Where did the Series 1 Malmstones rewards vanish to?

[ConcernedPerson]

Just to further add to the confusion, when they announced Series stuff prior to 6.1, they said previous rewards would eventually be purchasable (see https://twinfinite.net/wp-content/up...asy-XIV-43.jpg). But they've not mentioned this once since, so no idea if they mean 6.25, or 6.3, or next expansion, or what.

So, as an update...
I logged on to my alt and checked the PVP menu there. In that case, the button for "previous series" did show up. I used it, and it brought me back to the first series track and let me claim my rewards up through the emote and no further. When I left the interface and checked back in, the button was gone. (This explains, by the way, why I felt so certain that I had 5k-6k to trade in still. I did, but it was on my alt and not my main, so at least I know I'm not losing my mind just yet.)

So, either there is a bug that's making the previous series button vanish, or, more likely as you're saying, this is by design, and they very, very poorly communicated this to their players, which I still think is pretty messed up. Just be honest. It can all be said in one sentence: "When series 1 ends, you won't be able to get the rewards anymore, so hurry up and finish before patch 6.2." Bam. That's literally all they needed to say.

I don't understand why they hid this from players. I really don't. It makes me worried about the garo event. Like, when 6.25 drops, is it just going to vanish all of a sudden with no warning? Lame. I just feel like as a general principle, you should be honest, clear, and direct with your players about which content is coming or going and when. It's a pretty basic courtesy. They usually are good about that, so that makes it even more surprising, honestly. I hope it doesn't become a new trend.

I did the math and if you do 2 runs per day of CC in this new season (on one character), then within a maximum of 60 days you will earn enough series rewards to get all of the track done up to the new mount. This will ensure you finish the track before 6.25 lands, just in case. So that's what I'll do on my main & alt. I'm not going to trust that rewards these will be available later on. I'll just assume they'll vanish in any given patch moving forward.

[ConcernedPerson]

It's really bad wording on their part and I expect quite a few people have missed out on the rewards because they didn't realise they were retiring. From what I've seen ingame today:

1. You only see the "Past Series" button if you have unclaimed rewards - I had 5 of the infinite Trophy Crystal rewards waiting to be picked up, so I could see it. Once I claimed them, the button no longer appears.

2. You can pick up rewards from Series 1 in Series 2, if, and only if, you'd earned but not claimed them when Series 1 was active. There's no way to earn them any more - PvP exp goes towards the Series 2 reward track, so there's no way to earn points for the Series 1 rewards.

3. They're not available from any PvP vendors at present.

The messaging on this was terrible because their wording made it sound like the rewards weren't going anywhere, when in fact the ability to earn them was disappearing completely. If anyone has found something I missed, do point it out.

My guess is they might add these to Trophy Crystal vendors at some point in the future (or, heaven forbid, cash shop). The ability to earn them by playing PvP is gone, though, by the looks of things.

Oh, I also wanted to add that while I'm super frustrated by this situation overall, I am grateful to you, HermitUK, for your thoughtful and well-explained response here, as well as your links from the live letter. It does appear that you've figured out the situation correctly.

[EaMett]

Just to further add to the confusion, when they announced Series stuff prior to 6.1, they said previous rewards would eventually be purchasable (see https://twinfinite.net/wp-content/up...asy-XIV-43.jpg). But they've not mentioned this once since, so no idea if they mean 6.25, or 6.3, or next expansion, or what.

Eventually available sounds like they'll add them back into the game in a year or something. Like they do with the mogstation event glams, except these will be purchasable with in-game pvp currencies. Makes me feel a little better. I was also about to get my panties in a bunch over these items no longer being available when they specifically sold it as a FOMO free mechanic

[ConcernedPerson]

Clarity has at long last been achieved.

A forum user showed me this lodestone post: https://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...493ca256649e63

So, the basic takeaway is that in this specific lodestone post, SE said "At the start of each new Series period, your Series EXP and level will be reset and the available rewards will be replaced."

This makes the deadline pretty clear and also that the rewards would be vanishing. However, it was only clear to anyone who saw and read the lodestone post. Anyone who relied on the live letter and the preliminary patch notes to prepare them for 6.2 was not warned of this.

In the live letter, in their section on PVP, they left out this vital fact, which is either a glaring oversight or honestly pretty sketchy AF. Instead, they just said, and I quote,

"Available rewards will be updated and Series level/experience will be reset."
"Series One rewards may be claimed until the end of Series Two"

This led scores of us to believe that additional rewards were being added, e.g. the list was being updated. Silly us. This also led us to believe we had until the end of series two to claim the rewards from series 1.

My personal takeaway lesson of the day: Don't trust the live letters or patch notes by themselves. Make sure you read every single lodestone post because a vital fact, e.g. content vanishing from the game, might be tucked away in them. Seems pretty messed up, but OKAY. Sure. I wonder if they'll do the same thing when they end the garo event. Guess we'll see.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

...how many people are genuinely new to how a Battle Pass works? I'm actually surprised how many don't understand the system.

Series / Battle Pass runs from X to Y, gets replaced with a new one after it expires, you grab whatever rewards you were able to get before it expired (i.e. to the maximum of your Pass level). Your new EXP goes into the current pass, not the old one.

Considering the Series lasts a full major patch rather than a Blizzard-classic of two or three weeks tops, this is a generous period to obtain a fairly easy to reach Rank 30. I play like 1-3x a week for a couple of hours at most, of which I only do 30% PvP in that time at most. FOMO or not, this is a generous timeframe.

Also, the rewards can still come back later via Trophy Crystal shop for people who were late. Just don't expect them to show up immediately after the Series period ends. Maybe Series 3 or 4 you will be able to see the Series 1 stuff in the shop.

PvP not being able to get away from fomo just makes me not wanna play it and I hope it dies out from low participation cause it's so frustrating that this team just doesn't learn how to structure rewards in a way that would appeal to casuals.
And the thing is with the changes the rewards don't even appeal to the hardcore either since outside frames there is nothing really exclusive anymore.

This is arguably one of the most casual friendly systems they have given us. Casual however does not mean "literally doesn't play for four months then feels entitled to what they missed out".

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Yes me not wanting fomo equals feeling entitled to what I missed out on. Pls just don't talk if you're this brain addled.

First of all, I will have to apologise because I will keep talking even if you hate me for it. I see no reason to stop just because you said so, particularly after calling me "this brain addled". That was uncalled for, regardless how angry you are.

Literally most of the entire game works without fomo. You don't lose raid glam when the next raid releases cause somehow the rest of the team outside of pvp understands this is a shit system. Like imagine applying your frankly idiotic argument to ultimate. Imagine if a new ultimate releases all the old ultimate rewards become inaccessible. Well tough luck, don't be entitled to getting shit if you haven't played the ultimate on release... like how???? How can such a stupid line of thinking even exist.
It's as simple as make the rewards purchasable for crystals. I still get a reason to grind out in a new season if I just wasn't active in the last. Crystal is already an almost useless currency.

For starters, you cannot compare all types of content in this game with each other, neither can you blindly compare all reward structures.

PVE Raiding (any kind) fundamentally are gameplay challenges that are permanent implementations in the game that don't require timed validation, as the challenge is vs the AI / script of the game. The reward structure heavily depends on the type of duty done and so do the actual rewards within them. The way participation for this type of content is encouraged is by making it the primary focus of the game, on top of creating a scenario of character growth past the maximum level cap. Cosmetic rewards naturally are also reason to play said duties even past their theoretical expiration date.

PVP reward systems have generally been on the side of giving you essentially permanent access to the rewards available, as evidenced by the Wolfmarks and Trophy Crystal vendors. Exceptions are the GARO series due to licensing limitations and, at least temporarily, Series Rewards. I once again want to stress that we are merely in Series #2, meaning we have extremely limited data on if the rewards of previous Series will actually remain lost or if they actually show up in the Trophy Crystal Shop after a full extra Series. I urge to practice patience.

Series, or more publicly known as Battle Passes, are a type of reward structure that encourage play within a time period. To encourage the time period being active, you limit either temporarily or permanently the access period of the rewards within, which is what most know as "FOMO" or "limited-time reward" depending on your viewpoint. Based on the Liveletter talk about Series and Trophy Crystals, past Series rewards are not guaranteed to remain gone and are likely to reappear in the Trophy Crystal vendor along an update of Trophy Crystal rewards in general.

Important to know is while Battle Passes are inherently FOMO (at least temporarily in good systems), it is a working system. Hypothetically, if the Archfiend Armour was available for Trophy Crystals immediately after the corresponding Battle Pass ended, what would stop me from not playing until the period ends, 4 months later?

PVP being a sub-category of gameplay (thus a side activity) will mean it will have less activity than the main gameplay, which is Raiding and Story. By nature of how PVP works, you can only start matches by having enough players willing to queue up for the same mode and within the same team restrictions (mostly Crystalline Conflict) within a reasonable amount of time. You need incentive, but within a reasonable period to promote activity. A Battle Pass is a fantastic way to encourage play within said activity period, as it lets you grind towards it regardless of match outcome. It gets people to play PVP regardless of skill level.

Also top 100 each season should get a special mount that becomes free to purchase like an expansion later similar to how ex trial mounts become more accessible with time.
These are like basic things to make pvp actually appealing to a casual crowd while also giving hardcore some more reason to actually try for some shit. As it stands the rewards structure remains as awful as ever.

Like are you really gonna be the guy that is appalled at the idea of 10 season from now on that new players have 10 seasons of rewards to grind for getting into pvp. Oh noes we can't have longstanding content sustaining the modes. Fomo is the only thing to drive engagement for them! Like honestly if that's the thinking yall pvpers subscribe to I wish nothing but death to pvp in FF14. What an absolute waste of resources catering to absolute clowns.
[...]
PvP team puts resources into fomo rewards that only affect 100 people forever instead of you know having a proper rewards system that engages the entire playerbase instead of just the hardcore and cheaters for like almost an entire decade before doing something about it.

Before you jump to conclusions when responding - prior to the current iteration of PvP, I was always in favour of promoting casual play via an easier-to-access mode (no role restrictions) and decent unique rewards that you can obtain as a casual PVPer. Both of these goals were met, the primary criticism is perhaps how simplistic the choices are in the Crystal shop. Once we actually get updates to the shop, which we likely get in Patch 6.3,

Top <amount>/ Top x% exists specifically to encourage serious competition, in particular at high tiers. The Feast had the issue of accessibility, but currently we face the issue in Crystalline Conflict that four Seasons in a row they chose to limit the rewards to the same mediocre-looking Framer Kits for all tiers and Top 100/30/1, which severely impacts engagement in ranked as evidenced by the current queue times various datacenters are facing. Casual and Frontlines on the other hand are thriving. If Top X were a reward that is essentially only temporary unique to them, it would simply cause us to not bother with it if we can simply get whatever was in Top X later. That is the ugly part about us and I will make no effort trying to hide it:

If you want us to compete at the best of our ability, you have to incentivsise us with unique rewards that act as a Trophy Medal of that season. I do not bother with trying my best if whatever I work for will be trivialised to get later down the line. I'm very sorry if this upsets you, but this is the simple yet ugly truth. Feel free to toss insults like "oh its just for the cheaters or wintraders or hardcores", but despite all of this they are what they are - medals and proof of honour to put on open display, even with bad apples in between.

That said - no I'm not against people obtaining rewards of the past 10 or more Series/Battlepass (not Season however) in the future to work towards. I'm very open to this and think this is what they will do down the line. The Fomo is not a permanent Fomo for battlepasses from what I understood, it is merely encouraging "in the moment" activity before being shelved for a while until it returns for good.

PvP team is just frankly the team that is the most wasteful about resources in this game. Like they spend work on rival wings and the mode is just still dead on arrival cause nobody except organized discords can make the queue happen cause for some god forsaken reason they can't add a roulette for it.

This is definitely a point I can agree on. Perhaps in JP datacenters it is less of an issue, but the reward-driven Western Playerbase absolutely shows how little it cares if there is no incentive akin to Frontline put on Rival Wings. The Daily Challenge: Rival Wings should have been a thing by now and I'm flabbergasted that it isn't yet.


Either way - I want to apologise if you don't like my post. I am trying my best to be genuine, but I can't make everyone happy by being honest and explaining things from a game design standpoint. I hope you undestand.

[ACE135]

"Series One rewards may be claimed until the end of Series Two"

My mother tongue isn't englisch but even I understood that sentence in the way that you can claim the rewards as long as you achieved the required series level. That you can't get experience and therfore unlock more rewards for a past series when a new one is already active is kind of obvious to me.

[Sinstrel]

In every other MMO game I have played, I've been able to go back and grind out old PvP gear I missed out on if I took a break from the game for a few months (or a year). In my eyes, it is pretty silly to have items slowly delete themselves from the game via FOMO as the rewards become unavailable over time, and as the people who did get the rewards during that time but no longer play.

Seems like a waste of development time/resources. Battlepass items should be purchaseable the following season. It would be pretty dumb if only people who played in Heavensward patch 3.2 and grinded the raid before patch 3.4 only had Alexander raid items, and everyone who bought the game in Shadowbringers can never get them.

[Elfidan]

In every other MMO game I have played, I've been able to go back and grind out old PvP gear I missed out on if I took a break from the game for a few months (or a year). In my eyes, it is pretty silly to have items slowly delete themselves from the game via FOMO as the rewards become unavailable over time, and as the people who did get the rewards during that time but no longer play.

Seems like a waste of development time/resources. Battlepass items should be purchaseable the following season. It would be pretty dumb if only people who played in Heavensward patch 3.2 and grinded the raid before patch 3.4 only had Alexander raid items, and everyone who bought the game in Shadowbringers can never get them.

It's not really anything new. They do the same thing with holiday event items. Wow does the same thing with its gladiator gear and mounts too.

[Sinstrel]

It's not really anything new. They do the same thing with holiday event items. Wow does the same thing with its gladiator gear and mounts too.

You can indeed purchase all seasons of previous PvP gear in WoW with the exception of the specific reskins for achieving certain rank milestones unless they have changed that in the past few years.