Dev blog: New Feast rewards

[Aviars]

But effort is not enough..if only 100 people from a whole datacenter will get it. You can have 200 people that put in a huge amount of effort, time and are skilled and yet only 100 of them will get it.

This may be a foreign concept to many people in FF14 but not everything is made specifically for you. SE made it top 100 for a reason. They want The Feast to be a competition and the rewards that only the top 100 receive reflect that. Just because you are decently skilled at the game doesn't mean you are also a top 100 player and deserve it, that is the nature of competition. Not everyone gets a medal.

I find it quite strange so many people think they should have a significantly easier option to obtain the same rewards as people who got to the top 100. You basically invalidated the competition. If I could get 1 million dollars in a extremely easy way like a guaranteed lottery compared to creating a successful business, which would you do? Why work your butt off when you can get it for free? This is basically the mentality of the majority of people complaining in this thread and it is sad.

[Keridwyn]

This may be a foreign concept to many people in FF14 but not everything is made specifically for you. SE made it top 100 for a reason. They want The Feast to be a competition and the rewards that only the top 100 receive reflect that. Just because you are decently skilled at the game doesn't mean you are also a top 100 player and deserve it, that is the nature of competition. Not everyone gets a medal.

They did it to try and get people into PvP by putting a reward requested buy the casual segment of the player base into a portion of the game many of them didn't play. It does not appear to have worked.

I find it quite strange so many people think they should have a significantly easier option to obtain the same rewards as people who got to the top 100. You basically invalidated the competition. If I could get 1 million dollars in a extremely easy way like a guaranteed lottery compared to creating a successful business, which would you do? Why work your butt off when you can get it for free? This is basically the mentality of the majority of people complaining in this thread and it is sad.

I haven't seen anyone here asking for it for free. Most people are making suggestions that lock these mounts behind grinds that take a year or better. Honestly, it sounds like they're suggesting something more like how Veteran Rewards currently work. Now you have to buy those by earning achievements and yet the people who were subscribed long enough under the old system don't have to and can use their points to buy anything else they add.

Personally I have no dog in this race. I exited PvP with the 4.0 changes to the kit and had only dabbled in it previously. Just pointing out a couple of flaws in your statement

[Aviars]

They did it to try and get people into PvP by putting a reward requested buy the casual segment of the player base into a portion of the game many of them didn't play. It does not appear to have worked.

I see this explanation a lot. However it just doesn't hold water in the end. There are many rewards that are available to people that are not top 100 through wolf collars and in past seasons you also received a reward for finishing in a certain tier, which was replaced with wolf collars. There are also many titles and even, wow, mounts that are available through just grinding achievements. In the end it is quite obvious that people in general, just like to complain when they see something that they probably don't have a chance at getting.

I haven't seen anyone here asking for it for free. Most people are making suggestions that lock these mounts behind grinds that take a year or better. Honestly, it sounds like they're suggesting something more like how Veteran Rewards currently work. Now you have to buy those by earning achievements and yet the people who were subscribed long enough under the old system don't have to and can use their points to buy anything else they add.

Compared to top 100, turning it into grinding achievements might as well make it free. A lot of people even suggest wolf marks.... just no words for that. Anyways, like I said before there are already plenty of achievements that offer rewards like mounts, titles, accessories and minions. Top 100 rewards however were meant for top 100 players, they weren't meant as a general incentive for ALL players to try pvp. they were meant to offer a competitive aspect to the Feast. People should just accept that not everything is made for them nor does everyone deserve it.

[Keridwyn]

I see this explanation a lot. However it just doesn't hold water in the end. There are many rewards that are available to people that are not top 100 through wolf collars and in past seasons you also received a reward for finishing in a certain tier, which was replaced with wolf collars. There are also many titles and even, wow, mounts that are available through just grinding achievements. In the end it is quite obvious that people in general, just like to complain when they see something that they probably don't have a chance at getting.

The part you left out was that none of the mounts already on offer were specifically requested by the 'casual' playerbase. Or if there was a thread started requesting warhorses I missed it. The hellhounds though, a lot of people who never PvPed in their life wanted those and the new mount...well that's a story NPC who has fans that don't pvp at all. And honestly how does that mount even remotely fit with the theme? Also those rewards by themselves DO NOT offer a competitive aspect. The competitive aspect is the nature of PvP itself with the rewards merely being the atta boy for top placement.

Not a day goes by that I don't see some of the really invested PvPers asking when the botting and blatent win-trading will be fixed. So how many of those top 100 player did actually get their mounts free? While the majority likely earned it through hard work and effort you cannot deny a portion of them did not, the evidence is on Youtube, Twitter, and Reddit. The legitimate ones, those folks should be recognized 100% somehow, but when you can bot your way to rewards then it has already devalued them more than any amount of people getting them through grindy works.

Also, Wolf Marks? Seriously. No. Not unless they allow us to hold millions of them. Or unless they add a second currency item to buy with the marks at 20k marks a pop and the mounts take something like 1k each of them. The mounts should be work.

[Istaru]

Just because you are decently skilled at the game doesn't mean you are also a top 100 player and deserve it, that is the nature of competition. Not everyone gets a medal.

First, as I have stated before, I do not feel that the hellhound mounts should be brought back. With that out of the way...

You do know there are people in that ranking that can’t even win 50% of their matches, right??? You keep talking about skill as if it is an ultimate decider and it is not. Yes, a skilled person can get there are stay there easier, but there is nothing that keeps decently skilled people off the leaderboard. Even the other people in the top 100 say it isn’t much of a test of skill!

I understand that your possession of a unique or rare item makes you feel special and you may feel that your right to feel special is being attacked. I get it, I’m a legacy player and people attack our exclusivity too. Everyone should feel that they are special, and I don’t mean the short bus kind.

But in your attacking everyone to try and keep that feeling that you are special by owning a very rare or exclusive item in a video game is you being a butthole. Buttholes aren’t special, everyone already has one of them. There are other ways to defend your exclusivity that don’t involve that behavior.

Ultimately, it’s all up to SE anyway.

[Aviars]

You do know there are people in that ranking that can’t even win 50% of their matches, right??? You keep talking about skill as if it is an ultimate decider and it is not. Yes, a skilled person can get there are stay there easier, but there is nothing that keeps decently skilled people off the leaderboard. Even the other people in the top 100 say it isn’t much of a test of skill!

Win-rate doesn't mean anything. I have already explained this numerous times in this thread. A 50% winrate in say gold tier does not mean that person is suddenly doing as well as a person with a 50% winrate in diamond. Who do you think is having harder matches? Obviously the diamond player. Square probably see's your type of shallow reasoning a lot which is why they removed win-rates from the leader board.

To make it even more generic, does a kindergardener who gets a A+ suddenly a smarter person than a person in college who gets a B? Absouletely not.

Also lets say a player hits 2500 rating and that is as high as they can go. At that point they are basically winning one game and losing 1 game. The more games they play will LOWER their winrate and they will stay at 2500 rating. does it mean they do not deserve their 2500 rating compared to someone else? No it doesn't.

People who play a lot of games as well, generally get better. They could've had a horrible win rate from the beginning from when they were a worse player, but playing more allowed them to get better at the game and climb. That can translate to a low win-rate that follows high ranked players throughout the whole season.

I can come up with many reasons why a high ranked player would have a low winrate. But generally win-rate doesn't matter. The high ranked you get the harder it is to win and therefore gain points. It's just a simple fact

I hope this made sense to you.

Also, people who say top 100 is easy are speaking for themselves. It may not be hard FOR THEM. They are good enough because it is easy FOR THEM.

The part you left out was that none of the mounts already on offer were specifically requested by the 'casual' playerbase. Or if there was a thread started requesting warhorses I missed it. The hellhounds though, a lot of people who never PvPed in their life wanted those and the new mount...well that's a story NPC who has fans that don't pvp at all. And honestly how does that mount even remotely fit with the theme? Also those rewards by themselves DO NOT offer a competitive aspect. The competitive aspect is the nature of PvP itself with the rewards merely being the atta boy for top placement.

Does it matter? FF14 players ask and want everything. It honestly doesn't matter. You need to stop feeling entitled to something just because you "asked" for it. That is such shallow reasoning.

Just because you say it doesn't add a competitive aspect doesn't make it true. Competitions offer prizes and rewards as a reason to play your absolute best. If compeitions didn't offer prizes then you would obviously see quality drop. It is just fact.

Not a day goes by that I don't see some of the really invested PvPers asking when the botting and blatent win-trading will be fixed. So how many of those top 100 player did actually get their mounts free? While the majority likely earned it through hard work and effort you cannot deny a portion of them did not, the evidence is on Youtube, Twitter, and Reddit. The legitimate ones, those folks should be recognized 100% somehow, but when you can bot your way to rewards then it has already devalued them more than any amount of people getting them through grindy works.

Bots don't perform well enough to get to the top 100, stop trying to act like it does. It is a blatant lie.

Also win-traders have been banned. And as much as people who don't pvp would like you to believe, wintraders are not so common as to be a extreme problem. I can literally count legitimate win-traders on one hand. Take this from someone who has played since season 1.

Also, Wolf Marks? Seriously. No. Not unless they allow us to hold millions of them. Or unless they add a second currency item to buy with the marks at 20k marks a pop and the mounts take something like 1k each of them. The mounts should be work.

Grinding achievements or anything else shouldn't have access to the same rewards that people who got top 100 get. Plain and simple. It's top 100 or nothing. It should require the same effort and skill period.

[Stormfur]

(And this is coming from someone who has one of the rarest items in the game -- given out only to very specific contest winners -- the Gaelicap).

Do I want everyone to have a Gaelicap? I wouldn't mind one bit.

All it took from me was drawing an idea that got accepted by the dev team. It was very much a last-minute drawing and I put CONSIDERABLY more time into another idea which didn't win.

I don't need a digital item made of pixels to make me feel like a special snowflake in or out of the game. It's just a video game. No need to compare it to the Olympics/University degrees or anything else that actually requires a modicum of physical ability or mental prowess.

[Istaru]

A lot of stuff about skill.

I understood all that before too. The majority of people who place in the top ranks are skilled at what they do.

There are a few people that I am really referring to about the win rate statement. They are not low because they were learning. They are at that rate repeatedly, it is not that they are learning, they just do not win more than they lose. They are there because they grind it out. Grinding isn’t skill.

My point is simply, not everyone in the top 100 got there through skill. We will simply disagree about that fact and its ok.

We can agree on one thing though. I hope you can accept this and we can just stop here because regardless of anything else, this is really the only reason needed.

SE announced that the way to obtain those mounts was by placing a certain rank during those seasons of the Feast.

SE should not change that. Period. SE should honor it, and in my opinion, we should too.

Regardless of anything else, the people with the mount were there when SE said to be there and met the requirements in whatever way they met them.

I think a recolor/rework of some kind like they did with the goobbue is ok with me but releasing those exact mounts isn’t.

[Keridwyn]

*snip*

Please point out where I said that you shouldn't get a reward or prizes for being top 100.

Also, please see the PvP forums and multiple other PvPers in this thread pointing out to you that Wintraders are absolutely not getting banned and bots are absolutely an issue. Also go quickly take a browse of Youtube, Reddit, and Twitter. My 'lies' are pretty easily provable as truth and your anecdotal evidence is based on understandable passion to not be wrong.

When you start getting frustrated you start personally attacking people. We don't like it, please stop.

[Aviars]

Please point out where I said that you shouldn't get a reward or prizes for being top 100.

You keep repeating how the casual playerbase requested these mounts, it's obvious that you want these taken away as a unique top 100 reward.

Also, please see the PvP forums and multiple other PvPers in this thread pointing out to you that Wintraders are absolutely not getting banned and bots are absolutely an issue. Also go quickly take a browse of Youtube, Reddit, and Twitter. My 'lies' are pretty easily provable as truth and your anecdotal evidence is based on understandable passion to not be wrong.

Like I said, threads made in the pvp forums about wintrading have resulted in bans in both Solo Ranked and LP. It doesn't mean all of them are caught but win-traders are by far not rampant in the top 100 as many would like to claim. I also find it sad that you continue to cite win-trading as a reason to not have top 100 rewards. Should we remove ultimate and savage mounts and titles due to the fact that many people pay and cheat to clear them? I think the obvious answer is no. Stop trying to cite cheating as a reason to get rid of top 100 rewards.

When you start getting frustrated you start personally attacking people. We don't like it, please stop.

Where did I personally attack you? I think people say this due to the fact I make statements saying that people should have be good enough to get top 100 rewards by being top 100 and then they look at themselves and think they aren't that good and translate that to me saying that they are bad players somehow. It really isn't meant to be a personal attack, please stop trying to say this as a way to deflect.

Anyways due to the fact you failed to respond to my answer about competition, bots and your PVE player entitlement problem, I'll just assume you conceded the point, Thanks

I understood all that before too. The majority of people who place in the top ranks are skilled at what they do.

There are a few people that I am really referring to about the win rate statement. They are not low because they were learning. They are at that rate repeatedly, it is not that they are learning, they just do not win more than they lose. They are there because they grind it out. Grinding isn’t skill.

My point is simply, not everyone in the top 100 got there through skill. We will simply disagree about that fact and its ok.

Do you honestly have any experience in Feast or any proof that this is the case? You probably don't so it probably is best we stop talking about it because you obviously want it to be true whether it is or not. You honestly can't point out someone in the top 100 on the leader boards and then tell me someone who wasn't top 100 who was also playing deserves to be in that spot and not them.