So...gonna re-release previous PvP series rewards for crystals or NOT?

[cutestfox]

Now, wrapping up this rant because the text was too large for one post, I'd like to draw your attention to this:
https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/C..._(Accessories)

As I understand it, these accessories were once exclusive ranking rewards for the Feast, yes? And in spite of them having been available for trophy crystals for a while now, I've yet to see someone claim the sanctity of their time-gated cosmetics have been tainted.

I think the accessories are a different story
Even those who ranked hated their distribution because you were forced to either not compete or just cope with not getting color you liked and keep playing
They weren't really proper rewards but rather a meme that just got thrown at you from my perspective

[Commander_Justitia]

Now, wrapping up this rant because the text was too large for one post, I'd like to draw your attention to this:
https://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/wiki/C..._(Accessories)

As I understand it, these accessories were once exclusive ranking rewards for the Feast, yes? And in spite of them having been available for trophy crystals for a while now, I've yet to see someone claim the sanctity of their time-gated cosmetics have been tainted.

Yes, you got them based on tier ranking for that season only, they were from the very first seasons. They are even some top10 earrings, which they did not release.

I know PvP players didn't like it. Because it felt like SE is testing out the water how far they can go.

Even those who ranked hated their distribution because you were forced to either not compete or just cope with not getting color you liked and keep playing
They weren't really proper rewards but rather a meme that just got thrown at you from my perspective

This is also true. Players didn't care so much about them, but when they cared they would have liked to get all below their max tier ranking. Similar how the system is now when you get Crystal achievement you get all the below achievements too. It was sadly not like that back then. If you wanted a Bronze Wolf Achievement, you actually had to be Bronze Tier during a season. So many Top PvP players never got the title, which gave points too lol.

[Gunz_Zbestest]

Modern-day game design - you want your players to do something, you gotta give them their cookie for spending time on the hard-mode of choice or else they gonna play a game that will give them the cookie for playing the hard-mode of choice (and therefore not play FFXIV).

You can close your eyes and pretend it isn't there or relevant, but as we are experiencing entertainment in abundance and are short on the resource "time", we have to make decisions what to play - and as it turns out, putting a carrot on a stick works better than an empty promise and a wet handshake because "congrats you did it". See Criterion participation for that particular reason.

I'm pretty sure we both are going in circles with this.

I can tell you that this is not true for me. I get every season of frontlines and my trophy crystals roll over 50+ times for each series that I just convert the collars into wolf marks and buy a bunch of materia to sell on the mb. There are many folks who enjoy frontlines specifically for the quick ability to move around, come back and sit down for a match. Yeah I grinded the yoki event for that glowing ghost mount but it didn't hurt me that they increased the drop rate for players that came later, nor should it bother me on a deep level that I would actively campaign against it.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

I can tell you that this is not true for me. I get every season of frontlines and my trophy crystals roll over 50+ times for each series that I just convert the collars into wolf marks and buy a bunch of materia to sell on the mb. There are many folks who enjoy frontlines specifically for the quick ability to move around, come back and sit down for a match. Yeah I grinded the yoki event for that glowing ghost mount but it didn't hurt me that they increased the drop rate for players that came later, nor should it bother me on a deep level that I would actively campaign against it.

I think you missed my point a bit, but let me clarify.

Casual PvP (Frontlines, Rival Wings, Crystalline Conflict non-ranked) is doing fine rewards wise, arguably Rival Wings could simply use a Daily Challenge like Frontlines - the condition of reward incentivisation has already been checked with Wolfmarks and Trophy Crystals, among other things, as you nicely outlined.

However there was a time when the rewards were not as high and participation was low in the past.

My point more strictly refers to Ranked pvp, which gameplay wise is identical to Casual CC, but with several limitations such as player pool split based on skill tiers and progression, as well as being a generally more stressful environment than Casual CC by nature of actually staking not just your own rank progression but that of four other teammates too.

Simply put, Ranked PvP is a joke when it comes to rewards considering the limitations and hardships you are being burdened with. That was my actual point.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Do people get cookies from completing I don't know, BG3 on honour mode or anything? Do people get cookies from ranking game master in SC2 or other multiplayer games? The reason I went into the Feast and tried to first see how high I could achieve casually, and then later seasons went more seriously about it, wasn't for the rewards. It's a cool cookiee but I'd have done it anyway out of curiosity and challenge, and because I wanted to like the mode. And the reason I didn't reiterate the experience in the following seasons was because no, I actually didn't like the mode that much, it was kind of dull.

It goes deeper than just cookies.

BG3 is a better game and playing experience for most players than Crystalline Conflict in general,. BG3 is also not an MMORPG with public character progression - apples and oranges my dude. A better comparison would be World of Warcraft in general.

Also congrats, you are one of few players that are considered outliers in a statistic, glad for you that you aren't driven by rewards - it doesn't change the fact that many more aren't like you and I think you'd tell me a lie if you said you wouldn't find it nice if there was a reward for doing something you already like.

Yes the mode wasnt great - the point is, rewards drive incentive and if you can choose "activity A" or "activity B, which is just like A, but more stressful/annoying for little reason". most players will opt for activity A.

[Picothea]

I think you'd tell me a lie if you said you wouldn't find it nice if there was a reward for doing something you already like.

We need to think about the nuance in this idea, however. You're talking about rewards for playing content in a broad sense, and there's nothing wrong with that idea. FFXIV is full of rewards - you can't set foot in an ARR zone without getting achievement point progress just for mapping it, to name one of the smallest and most random implementations. In Valence's own post, they said "it's a cool cookiee but I'd have done it anyway" so yes, rewards are cool, they're not unwelcome.

But there's no reason to make those rewards be time-sensitive. In doing this, you're taking away more "cookies" than you're offering, and you're explicitly telling the latecomers they're being barred from the cookies they might want. Don't you think more players would be getting into ranked PvP right now if those rewards were still available, for one?

[Mistress_Irika]

I'm only going to say this once, because I'm not sure why the topic is still going after all these years.

Despite the feast items being the same as your battle pass items as far as time is concern the feast items is not a FOMO reward. It is a ranking reward. Unlike the pve counterpart that has everyone just beating the mode for the rewards these items were competed for. With that said, the devs made a mistake adding mounts and glamour as a top 100 reward to begin with knowing that majority of players collects those 2 without question. They made a mistake they now have to deal with to this day. Looking at the rewards themselves, I personally feel as though they didn't really have many ideas seeing that more than half of the rewards were reskins of the original reward of that type. Should they ever decide to flip and make these rewards accessible and easy to obtain you're basically letting everyone know that you're better off not stressing yourself in rank and waiting until the season is over, much like most people do anyways when it comes to extremes, savages, and ultimates. Rank would certainly be dead because of a lack of meaningful rewards. Plates don't cut it. You may as well be putting in all of that work today to become number one just for bragging rights for the next season. Plates and titles are not comparable to the mounts that was offered. If that was the case, then we wouldn't need discord to keep Rival Wings alive in the first place. Whether you like it or not, folks aren't going to play ranked unless there's something on the line, much like the mounts and armor that shouldn't have been offered to begin with. There is people like me that can care less for a reward when jumping in. I just want to improve and keep up with the best of the best. For the most part, you need something rare that people are going to give value over in order for rank to work, because rank is all about competition and bring the best out of everyone just for the chance to prove that you're better than everyone else. No one is fighting over a participation trophy. For rank to be considered the hard version of pvp it's being treated more casual than savage, extremes, and ultimates combined.

While I can't speak for savages and ultimates, the moogle event does offer certain mounts coming from certain extremes if people want to collect them without ever visiting a single hard content. Hint hint.

[Picothea]

the feast items is not a FOMO reward. It is a ranking reward.

While I agree with much of your post, this part is objectively not true, the two ideas are not mutually exclusive. It is a ranking reward, yes, and it induced FOMO in many players who learned about it. That's why this type of post keeps being made, after all - people missed out, it's a bummer, we don't want it to happen again with Series, and we'd like to have this backlog of mistakes fixed for the sake of consistency and welcoming newcomers.

[Valence]

BG3 is a better game and playing experience for most players than Crystalline Conflict in general,. BG3 is also not an MMORPG with public character progression - apples and oranges my dude. A better comparison would be World of Warcraft in general.

Also congrats, you are one of few players that are considered outliers in a statistic, glad for you that you aren't driven by rewards - it doesn't change the fact that many more aren't like you and I think you'd tell me a lie if you said you wouldn't find it nice if there was a reward for doing something you already like.

Yes the mode wasnt great - the point is, rewards drive incentive and if you can choose "activity A" or "activity B, which is just like A, but more stressful/annoying for little reason". most players will opt for activity A.

( I'm not your dude )

So because it's not a MMO by this arbitrary filter it shouldn't be comparable? What makes you think this drives an impassable wedge between both then? Judged purely on an engagement perspective, people go play games without any rewards behind more often than not, if just steam achievements. One could argue that a solo player game which has a finite game session unlike a MMO makes this different by this fact alone, which is true, but you get players that keep restarting it over and over even though it becomes a repeat because they still do find engagement in it for nothing. They want to experience different paths, they want to try them in honour mode too, could be anything. And maybe they'll come back to it in one year after not touching it for other things. I still find amusing that you consider BG3 a batter game and playing experience than CC. Perhaps then SE should strive and make their own game a better game and retain players from other things than just low hanging carrots?

When it comes to multiplayer games that actually don't have a finite session lifetime however, that difference can't even be made and I find interesting that you only chose to address the BG3 example and not the other one. Ranked players just play ranked, and even in the case of LoL, I do believe that past a point they have unlocked most stuff right? I'm not very familiar with Mobas, but do they only play for skins once they have all their heroes? Or do they play to try and go higher in ranks regardless of what they have to gain out of it? The latter is definitely the case for many multiplayer online games. They just get a neat placement at the end of the season and that's it, and they go again for the next one. They engage with the content because the content engages them and don't need a carrot to keep engaging.

You're telling me that i'm an outlier, I counter with that I'm perhaps an outlier in this very specific MMO format because MMO players are absolutely weird, but I'd argue that no in fact, it's the MMO players that are the outliers when it comes to competitive multiplayer game engagement.

Another real reason why ranked has trouble going off is because the population it reaches and attracts is way too inbred and small. Even on multiplayer games of which it's the core purpose and gameplay and not considered a side activity, they actually have about 70% or above the active player base only engaging with the co-op SC2 modes for example, and within the remainder there is a big chunk that also only touches unranked as well. That's the reality of MMO ranked pvp, it's way too niche to keep the fire burning on its own and rewards are the usual bait to ensure it does at least a little.

I specifically said that the cookiee was nice on top of it, but that's about it. I'm not masochistic enough to keep playing something I don't enjoy just because there is rewards. I find it even a little toxic as an attitude to have.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

So because it's not a MMO by this arbitrary filter it shouldn't be comparable? What makes you think this drives an impassable wedge between both then? Judged purely on an engagement perspective, people go play games without any rewards behind more often than not, if just steam achievements. One could argue that a solo player game which has a finite game session unlike a MMO makes this different by this fact alone, which is true, but you get players that keep restarting it over and over even though it becomes a repeat because they still do find engagement in it for nothing. They want to experience different paths, they want to try them in honour mode too, could be anything. And maybe they'll come back to it in one year after not touching it for other things. I still find amusing that you consider BG3 a batter game and playing experience than CC. Perhaps then SE should strive and make their own game a better game and retain players from other things than just low hanging carrots?

When it comes to multiplayer games that actually don't have a finite session lifetime however, that difference can't even be made and I find interesting that you only chose to address the BG3 example and not the other one. Ranked players just play ranked, and even in the case of LoL, I do believe that past a point they have unlocked most stuff right? I'm not very familiar with Mobas, but do they only play for skins once they have all their heroes? Or do they play to try and go higher in ranks regardless of what they have to gain out of it? The latter is definitely the case for many multiplayer online games. They just get a neat placement at the end of the season and that's it, and they go again for the next one. They engage with the content because the content engages them and don't need a carrot to keep engaging.

MMOs are designed to keep players engaged long-term through progression systems and community-driven experiences. Comparing a semi-finite, replayable game like BG3 or even ranked systems in LoL, which rely on tight and inherently engaging gameplay loops, to an MMO PvP mode doesn't work. MMOs rely on rewards to justify the significant time investment they ask of players.

Games like BG3 succeed on the strength of their narrative, mechanics, and replayability. But here's the critical difference: single-player games don’t need to sustain a player base for matchmaking or queues. Their engagement isn't tied to other players, which is why they don’t require additional incentives. Multiplayer modes, especially in MMOs, live or die by participation. Without incentives, there's a risk factor of those systems becoming barren.

As for competitive/ranked-focused games, while ranked players in LoL or SC2 (also Overwatch 2) often play for gameplay/intrinsic satisfaction, these games still use rewards—seasonal skins, exclusive badges, and events—to incentivize engagement. Without those, you’d likely see a drop in participation, particularly among less competitive players. These players are crucial for fast, smooth queues to engage with content in a timely manner. They also form the foundation that enables anyone who may want to go above and beyond to actually get to play games without excessive waiting times.

Rewards serve as an invitation to try something new, offering a nudge to explore content you might not have considered otherwise. You can't know if you'll enjoy something until you try it, and incentives can provide that initial push. Without them, many players might never even give certain activities a chance, regardless of how engaging the content might ultimately be.

Also, the reason I didn't address Starcraft 2 initially is because I forgot, jesus. Not everything is intended as cherrypicking.

You're telling me that i'm an outlier, I counter with that I'm perhaps an outlier in this very specific MMO format because MMO players are absolutely weird, but I'd argue that no in fact, it's the MMO players that are the outliers when it comes to competitive multiplayer game engagement.

MMO players might indeed have different engagement patterns compared to players of purely competitive games, but that doesn’t make their behaviors irrelevant. MMOs have distinct designs and player motivations, often emphasizing progression, community, and time investment over purely skill-based competition. In this context, relying on rewards to drive participation isn't "weird" but a logical response in MMORPGs.

Competitive multiplayer games outside of MMOs also use rewards extensively to maintain engagement and ensure healthy matchmaking pools, so calling MMO players "outliers" misses the broader trend. Incentives aren’t an MMO-exclusive phenomenon; they’re a common tool across various (not all) gaming formats.

Another real reason why ranked has trouble going off is because the population it reaches and attracts is way too inbred and small.

This argument seems contradictory. If the ranked player base is small and niche, it further underscores the importance of external incentives to broaden its appeal. The core gameplay of Crystalline Conflict clearly isn't the issue, as its Casual mode sees consistent activity throughout most of the day. The problem is ranked participation falling off over time, particularly in ranks without meaningful reward incentives.

Additionally, long queue times further reduce engagement, creating a feedback loop where fewer players participating leads to worse matchmaking experiences, discouraging even more players. This "Catch-22" makes active participation critical to maintaining healthy matchmaking.

If the ranked population struggles to grow, the solution isn’t to ignore or remove incentives but to enhance them to attract a more diverse player base. This approach acknowledges the systemic challenges of ranked modes without unfairly blaming core gameplay.

Even on multiplayer games of which it's the core purpose and gameplay and not considered a side activity, they actually have about 70% or above the active player base only engaging with the co-op SC2 modes for example, and within the remainder there is a big chunk that also only touches unranked as well.

Your take actually strengthens the case for rewards as possible incentive. If 70% of players in a competitive game like Starcraft 2 prefer co-op or unranked, it's a testament to how rewards and alternative modes help sustain broader engagement. Ranked modes appeal to a specific subset of players, and incentives are a proven way to encourage more casual or less competitive players to participate, ensuring those systems remain viable, playable and active.

That's the reality of MMO ranked pvp, it's way too niche to keep the fire burning on its own and rewards are the usual bait to ensure it does at least a little.

If ranked PvP in MMOs is inherently niche, then rewards are an effective strategy to sustain participation. Without such incentives, modes like Crystalline Conflict would likely struggle even more to retain players, let alone attract new ones. Rewards aren't just "bait"; they’re an integral part of modern game design to ensure accessibility and engagement across different player demographics.

I specifically said that the cookiee was nice on top of it, but that's about it. I'm not masochistic enough to keep playing something I don't enjoy just because there is rewards. I find it even a little toxic as an attitude to have.

Well, good for you I guess. However, rewards aren’t designed to compel players into "toxic" engagement—they’re designed to lower the barrier to entry and provide a sense of progression or recognition. Many players don’t approach games with the same mindset and may need external motivators to engage with or even try certain content.