Is the "One Steppe at a Time V" achievement reward a bit cruel to put up?

[Chasingstars]

Winning is the goal since it grants various rewards - it can be the win itself, experience, tomes, whatever.

Which is just varying amounts. It doesn't change the luck-based nature of frontlines. As it still is a participation reward, just like the malmstone series rewards are participation rewards. The only difference between a person who wins every frontlines match and a person who gets 2nd/3rd place with most of their matches is the amount earned and how long it takes to complete a given achievement.

What you described is your own justification for not achieving the goal,

I assume your not saying that is my own justifcation for how I play. I said that a person could semi-afk and get same rewards as a person who did. After all, I seen this behavior from teammates who will end matches with 0/0/0 as their KDA but were in the full match of frontlines.

as well as how rewards are allocated.

Yeah because it a timewaster most of the time from a "win or nothing" point of view. You have a baseline 33% chance of victory. if you play 3 matches in a day, get 1st place, 2nd place, and 3rd place once for each, then that means 20 to 40 minutes of your day was eaten by an activity that gave you no reward if you only care about getting 1st place and therefore progressing an achievement.

As I take issue with the matter of "Winning is the goal of pvp [frontlines]". As you will be far more disappointed and frustrated at losing which has a baseline 66% chance to happen.

The only way that "winning is not the goal" is if someone is completely apathetic to the outcome of the match - for example, some could care less as to the amount of series EXP rewarded that they get from the match. In which case that person is likely to make little or no effort.

News flash, I don't give two shits if I win or lose. But I will fully participate with my team anyway. A healthy dose of apathy is required for frontlines to roll with what the RNG gives you, its what lets me have fun even if my team comes in third, where I don't get frustrated.

i doubt that they're even having fun at that case, in which I go back to wondering why they're even there.

It's certainly a healthier mentality to have with frontlines and treat it as what is than having a "win or nothing" mentality with it and becoming miserable from getting loss after loss especially if you are actively grinding it in a day for the series malmstone of that season. I already got the rewards I wanted from that season and just the general frontlines achievements rewards of the mounts and the coat.

After all, here is a screenshot from my previous series malmstone where I just kept playing for fun after I got the reards. Which yes that alone translated into 160,000 wolfmarks.