So now contest prizes can be bought?

[Sakuraluna]

are those contest prizes? I seem to have all of them but the moogle and never entered a contest

The scarf is. It’s the only one for the time being.

[Darrcyphfeid]

Nope, Feast has been hardcore dead even with Garo. Garo only required Feast participation for one mount, with 20 wins. Most of the rewards were gotten easier with Frontlines.

Garo is also more than two years old at this point! lol

That does not change the fact that all of what I said is true, that each of those things did initially, and for varying lengths of time, provide massive influxes of players. And not because they enjoyed PvP, oh no far from it, but because they wanted the rewards. EXP the biggest reward of all, more recently.

Rest in the spoiler tag since it has almost nothing to do with the contest prize topic itself.

...you need 3000 A ranks to get the tiger. Also it's all A-ranks, I been gathering in ARR zones too.

I'm well aware how many kills are required. I can only speak about my own server and what I've heard about other servers; I have no context for your gathering schedule or how frequently you do or do not stumble upon ARR and HW A Ranks.

The mounts are just pallete swaps. None of them have any added functionality, even compared to holiday mounts, and virtually every ex primal's participation quickly tapers off in 2 weeks.

Okay? The primal mounts are the most requested mounts to be able to fly by a wide margin too, pallete swap or no. And you know why? Because people like them. And because they play the music from the related Primals, presumably.

EX Primals have a large drop off after a couple weeks because the weapons are no longer the best available and the smell of "new content!" fades. They would drop off entirely and be completely dead if not for the mounts.

Even unsynced, you're still not seeing a lot of people doing them for the mounts.

Uh... Err. When's the last time you've looked at party finder, by chance? I still see tons of bird farms, and obviously wolf farms. I don't see very many pony farms by virtue of most of those being very easy solos, and that whole 6 or so month period where Wondrous Tails was all the rage.

To expand though, I mean the mounts and exclusive haven't been a real draw to populate the mode. Even the exclusive God Kefka fight hasn't really increased desire to do it I think; i notice in PF the pug requests have been more or less consistent in number all of SB. There's rarely a time when they get up to 3 pages in Primal for example.

Very few people are going to challenge an at-level raid tier for a mount or minion when they know they can unsync it and skip a lot of the more dangerous/annoying mechanics in the next expansion. That's kind of the argument being made here. More people, even if "more" is literally just "one person," may be inclined to at least try for them if they didn't lose value as quickly as the raid tier itself did.

There's also the bit where raiding in this game has a stigma associated with it.

The tome armor actually isn't useful in any real sense; even now I can just use my augmented 360 armor as a tank in most casual content, and be fine.

I assume by augmented 360 you mean the crafted gear turn-in stuff, which I must point out that the overwhelming majority of the community doesn't have access to/use that stuff. If they did, floors 1 through 3 of the NM raid would die after the first week because no one would need to farm the lenses, cranks, etc.

I mean, you play the things more because you find them fun.

This is an entirely different argument, though. One that I obviously don't disagree with.

The rewards - the mounts, minions, etc - exist to get people to try new things. If they like them, they may stick around after getting the thing they want just because they enjoy it. And they'll be more readily accepting of similar things. But to get them in the door, to get them interested, takes incentivizing. Likewise, removing the value of items can just as easily discourage them - even if it's something they like. You need look no further than the PvP community for that; why should they bust their ***es with little or no support from Square, even in crucial areas like cheating, if Square's just going to turn around and give their hard earned items away for nothing?

[Dzian]

As for tomes...its literally something to do.

It's a reward and thus the reason players do things. this would most recently be highlighted with the raid roulettes. i mean 24 man raids have always been "something to do" but noone ever did them and queue times were horrible..

add a raid roulette and throw people some tomes or a huge chunk of exp if they need it and queue times have shrunk massively. yet those 24 mans are still "something to do"

I'm pretty sure if you took away the tomes and exp rewards from roulettes queue times would be horrendous. those roulettes would still be "something to do" but without the rewards noone would touch them.

[Nariel]

In the end, its not like they will take back YOUR prize to give it to someone, they are not erasing your name from the victory board nor they take your memory of you winning/doing the thing years ago, its not like you can actualy sell those for bazillion of gils or even real curency.

So why do you care ? people aren't gonna love them as much as you do, most of people won't even wear them cause, lets be honnest fashion wise they aren't that good looking for the most part even the scarf look like you take it from one of the Dalton brother's.

Most people in game don't care much about contest, I don't even recall of people asking for them as much as you ask for them to stay your little ego token.

Oh and i'm sure if they don't offer any gift for a contest people are still gonna do it cause people like to win. People do in game fight for the prize cause winning over a old easy instance isn't worth as much as winning a one time contest.

People do sport even when they don't fight over the world cup aren't they ?

[Skivvy]

People do sport even when they don't fight over the world cup aren't they ?

I don't think the players would be happy if anyone could suddenly buy original World Cup trophies at a kiosk though, right?

[Darrcyphfeid]

Most people in game don't care much about contest, I don't even recall of people asking for them as much as you ask for them to stay your little ego token.

If no one wants them, then why is Square giving them away? Isn't that worse?

People do sport even when they don't fight over the world cup aren't they ?

We talking professional athletes here? 'Cause... they get paid money to play. And in the pursuit of becoming a professional player, people put up with a lot of crap (see: hubbub surrounding NCAA). They're also incentivized by things like scholarships.

[Nariel]

I don't think the players would be happy if anyone could suddenly buy original World Cup trophies at a kiosk though, right?

Buyer wouldn't earn it so why the bother ? He won't care for it as much as the player who won the championship do nor people enjoying the match, player would still be able to play the championship for the trophies and for winning over the others.

Trophies have no value beside the one you give to it, if seeing other buy trophies impact that much your love for your feat then it probably don't worth that much to you at all.

If no one wants them, then why is Square giving them away? Isn't that worse? :

Dunno', i'm not part of the staff, its not even a new thing in the game.

[Sakuraluna]

People do sport even when they don't fight over the world cup aren't they ?

To use your World Cup example though;

Imagine that your team won the World Cup. You all put in a lot of sweat and tears this year and are proud of your achievement and excited to receive your award. But then right as you’re being awarded it is announced that every team who participated this year will have the opportunity to buy the same trophy stating that they won this year. Next year, the trophy will have a new design. How would you feel?

Now, imagine if the World Cup trophy had been redesigned and given a distinct appearance, and that everyone was aware of this new design ahead of time. Since your team won, you’ll be the first to receive the new trophy. Immediately afterward, the old design will be sold as a novelty. Would this be an issue?

That’s the point I’m trying to make. It’s not about the item. I don’t care if someone else has a scarf that looks exactly like mine. It’s not about exclusivity. The item has always been readily available to anyone who cared to enter a contest and request it as a prize. It’s continued to be available even right up until the moogle announcement. It’s literally about the way SE has handled the situation.

I mean, I don’t even know if we’ve been informed whether the scarf is being retired as a contest prize. I know the Cloud hair will be offered, but for all I know about the scarf, it could still be on the list for the next contest. I feel like any unhappiness about this could have been fixed by a little more transparency from SE from the get-go, as well as better planning on phasing out game content.

[Nariel]

Why should I care if the other get a trophies if I win, I'm the winner, they get a trophie but still loose, they'll get to see this trophy et remember how I beat them that day, sweet sweet memories. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Annnnnd for the way they handle it I don't see the problem like... at all. But to be fair I don't care about prizes or upcoming contest.

[Velthice]

I still have my old i95 allagan monk fists from turn 5. I've kept them ever since I got them on my first clear yeeeaaars ago when it was the only raid we had. Literally anybody can get them now, heck people can get Bette dyeable versions of them. I'll always hold on to mine though, because of the memories attached to them.

That's the important part, it's the memories, never the item.

You want to talk about 1.0 items and stuff, I'm a 1.0 player and I don't care if they gave everyone everything, chocobo, legacy mark, whatever. I still have my memories of playing it, I still love to share the experiences I had playing that really weird game, like not being able to clear a knee ledge.

I think people that heavily value items, that seek to use them to feel superior to others, have their priorities... misaligned. It's a cooperative game at it's heart, not a competitive one.