even if it may take them longer to achieve. A bigger issue for FFXIV is the lack of a rank depreciation, which only encourages top ranked players to stop PvPing just to maintain their position.

Keep in mind, the vast majority of players in FFXIV are PvE centric. A PvE grind is what they anticipate, and why many actually play. Therefore, you do need to focus some of that same grind into PvP, otherwise they won't do it.

- the intentional outlook they have for player mentality. Carrot on a stick for pretty much everything in the game, with practically no possibility to ever expect otherwise. This is fine, to be honest, but an extremely shallow approach to game philosophy. It's along the lines of F2P mentality.

Yes and no. I used to play FPS competitively. Unless you're in the Twitch bracket (years after I quit the genre), you'll actually get very little. Games like Halo, Call of Duty and Battlefield mostly reward achievements and cosmetic things for bragging rights, like custom tags or painting your gun. Few of those are exclusive. The playerbase in FPS plays primarily for fun or to outrank other players. You don't have to incentivize them because the game itself is incentive enough. FFXIV doesn't have that luxury because its audience isn't PvP oriented. So you need to nudge them towards it in the hopes they'll find it fun. Basically, you start with a carrot, then gradually move away from it.