Removing Mount as achievement reward from Variant Dungeon is a bad development choice

[GlowClam]

This is honestly a huge disappointment. As a casual player, my main motivation was to earn the (usually untradable) mount by completing all the paths of the new Variant Dungeon. Now I have to find out that this reward is gated behind Criterion (Savage) difficulty and reserved for the elite.

I’m drawing my conclusions tonight. I already cleared five paths with random groups today and planned to finish the rest this week to get the mount. But now, that feels like a complete waste of time. Since I am a 'multi-millionaire' with hundreds of millions of Gil and I’m successful as a gatherer and on the Market Board, I will simply buy both mounts instead.

Instead of enjoying the new content, I’ll be spending the next six weeks mindlessly farming Gil to recoup the costs. It’s 'every day the same procedure' instead of actual fun, thanks to these questionable design choices by Square Enix. On a side note: I would have much preferred a design inspired by Disney’s Jafar as an evil genie, with Iago as a minion, over what we got.

[Pricia]

Square once again showing casual players (which are, what, 95% of their player base?) that they don't care about them.

And we get a recolored sleep mask instead. What a slap in the face.

[Pricia]

Found the one out of thousands feedback that the devs can point to and say "See? We don't need to improve our game, people say it's fine as is."

Or yet another one of those "casuals don't deserve anyrhing" elitist players.

God forbid casual players also get something valuable for their time (which raiders can ALSO get by the way).

Not everyone has the time/patience to do hard content. Square should probably still make sure that they have something to do in the game.

[Pricia]

This is honestly a huge disappointment. As a casual player, my main motivation was to earn the (usually untradable) mount by completing all the paths of the new Variant Dungeon. Now I have to find out that this reward is gated behind Criterion (Savage) difficulty and reserved for the elite.

I’m drawing my conclusions tonight. I already cleared five paths with random groups today and planned to finish the rest this week to get the mount. But now, that feels like a complete waste of time. Since I am a 'multi-millionaire' with hundreds of millions of Gil and I’m successful as a gatherer and on the Market Board, I will simply buy both mounts instead.

Instead of enjoying the new content, I’ll be spending the next six weeks mindlessly farming Gil to recoup the costs. It’s 'every day the same procedure' instead of actual fun, thanks to these questionable design choices by Square Enix. On a side note: I would have much preferred a design inspired by Disney’s Jafar as an evil genie, with Iago as a minion, over what we got.

Yes but the problem with that is that we have to bet on the fact that hardcore players will actually want to find the time to get extra mounts to sell.

Bleh.

[TeresaFortell]

I kind of get the idea. They set the rewards to advanced mode in the hopes that people would want to try it and, more likely than not, do savage mode afterwards. The problem here, as many have also noticed, is that when there are not enough incentives for the variant mode, there would be even fewer players who want to try advanced and savage modes. I am not sure if they have thought about this, but the disconnection is quite apparent.

[TantalusTroupe]

not only is it a laughably bad reward for investing that much time into the new criterion content, the sleep mask being included in with the suspiciously arabian nights shaped theming (which is another can of worms regarding this dungeon) is. well. a choice to make ngl lol

[Pricia]

I kind of get the idea. They set the rewards to advanced mode in the hopes that people would want to try it and, more likely than not, do savage mode afterwards. The problem here, as many have also noticed, is that when there are not enough incentives for the variant mode, there would be even fewer players who want to try advanced and savage modes. I am not sure if they have thought about this, but the disconnection is quite apparent.

The game is 12 years old. As this point, if people are not doing harder content, they are just not interested.

[Kaurhz]

I mean sure, they could have made an extra mount, but obviously from their perspective they can only make so many rewards overall within their "development resources". Maybe if everyone wasn't so opposed to AI, they could use it to make 1,000 mounts quickly. Just because AI does it doesn't mean it's slop; depends how they utilize said AI, but everyone will disagree with me anyway because they've hardly used AI themselves. In short, they have all the models for mounts made already; it is just the background stuff like creating/adjusting/choosing ride animations and creating the necessary files/table entries, accounting for different races riding them, and (stupid as this is) adding a saddle on it.

From what I understand, Advanced is meant to be a casual version as well, hence being classed as Variant and not Criterion. Casual, but for the subset of casual players that actually understand how their actions and abilities work and can actually do a mechanic.

Did someone order salad?

[Aidorouge]

I mean sure, they could have made an extra mount, but obviously from their perspective they can only make so many rewards overall within their "development resources". Maybe if everyone wasn't so opposed to AI, they could use it to make 1,000 mounts quickly. Just because AI does it doesn't mean it's slop; depends how they utilize said AI, but everyone will disagree with me anyway because they've hardly used AI themselves. In short, they have all the models for mounts made already; it is just the background stuff like creating/adjusting/choosing ride animations and creating the necessary files/table entries, accounting for different races riding them, and (stupid as this is) adding a saddle on it.

They literally put crap into the cash shop all the time that could have been rewards for content, get the hell out of here acting like they "don't have enough time or resources" to add stuff to the game proper. They do, they just always prioritize slapping an additional price tag on it, and the only thing an AI would do is help them churn out even more cash shop slop at an even more alarmingly rate.

This is just Square-Enix showing their ass again about how lazy they are, and that they honest to god don't care about casual players, or they assume the only thing they're good for is giving hardcore players gil to get the items for them (assuming they're tradeable at all), or to give SE real money for an "alternative". There will probably be a new mount in the mogstation before the end of the month (that could have been the hardcore reward instead if they insist they get something fancier than casuals), I'd almost bet money on it.

[Sunhwapark]

Maybe if everyone wasn't so opposed to AI, they could use it to make 1,000 mounts quickly. Just because AI does it doesn't mean it's slop; depends how they utilize said AI, but everyone will disagree with me anyway because they've hardly used AI themselves.

Bro ???????