Why do casual players seem entitled to cosmetic items added in game?

[Mawlzy]

See this is where the problem is coming from

1) conflation of 2 points in this thread. Casual content being under-offered this expansion is not the same thing as saying “if you both aren’t willing to try CAR or buy it you shouldn’t feel entitled to it”. I fully agree that casual content is pathetic this expansion but that’s got near nothing to do with the idea that if you aren’t willing to go for a rare item in various ways you shouldn’t feel entitled to it. Is there an argument the hair shouldn’t have been a savage reward; yes I’d say there is. But in the context of the fact it is one if you won’t try one of the two avenues to get it then that’s more a personal problem

2) the reward is no more “casual” than it is “hardcore”. You specifically use the analogy “what if BIS was locked behind IS” directly implying that this is a casual reward locked behind high end as your analogy is the reverse. What makes this a “casual” reward? How do you determine what rewards low effort casual only players intrinsically have the right to? What if this reward was instead say a reward for 10/10/10 in Bozja. That’s all casual content but it’s a long grind people wouldn’t like. How do you determine as a playerbase wide arrangement of who is intrinsically entitled to what based on what content. It feels like most of these complaints are proxy complaints for lack of content

Sure, people tend to complain more when they are annoyed about other aspects of game direction. Many people are currently very annoyed.

FWIW I don't think people are entitled to any in-game reward. But "being willing to try CAR" doesn't earn you the reward, does it? And encouraging people to try CAR is a pretty bad idea when most cannot clear it and will simply annoy the raiders.

So sure, it can be bought. And many casual players, rightly or wrongly, see this as their gil being siphoned off to hand to the favorite players. The players SQEX actually values. Because they play the game how SQEX wants them to. See how unpleasant this gets?

Basically I agree with you. The complaints about the hairstyle being locked behind savage are intertwined with a host of other complaints about game direction, the majority of which are legitimate. In that purist and abstract sense, I can see how the complaints come across as entitlement.

Here's a thought experiment. Let's suppose six months ago, we had a thread here titled "What could SQEX do in 7.1 to most annoy the playerbase?"

I would bet folding money a top answer would be "lock a long hairstyle behind a savage raid." The only reason it might not appear is most people couldn't conceive of SQEX doing something that monumentally stupid.

[Kiet]

I'm not entitled to the hairstyle. Conversely, Square Enix isn't entitled to my money. This is just yet another thing that feels bad in an expansion full of things that feel bad. It feels like all the cool new cosmetics are store content now, or locked behind a 24 person Savage. Yes, you can by it for 50 million, but most people don't have that kind of money lying around unless they're doing the FC submarine thing. And the price will only increase as people run the content less.

[Mawlzy]

I'm not entitled to the hairstyle. Conversely, Square Enix isn't entitled to my money. This is just yet another thing that feels bad in an expansion full of things that feel bad. It feels like all the cool new cosmetics are store content now, or locked behind a 24 person Savage. Yes, you can by it for 50 million, but most people don't have that kind of money lying around unless they're doing the FC submarine thing. And the price will only increase as people run the content less.

Right, and ultimately how players feel about a game is what determines if they continue to subscribe to it.

[Mawlzy]

2) the reward is no more “casual” than it is “hardcore”. You specifically use the analogy “what if BIS was locked behind IS” directly implying that this is a casual reward locked behind high end as your analogy is the reverse. What makes this a “casual” reward?

Here's a key difference. A non-raider has no use for BiS gear. All players can use a hairstyle.

Does that matter? I'm not even sure. This whole episode and the nasty reactions have soured me on the game tbh.

[Saraide]

Here's a key difference. A non-raider has no use for BiS gear. All players can use a hairstyle.

Does that matter? I'm not even sure. This whole episode and the nasty reactions have soured me on the game tbh.

All players can use mounts aswell. The axolotl thread was bait btw.

[BigCheez]

i miss the days when we are just players and not sorted into these rankings

when i joined this game in 0'20 it wasn't like this. there was no casual or raider. nobody respected raiders really and the devs didn't cater to them. so the toxic ones left for games that they could get their high from.
I was even allowed into shiva prog parties with no savage clear experience , trash dps, no fflogs uploaded and barebones understand of mechanics. i emt many wonderful people who helped set the expectations raiding for me when my current static were forcing me to prog to p2 all alone in pf from scratch with no savage clears. after that i got invited to e8s static run by an extremely skilled BLM who never once cared about my dps or performance and we eventually went on to clear it

nowadays this would simply never happen because id just be called a waste of peoples time

Skip soar or disband.

[Tint]

Here's a key difference. A non-raider has no use for BiS gear.

This is simply not true. That's like saying non-raiders have no use for learning their rotation properly.

BiS gear helps with clearing content faster on all levels, which is espcially usefull if you are grinding content over and over. Even Fates. Plus it helps to outweight bad optimization and errors in your rotation to some degree. It also helps with survivability when you eat a mechanic.

And of course it's simply nice to have some sort of character progression and getting stronger, this is an RPG after all.

[Eyrilona]

This is simply not true. That's like saying non-raiders have no use for learning their rotation properly.

BiS gear helps with clearing content faster on all levels, which is espcially usefull if you are grinding content over and over. Even Fates. Plus it helps to outweight bad optimization and errors in your rotation to some degree. It also helps with survivability when you eat a mechanic.

And of course it's simply nice to have some sort of character progression and getting stronger, this is an RPG after all.

You are technically correct, but in this case that may not be the best kind of correct. The margin of difference just isn't relevant enough in any content that a casual player will be facing - it's like expecting a car designed for the race circuit to speed up your daily commute in city traffic.

But in going in for a 'technically correct', you use a technicality to distract from a fundamentally valid argument about why certain types of reward should or should not be behind certain types of content.

[Supersnow845]

You are technically correct, but in this case that may not be the best kind of correct. The margin of difference just isn't relevant enough in any content that a casual player will be facing - it's like expecting a car designed for the race circuit to speed up your daily commute in city traffic.

But in going in for a 'technically correct', you use a technicality to distract from a fundamentally valid argument about why certain types of reward should or should not be behind certain types of content.

By that logic there is literally nothing besides gear high end content could reward you with that isn’t logically better suited to casual content because the only thing that high end can do to justify itself as more deserving of a reward than casual content is to reward something that makes high end content easier (ie gear). If a reward either benefits neither or benefits both it doesn’t work

Glam weapons, mounts, adventurer plate stuff, titles, none of them can be justified under that logic because there is nothing that intrinsically links them to high end content

[MrJPtheAssassin]

So sure, it can be bought. And many casual players, rightly or wrongly, see this as their gil being siphoned off to hand to the favorite players. The players SQEX actually values. Because they play the game how SQEX wants them to. See how unpleasant this gets?

Honestly, I never thought about this before but Im glad you bought this up. The casual to mid-core players can buy the hairstyle from the MB but it's not really a feel-good buy honestly. Like look at this patch, raiders got everything. They got new content, 2 mounts, a hairstyle, more gear(that can be used as glam and BiS), and a way to make lots of money. What did casual to mid-core players get? The ability to give raiders gil for a mount or hairstyle. It just feels like a rich get richer and poor get poorer situation where the favorited player base gets everything and the other player base only gets the ability to hand over their money to the favorites.