The mounts rewarded in previous seasons of the Feast

[Nirokun]

why should PVP be exclusive? Do you work harder to rank than raiders or crafters or people who level up all their classes? Is your work somehow better or harder than theirs?

Simple, PVP doesn't get easier, you cannot outgear your opponents (I mean you could in S1-4, because they allowed people to put on whatever, but fixed that in S5). You always fight at minimum iLvl. Some seasons are harder than others to rank up in (S1 brag, you can't rank up in S1 like you can now because the point system was much, much harsher), but in your individual season, you are evenly matched with other people in that same season as far as points, jobs, patches, etc.

And I have always maintained that the top-ranked should have something worthy (whatever happened to the trophies and crowns?) But when you take a mount that so many people have asked for and throw it into a seasonal and exclusive thing, it's kind of like trying to entice the majority to join a broken, skewed system by way of a carrot. Except to get that carrot, your arms and legs are bound and you have to swim through a murky, piranha infested pool.

Simple, you don't decide what SE chooses as the rewards at the end of the season. They did a good job to entice people with a mount, because people love mounts, it brought people in. They took something popular, like the Uraeus Coat, and reskinned it for Feast S1/S2, and then Fenrir, reskinned that for Feast S3/S4. And again, the climb is the same for everyone, it's a competition and there will be bads dragging you down, good players carrying you, etc. The best you can do is better yourself to be the good player each match guiding your team to victory aka GIT GUD.

But this game is not my life. I, and many other players, need to work toward things on our own time at our own pace. Job and life responsibilities come first. Making something -- anything -- exclusive and seasonal basically says to the players "nolife grind your way toward this reward to the exclusion of everything else"

What's fun about that?

And this is where your entire argument falls apart. You bring up the same arguments time and again and keep hoping it will somehow give you a different answer. You mean to incite a forum rebellion to get what you want at the cost of others' efforts, it's exhausting to find these things and have to defend them over and over and over, especially as someone who went through all the effort to make it to the top 100.

Clearly you can tell that there are people willing to put PVP first, and through both skill and sacrifice make their way to the end of the leaderboard at the end of the season to claim their trophies. Because that's what it takes to win. Clearly you can also tell that there are people who are either unable or unwilling to do those things, and they don't make it onto the leaderboard. You don't get anywhere without sacrifice something, you just need to make your choices carefully and not complain about it after you made up your mind.

Take me for example, I am a licensed healthcare professional with a 9-5 job. I hold a managerial position. I fight to maintain work-life balance, because I still go home and cook full meals for my family (dogs included, but that's more assembly of different things [like 5] added to their bowls). I find time for long dinner/TV time with my fiance, walks with my fiance and the dogs, my fiance's family events, seeing my family, everything. But I've made up my mind here in S5 to put my time in.

I clearly have a full life, but choose to put my time into PVP because that's my choice. What I'm not trying to do is change the entire system to cater to me, my full life, to make it easier for me or anyone else unable/unwilling to put in the skill/time investment. I don't complain that the entirety of the game is inaccessible to me because I don't have time for a static for raiding/primals, because a scheduled raid cuts into family time. PVP does not do that, I queue, I get in, and my skill/time investment determines if I make it onto the leaderboard at that end of the season.

Feast rewards being exclusive makes it one of the last places where your achievements dont get erased by a sea of essential counterfeits, bought with less effort/skill than your real, hard-earned trophy.

I wrote all this for you, but I'm sure it won't change your mind, it never does because you only care about your bottom line of needing to "collect" everything. Don't let your completionism spoil the game for others, thanks.