Quantum Content Feedback: Rewards

[IzanamiNoMikotoo]

This post contains spoilers about the rewards from the new Quantum content released in 7.35, so read at your own risk!

The new Quantum content is really fun. The fight is great, and the scaling system is a nice idea. However, I feel like there are still some issues, and the biggest one is probably the reward system:

When completing the content, you receive multiple "Sack of First Light" as a reward. When turning them in, you have a chance at two mounts, a parasol, and around 99% of the time just a "fragment", of which you need 99 to trade for a mount or parasol. While I enjoy mount farming, this is not enough at all. I know many people who think the content is interesting but have no interest in doing it because they don’t care about mounts.

Possible solution:
Add more variety of meaningful and proportional(!) rewards like minions, special glamour, more fashion accessories, expensive dyes, upgrade materials, or even gear!

Savage released many months ago, and this content is as hard or harder than Savage. Finding people to do Savage now is a nightmare, and some players might simply not want to repeat it after all this time. Adding Savage-level gear to Savage-level content would give some players an incentive to participate again.

You could also include special items, like unique glamours or cosmetics for clearing it perfectly without deaths (though I’m not sure if clearing with dying is even possible at this point at +40). In general, the game needs a larger variety of rewards that match the difficulty of the content. This would give players more reasons to repeat the activity and offer alternative sources for valuable items.

I think this issue applies to most content in the game right now. Many types of content only reward a very narrow range of items. Quantum only really rewards mounts. Alliance raids mostly give glamour, minions, and orchestrion rolls. Dungeons provide gear, which is really just glamour, plus the occasional minion.

Yoshi-P recently stated that he wants to make the game appeal to everyone, ensuring that every piece of content attracts a wide audience. While the team has delivered in terms of difficulty, the reward systems are actively working against that goal. For most players to engage with a piece of content, it needs rewards (whether items or experiences like high difficulty) that appeal to different kinds of players. A broad reward pool ensures there’s something for everyone and gives more people a reason to play.

To clarify, this does not mean that I want everyone to get everything just handed to them at all. Things need to stay exclusive to a point.

[Valence]

I mean no matter the rewards, if you make something savage+ difficulty, you'll not attract nor design for everyone, so I assume that what's aimed at "everyone" is the deep dungeon itself and not the final trial, which has been added specifically to include raiders into the content (which is cool). Adding carrots in the reward pool won't just magically make people go for savage+.

Or did you mean to attract raiders more because you think it's not sufficient?

[Akroya]

The biggest issue right now isn’t just the difficulty balance — it’s that the reward structure in XIV simply doesn’t respect players’ time or effort.

We’re six months into the current tier, Savage is still locked, and the “rewards” for new or side content are almost entirely cosmetic. Meanwhile, the cash shop gets a brand-new outfit every two weeks, yet somehow the dev team is “struggling to come up with rewards” for in-game activities. Come on.
Same case as it was with Criterion (Savage) — for beating such demanding content, you were rewarded with some Materia and a furnishing item. Like… bruh.

Look at Eureka or BA — the only reason people still do that content years later is the Ozma mount. One strong, desirable reward kept the content alive and gave veterans a reason to help new players. Without it, that content would be completely dead.
The same principle should apply to new stuff like Quantum: if you want players to engage long-term, there needs to be something meaningful to chase, not just another 1% drop mount and 99 fragments of disappointment.
Give them a special weapon, a totem for different BiS weapons, shiny glowy armor or weapons — or even something like an untradeable mount, a unique emote, animation, or another meaningful reward.

And honestly, Yoshi-P saying a “50% reward increase” was coming feels like a joke — 50% of zero is still zero.
Criterion Savage rewards were already disrespectful, but with Q40? You can’t be serious right now.

If SE truly wants every type of content to appeal to a wider audience, they need to rethink how rewards are structured — add variety, tie some items to challenge achievements, let side content offer valuable alternatives to raiding gear, and unlock Savage earlier so people can actually help others.
Right now, too much of the game’s reward philosophy boils down to: “you get a glamour or you get nothing.”

And that would be fine — not everyone should get every reward. That’s okay. You should have to earn unique rewards, spend time, fail, and improve to beat the content — but at the end, you need something truly unique to make it feel like your time and effort were well spent.

And considering that the final Quantum 40 fight is at a Savage+ difficulty level, yet the only reward is a title — one that doesn’t stand out in any way (no special font, color, or effects), and can even be disabled in the game settings — on top of that, 99% of players can’t even tell the “value” of a given title — you could say that the reward for clearing Q40 is pure satisfaction and nothing else.

There isn’t a single reason for someone who’s already completed this content to ever return to it. Not one incentive. You can farm the mount, the portrait frame, and the glamour just by running this Deep Dungeon a few times — but Q40, as harsh as it sounds, was dead on arrival.

[hydralus]

Put too many desirable things behind savage-tier content and you have everyone else complaining. Can't win for trying. I suppose gear for alt jobs would be the best option.

[IzanamiNoMikotoo]

Or did you mean to attract raiders more because you think it's not sufficient?

I meant it more like that some people have the desire to do it in the first place simply because the content is nice (typically savage raiders yea) but might do it once and never again because after that they get nothing from it. Even savage raiders have secondary interests. Some want mounts, some like glam, some like minions, etc. Having a bit more there would incentivise more people to do it more than once and would probably also get some people to do it in general. I know a few people who think the fight looks cool but will not go to the trouble of unlocking it an doing it if they only get a mount. They would do it if there was something for them specifically tho. So I just mean that they should broaden the loot pool so that everyone doing it in the end also has at least something that they want.

Also I think the whole point of quantum was that it scales from "Fairly easy" to "Savage+" that attracts everyone. Currently the earler Sacks just give you like bardings or old weapons, but almost nothing new. Instead it could include more new things, already for earlier difficulty settings, which you can also buy from currency you get from higher difficulty. That is just an example ofc. But doing the hardest difficulty and getting 2 mounts is just...

[IzanamiNoMikotoo]

Put too many desirable things behind savage-tier content and you have everyone else complaining. Can't win for trying. I suppose gear for alt jobs would be the best option.

I guess it depends on how difficult the early Quantum levels are. If it starts off as a hard content already then yea but if the lowest possible difficulty is fairly easy I think there is no problem. Not everything should be locked behind the +40 tier, instead you could get tokens depending on your difficulty and exchange them for any rewards of that difficulty or lower ones. Some things need to be locked behind it otherwise there is no reason to do them. But I think that was the point of the content where lower Quantum levels are doable by everyone and higher ones only by skilled players so they can definitely pull of a more complex reward structure than this where all +40 gets is a mount.

In general I think most pieces of content should have a bigger reward pool. Sure then not everyone can get every glam piece or every mount but that is how MMOs work. Some things are locked behind harder content. If you don't do that then you get what we have now where people are leaving the game because there is no reason for them to even do the content anymore. There will always be people whining about not being able to get something cause it is "too hard" but unless that is the majority of the game, that is a skill issue and generally how games are designed. Doing hard things gives more rewards usually

[brinn12]

I'm extremely confused as to why we're regressing on rewards in an expansion that was supposed to improve them, according to the director's own words. CBU3 are massively overestimating the value a title has in this game.

We already had feedback from 3 Criterions, and they seemed to get it right with the third one (Aloalo Savage). We also didn't get an Ultimate in 7.3, just like in 6.5, when Aloalo released.

Perfect timing to put Pilgrim's glowing weapons into Q40, right? Wrong! The only unique reward is a title.

[Stasya]

I'm extremely confused as to why we're regressing on rewards in an expansion that was supposed to improve them, according to the director's own words. CBU3 are massively overestimating the value a title has in this game.

We already had feedback from 3 Criterions, and they seemed to get it right with the third one (Aloalo Savage). We also didn't get an Ultimate in 7.3, just like in 6.5, when Aloalo released.

Perfect timing to put Pilgrim's glowing weapons into Q40, right? Wrong! The only unique reward is a title.

They wanted for this content to have shelf life of -1 day, so they will have excuse to never do that thing again. At this time of content release i think it's safe to say you better drop 1-100 requirement, if you want to give this boss any signs of life.

See they hate people so much, so only one person has to put offerings AND they give max loot to only THIS person for them. So why other 3 people need to do 1-100 for title?

[FuturePastNow]

I'm really surprised to learn clearing q40 doesn't give glowy versions of the DD weapons. That seems like an obvious reward for something that's basically ultimate difficulty.

[Valence]

And honestly, Yoshi-P saying a “50% reward increase” was coming feels like a joke — 50% of zero is still zero.
Criterion Savage rewards were already disrespectful, but with Q40? You can’t be serious right now.

I mean if you look at the current rewards of PT, they're more than what Orthos had, and every deep dungeon actually increased that amount compared to the previous one. There is a lot of currencies in PT (perhaps too many), but there is multiple mounts, cosmetics, minions, goodies... It's way more than what other DDs could claim, so I don't think it's fair to say it's zero.

What you're actually saying is that it's zero specifically gated behind Quantum, which seems to follow their new philosophy of designing content for everyone: the reward pool is also shared across the whole PT related content, that's it. Harder parts just make it a lot easier to get them, that's about it.

I meant it more like that some people have the desire to do it in the first place simply because the content is nice (typically savage raiders yea) but might do it once and never again because after that they get nothing from it. Even savage raiders have secondary interests. Some want mounts, some like glam, some like minions, etc. Having a bit more there would incentivise more people to do it more than once and would probably also get some people to do it in general. I know a few people who think the fight looks cool but will not go to the trouble of unlocking it an doing it if they only get a mount. They would do it if there was something for them specifically tho. So I just mean that they should broaden the loot pool so that everyone doing it in the end also has at least something that they want.

Also I think the whole point of quantum was that it scales from "Fairly easy" to "Savage+" that attracts everyone. Currently the earler Sacks just give you like bardings or old weapons, but almost nothing new. Instead it could include more new things, already for earlier difficulty settings, which you can also buy from currency you get from higher difficulty. That is just an example ofc. But doing the hardest difficulty and getting 2 mounts is just...

I'm not too familiar with how fast one can unlock the rewards from the mode in Quantum to be fair, so if you only need to clear it once, then it's probably a shelf life problem yeah (although I may also have my own ideas on why shelf life sucks in this game but that's another story).

The problem with Quantum is that it's not scaling from fairly easy to savage+, it's savage to savage+ no? Unless you mean the base trial that's not quantum? I've not heard a lot about that one but people seemed to say it's Delubrum savage to ex level?