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

[Picothea]

...

Ok, lots of talk of "rewards" again, which nobody was arguing against. I still don't see why those rewards need to be time-sensitive or gated to an extremely small percentage of the game's playercount by artificially limited numbers? I agree with Valence that the solution isn't to patch up an underperforming gamemode with rewards, they should work on making the gamemode more appealing in the first place.

And again, keep your medals and badges and titles and achievements, people aren't interested in those. It's just the items that need to be freed up, stuff taking up space on our hard drives which serve no purpose. You could play this game for three-thousand nine-hundred hours and notice maybe 2 Feast outfits on other players (my situation). For all the repetitive arguing about it, I've yet to see any reason why FFXIV should do this 1 reward distribution in such a different fashion to the entire rest of the game, or why it should be more exclusive than ultimate raids, as if the gamemode would implode otherwise. I have friends who are still doing Stormblood ultimates. Again - if you build it, they will come.

Edit: I'll also add my own perspective for clarity: If the rewards hadn't been time-sensitive, I would be playing the darn ranked gamemode. But I'm turned away because forum discussions have weirdos talking about "punishments" against players for not meeting their standards, and insisting they want to keep videogame cosmetics permanently exclusive. It's similar to a child that won't share a toy, but to be more accurate, it's a child that won't let others have the same model of toy either. At the end of the day, this is a videogame for people as young as 13 years old, we're not talking about sophisticated adult sports here.

Edit 2: When you were talking about Starcraft's seasonal skins, did you mean the old ones that have since been added to the store, so you can buy them with no time limit? Sure, I'd be satisfied if they would at least put the Feast items on the shop, that's one possible solution, wink wink.

[Archeron]

"If you build it, they will come" Doesn't work when you build an empty storefront that offers ugly weapons for a high price (The price being time you're investing into earning Commendation Crystals.)

I do not see any reason to participate in Ranked CC. I don't like the weapons, I don't care about titles, or adventure plate frames. The mode offers me nothing, so I do not participate. This is the mindset of an NA player that can be applied to literally any piece of content to explain why we don't bother putting effort into content we deem a waste of time.

If you want to drive people to play a game mode, it needs to offer compensation for the time invested. Give us Tomestone Ilvl gear, Give us unique sexy rewards that appeals to our vain desire to flex on those beneath us. The early FoMo PvP sets would have been perfect for this purpose, very clearly by how many people are asking for them to come back. They should come back. (As was promised long ago, without a timeframe as to just when they would return.) Feast gear however I do not believe should make a return, unless the Feast itself makes a comeback. But knowing SE, anything they bring back will be brought back in the most insulting manner possiblem, like perhaps throwing the old Feast sets up for wolf marks, or crystals, while making the FoMo sets a hard and long grind.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

[...]

Im sorry I am going so in-depth about this, but I'm not going unchallenged when discussing whether or not rewards matter for player participation - sorry if I am not giving full thought to your posts in the meantime.

But to your points - again, I am not in the position of thinking they shouldnt return, at least not the original sets - as I said many times (and I am really trying to make my points clear), replicas (functionally identical in everything except name) are completely okay. However, I think it is a weird take to complain about the underperformance of a gamemode (Ranked) and trying to look for reasons to anything but rewards, when Casual mode is very much active - meaning the core gameplay is at least in a playable state where players interact with it. Could it use improvements? Absolutely could core gameplay be improved upon. Is it the only issue? No, certainly not.

If I argue "why" the FOMO exists, its because of devil's advocacy. I do not agree with it from a personal point of view. I think the reward structure should've never been as strict as it is, but hindsight helps little in the present.

To your Edit 1 - I can see why and I think largely, the reward pool for ranked simply is awful and it helps absolutely nothing that certain things are time-sensitive (or at least used to be).
To your Edit 2 - sort of. Obviously the monetization structure definitely means they might end up on the store there, so it would not need to be the same in FFXIV (lol Mogstation Feast armour on top of sub, please no). I personally think allowing them to be reobtained for an adequate and fitting grind (not grindy, but not essentially free either, as an accomplishment for sticking around) is a good way to go about it.

[Mistress_Irika]

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.

You have newcomers unable to access rival wings because everyone that played before has... *sigh*
Adding those rewards fixes things for everyone that wants them. It doesn't fix rank however. I would argue that rank would get slightly worse while casual sees a ton of activity. It is a solution that works in the short term but backfires in the long term. Everyone plays and grabs the rewards. Now what? Rank already has nothing exclusive. Are we supposed to continue in that direction? If so, I see no hope for rank. It's already bad enough we're letting people ride to platinum while actively punishing those below that rank just to keep low rank queues going.

[Commander_Justitia]

You have newcomers unable to access rival wings because everyone that played before has... *sigh*
Adding those rewards fixes things for everyone that wants them. It doesn't fix rank however. I would argue that rank would get slightly worse while casual sees a ton of activity. It is a solution that works in the short term but backfires in the long term. Everyone plays and grabs the rewards. Now what? Rank already has nothing exclusive. Are we supposed to continue in that direction? If so, I see no hope for rank. It's already bad enough we're letting people ride to platinum while actively punishing those below that rank just to keep low rank queues going.

Damn, someone caring more about the state of the PvP ranked mode itself, than the 3 pixels tied to it. How refreshing. You will still will fall on deaf ears, they want "item item item now and always for everyone, because f PvP ranked"

[Commander_Justitia]

To your Edit 2 - sort of. Obviously the monetization structure definitely means they might end up on the store there, so it would not need to be the same in FFXIV (lol Mogstation Feast armour on top of sub, please no

Please 500$ a seasonal reward, would support. Gives my account more value. ✌������ You will see even more PvP vets selling their accounts than they are already doing. Of course I would never do such a thing. I only buy rank1 trophies with gil if somebody wants to sell them again.

[Valence]

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.

I do not disagree and never disagreed with the idea that rewards provide additional incentives. See my first comment on a cookie always being a nice addition. You told it yourself however, players in multiplayers games are engaged by engaging gameplay loops, and even without rewards they'd still work great. Well, then, where are our own engaging gameplay loops? I do think CC is decently good at this though, which leaves the player base, which I do feel is inherently reward driven, which was my first and unique point really. I never intended to argue AGAINST the notion of cookies and rewards. I just sighed at MMO players (and I've been playing MMOs for a while so that also makes me one of them). If it takes rewards for the modes to work, and exclusive trophies to further attract people, then so be it. I'll keep my own opinions about that kind of mindset to myself in the future even if I do find it very pavlovian.

The argument isn't contradictory and I do agree that adding more rewards will by necessity attract more players to make the player pool less inbred. Once again, not arguing and never arguing against the lack of rewards. If anything, this tends to counter your own arguments about keeping some rewards exclusive if it proves to attract more players, and less hardcore players to try their luck at ranked or even just pvp. Casual mode right now seems pretty healthy on its own to be honest, which is a mixture of crystal and wolf collar/marks rewards but also the mode itself, else they'd just play FL.

The case of SC2 mainly illustrates that pvp, especially 1v1, doesn't attract a big part of any playerbase even for pvp centric games. And once more, this is not a case I made against rewards.


Edit: to add onto incentives since ranked participation is a problem, I've actually advocated for a complete merge of casual and ranked modes in the past, with caveats, where only you can see your ELO/MMR until you get high enough in ELO, but therefore keeping a lot of the casual base casual, and still providing a little better matchmaking for skill levels. This on its own would probably naturally push casuals that do perform well to climb up and actually perhaps give a try to the ranked mode. You could even imagine an opt-in / opt-out toggle that hides ELO and league for players that perform well but still dont want to engage with the ranked ladder competition, and they'd not appear in the leaderboards either. I'm sure there is flaws to such a system perhaps, but I feel it could potentially be a good way to sustain queues with bodies without flustering casuals either.

[Valence]

"If you build it, they will come" Doesn't work when you build an empty storefront that offers ugly weapons for a high price (The price being time you're investing into earning Commendation Crystals.)

I do not see any reason to participate in Ranked CC. I don't like the weapons, I don't care about titles, or adventure plate frames. The mode offers me nothing, so I do not participate. This is the mindset of an NA player that can be applied to literally any piece of content to explain why we don't bother putting effort into content we deem a waste of time.

If you want to drive people to play a game mode, it needs to offer compensation for the time invested. Give us Tomestone Ilvl gear, Give us unique sexy rewards that appeals to our vain desire to flex on those beneath us. The early FoMo PvP sets would have been perfect for this purpose, very clearly by how many people are asking for them to come back. They should come back. (As was promised long ago, without a timeframe as to just when they would return.) Feast gear however I do not believe should make a return, unless the Feast itself makes a comeback. But knowing SE, anything they bring back will be brought back in the most insulting manner possiblem, like perhaps throwing the old Feast sets up for wolf marks, or crystals, while making the FoMo sets a hard and long grind.

If you don't see any rewards for you and that the content isn't for you either, then don't participate as you say if you don't like it.

It's frankly stunning to read that kind of takes when on the other hand in FL threads you have people complaining about "casual bots" just being there for the xp rewards and polluting a mode they don't even like doing or put effort into. I'm not sure ranked CC would benefit that much from a flood of uninterested players that are just there for the rewards either. As for those that would tryhard more if we take into account top ranking rewards, then it would just introduce more toxicity than there currently is.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

[essentially entire post]

Fair enough.

[Picothea]

[...]

I'm also sorry if my own posts have been showing my frustration in the meantime. There are certain other people who say baffling things whenever the topic comes up, and it makes getting to the honest conversations a slog.