"The vast majority of players do it for the rewards"

[strawberrycake]

The issues are:

XIV as a game doesnt do longevity well. They make content, said content is a fun one and done, but has little to no interconnectivity with other aspects of the game, and doesn't give another reason to do it beyond the one time you do it.

The difficulty of the Savage Version of the dungeon is fairly involved, and for all the work and effort, should have a substantial reward for raiders. Say they gave us the tome upgrades for gear, it would lead to more players helping out groups stuck on the prior fights of the tier as they're less concerned with their own gearing and are now able to help earlier in the tier, this would increase clear rates.

This is a waste of dev time because as with all generally hard content in XIV, it will be left to the wayside over being regularly maintainted as a form of worth while content. So the lack of realistic rewards here is sad because all this dev time is wasted on people not doing it after a few runs, that a waste of Money and Resource, and Once again, Dev time.

No matter how you cut it, the lack of rewards is sad. The lack of rewards is a waste. And this shouldn't be continuously normalized.

[MagiusNecros]

I mean hey getting your choice of IX/X materia with extra steps is well and good but you can get more faster by just queuing up Adventurer in Need or spamming Troia.

The most rewarding thing about Variant/Criterion is the glam set which is just another butler suit with a hat that I guess the Hrothgar and Viera can't wear, in addition to spending tokens on emote and cosmetic items you can sell on the MB for gil. Couple 100k for a few items and millions for the chair.

I mean an interesting experiment would be remove the minion drop, diamond confetti, tokens, tomestones and see how many times players would run in with "fun" as the reward.

If it's for fun why do you have to be ilvl610? Why not ilvl540? The same as the Endsinger normal fight? Why not sync down to your ilvl so if desired I can take my BLU in with Nanamo(for this to happen I have to wait probably 5 years lol).

I will say I wish the bosses were randomized because I imagine fighting Donkey Kong and his barrels only has so much appeal.

[Dzian]

People only ever do content for the rewards.

all you'd have to do is take away roulette rewards and you'd almost instatnyl kill 99% of the games content for newer players. that new player who needs aurum vale would be stuck in a queue for days, without roulette rewards..

The problem with Fun, in this game is there is never very much to do in terms of relevant content, what we get in a patch is really not very much. and can be cleared in a couple of hours. and this combined with loot lockouts and stuff leads to massive amounts of burnout.

Algaia the aliance, super fun the first time you do it. but when it's essentially the only content worth doing for a lot of people and you end up doing it 6 or 8 times a week trying to get your weekly drops. it gets stale very very quickly.

same thing with ex trials. fun the frist few runs maybe but when your doing the same trial 99 times because its the only relevent contet to do it gets old very quickly.. especially with party finder where you can do the same fight over and over and over for hours in a single session

In many ways i think thats one of the things i used to enjoy about final fantasy XI (75era) not only was there so much to do because of a horizontal progression but things like the 3 day lock outs really helped keep content fresh. you'd always be excited going to fight odin in einherjar because it was something you probably only did once a month ish so it kept it feeling much fresher.

but in xiv literally everything is a chore because you spend months at a time doing the same things literally every day because there is so little to do.

[ameliaw]

Well, I'm one of these people. If I don't like the rewards, I don't do it. Not in FFXIV at least.

[dspguy]

I suppose I'm the rare breed that did content for fun. I was puzzled why my raid group wanted to keep clearing certain content after we cleared it once. Yeah, I guess the mount/minion are nice. But they still wanted stuff from earlier tiers or more weapon coffers. I was good at just one clear of savage content. Didn't win the mount. Didn't win the weapon or the upgrade item or a drop. But what's the point of the gear once I cleared the content the gear was designed for? I no longer need it to achieve the goal of clearing said content. However, I went along for more runs to appease the rest of the group that worked so hard to clear the content.

I do lots of content because it is fun. And I do the content again to help others. Back in my FFXI days, I led many players (friends and strangers alike) through expansion missions that were very difficult. There was no longer an in-game reward for doing it. Maybe good karma?

That's my take and it doesn't make the "reward only" people wrong. Everyone gets their kicks their own way. Mine isn't from the gear rewards.

[Aword3213]

I suppose I'm the rare breed that did content for fun. I was puzzled why my raid group wanted to keep clearing certain content after we cleared it once. Yeah, I guess the mount/minion are nice. But they still wanted stuff from earlier tiers or more weapon coffers. I was good at just one clear of savage content. Didn't win the mount. Didn't win the weapon or the upgrade item or a drop. But what's the point of the gear once I cleared the content the gear was designed for? I no longer need it to achieve the goal of clearing said content. However, I went along for more runs to appease the rest of the group that worked so hard to clear the content.

Basically me.

I do content because it's fun. The experience is my reward. I never understand why most of my friends would buy a single player game, only to leave the moment they have unlocked everything. To me they treat games like a bunch of checklists. I usually keep playing the same game because I simply enjoy playing it. I don't care if I've already unlocked everything and collected every collectables.

[Katt_Felista]

I'm sorry i'm a bit tired of the "safe stats on every gear" motto, very very extremely "safe" balance act for all the content, when we can have 1 segment, just 1 segment of the content that would be specific for Gear power "fantasy" / strong stats, balance be damned for pve dungeons. I wanted a part of a content where the GEAR can go wild and almost abit randomized (stats wise), SE could have separated / segmented savage criterion outside of main content like it's very own "mythic +" types dungeons where you can loot out of this world gear and feel nicely rewarded for your efforts.

Segmented enough that this gear is unusable outside of these dungeons, they are able to do segmented / separated content for HoH / towers and bozja / eureka, i don't see why they can't gift such a mode to the players that want that.

Glam is "okay", but a lot of ppl just like being stronger and have better gear and more gear progression and it feels like savage dungeons would be an extremely good area to test that.

Everyone seem to have their fantasy accomplished in the game, be it Roleplay, raids, housing, the only one fantasy that isn't achieved in the game and gave to one specific people / type of area is the one where you have just 1 mode, 1. out of the dozens mini game that already exist, give just ONE mode for GEAR progression ala mythic + and be allowed to loot randomized stats on gear, a bit diablo like ish. That's one area that is lacking in the game. Just that nice little mode, even if it would mean u have access to that specific arsenal / gear only for that mode, i'll be more then okay with that.And if it's a mode, exclusive to it's own little area, u can go wild with balance u shouldn't have to even worry about it, just make a FUN mode where you crit and damage like a truck on nitro if you reach like the +30 savage criterion dungeons.

Just make a savage criterion + mode where u loot 635 to 700 even 800 ilvl stuff with a bit of randomization in stats so we trash or keep some part of gear when we find worse, or better ones, in progression from +1 to +30 savage that is used only in this mode if u are so scared it would escalate out of that content.

[Payadopa]

To me they treat games like a bunch of checklists.

I agree. It's weird to me. If an activity is boring I'll just not do it. Like collecting flags in AC2. lol It's just boring busy work. If it's fun, I'll do it for the sake if it. But it's true that content dies faster if nothing shiny is attached to it, so I guess it's in everyone's best interest if rewards at the end are 'adequate'. But not every single one plays that way is all I'm saying.

[Vahlnir]

I want to get paid, but I found a career I enjoy doing. So its not a struggle to wake up in the mornings. Why not have fun while getting paid?

Most people don't have that luxury, sadly.

But back on topic, it's an MMO. Time = money, and time = rewards. If our time isn't well spent on a particular piece of content, either through poor design or lackluster rewards, said content usually just dies.

[Raikai]

"The vast majority of players don't do difficult content because it's fun"
"The vast majority of players do it for the rewards"

If this is true, then how come the vast majority of the replies to this thread will be about people who do difficult content just for fun?

Every time new hard content is released and there are complaints about rewards, there's always the expectation that people should just do the content for fun and for the challenge.

however, even world progression teams and streamers declare the above statements, and many of them act the same way.

I asked on Xenosys Vex's stream why did he only clear Delubrum Reginae Savage once and never went back in, I asked whether he should do it for fun or for the rewards, and he openly declared that he does it for the rewards.

I wonder how popular Ultimates would be for the majority of the raiding players (not the world racers for obvious reasons) if there was just an achievement for the completion. Whether or not it's for someone's liking, a visible reward is a token that you did the thing.

Alas, I don't find the appeal in any of the Criterion rewards, so I'll probably run it just once, not even sure when. I don't find Ultimates' weapons desirable either (personal preference), so I don't even attempt the stress of running it... maybe one day, who knows?

My biggest complaint about Criterion rewards is that it could easily become an alternative way of gearing alt jobs through tomestone augmentation items, since we are already 2 months in, especially for someone like me that is a Party Finder raider this expansion, horribly impacted by the Savage loot system,