Quote Originally Posted by HermitUK View Post
The reward structure could do with an overhaul, and I'm hoping this is coming with the new mode in Endwalker. Rather than time-limited rewards, a top 100 finish should give you a prize voucher you can exchange for any of the previous or current top 100 rewards; that takes some of the time-limited nature out of it, so if there's a mount or armour you really want you can focus on improving over multiple seasons to get a top 100 finish without the pressure to do it in one particular season or lose that reward forever. It also means that you don't end up with very similar rewards between seasons; I fell off the Feast bandwagon in season 8 because the reward was basically the same as season 7's, and haven't really been back since.

Recolours (or in the case of armour, an undyable variation like the Gold Saucer variations of the Garo gear) should be available for something like 10 wolf collars. So you keep the rarity and distinction of the top 100 prizes, but if someone just wants to play a couple of seasons and casually get to gold, they can buy something they like. The current reward structure doesn't offer any value outside of going for top 100 (the PvP weapons from Wolf Collars are all pretty boring), so having some more obtainable prizes would actually encourage more people to play the mode.

Also agreed that SquareEnix need to do a better job of policing those who aren't playing fair. Wintrading can be difficult to prove, but botting at least should be obvious enough to punish. It should be said that there are plenty of people in the top 100 each season who aren't cheating. Those who are do need to be banned, though, and this isn't limited to the Feast, either. There were lots of reports of people using gathering and crafting bots during the Firmament rankings as well which never seemed to be dealt with.
I thing a 'top 100' system is going to be garbage until such time as they design a system that doesn't allow for win trading. And since they seem to outright refuse to police their own design for that very behavior, then the top-100 needs to be dropped. As Jeeqbit said, just turn it into a grind, because 99 percent of the people playing this won't be able to stomach the Feast anyway. At least open a clear avenue for people to be guaranteed the rewards if they put in the effort. Because the current system isn't rewarding skill.