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

[ACE135]

YES! That's why we play MMOs. To get powerful to do content and to earn the sweet rewards.... I will not waste my time doing something if im not going to get something nice out of it

Getting something nice out of it in form of enjoyment of the content itself is no option?

[hydralus]

I agree the eye mask sucks and is absurdly lazy. Still gonna be farming though. The sets look great and the fights have been fun.

[hydralus]

Getting something nice out of it in form of enjoyment of the content itself is no option?

It really does get silly people are complaining this hard about a lackluster reward. Like dang I just go "Huh, that sucks" and go about my day.

[GlowClam]

Does the reward alone determine whether you enjoy a specific content or not and not the content itself? Why is content that is enjoyable for you suddenly becoming unenjoyable just because of a reward not being available? Would that also mean that any content where the rewards are not to your liking can't be enjoyable for you and rewards are the only factor to make content enjoyable? After all, the content remains the same regardless of rewards.

"I certainly understand the intent behind your question. You’re arguing for intrinsic motivation—that the enjoyment should come from the content itself. However, I believe this viewpoint oversimplifies the psychology of an MMORPG and ignores how long-term engagement works in this genre.

For me, it’s simple: No reward, no effort. Rewards in FFXIV are the 'carrot on a stick' that keep us going. An untradable mount for clearing all Variant paths is a status symbol for personal dedication. By making it a tradable drop from Criterion, it becomes merely a status symbol of wealth for me. I would much rather earn it by mastering the new content than simply buying it. My suggestion: Give the mount as an achievement reward for finishing all Variant paths, but keep it tradable. This gives everyone a reason to play. Without such incentives, I fear this content will be 'dead' within days.

And honestly, just imagine the scene between Jafar and Iago right now:

Iago: 'Exactly! Jafar isn’t about to grant three wishes to some random street rat. His lamp needs to be a super rare drop in the Savage version! And of course, he’s gotta be tradable on the Market Board!'
Jafar (fuming): 'I want to get out of this lamp, and yet you want me to be an ultra-rare drop?!'
Iago: 'Zip it! I want to be a minion for the filthy rich customers. Your personal advisor for whenever you’re playing like an amateur again! We need a master who’s actually good at the game or has the Gil to prove it. Anyone else is beneath us!'"

[Jaltaer]

I would have less of an issue with there being no mount reward if the "reward" we get instead didn't feel downright insulting with how little care or thought seems to have gone into it. They couldn't have ripped the veil off the Thavnairian Turban? Or reused the Moonward striking/scouting veils? They couldn't even be bothered to give it some pattern options that maybe could have matched up with something like the fabric designs on display in the dungeon itself? It genuinely feels like something that was intended to be submarine loot or something similar, not a reward for clearing a dungeon 13x times when its 3 predecessors had unique and cool mounts that tied into their respective dungeon's designs.

[Mouthbone]

Why should people care about content with such bad rewards? Why should I care about doing braindead easy content for the love of the game if I don't even get anything worthwhile out of it?
I have so many games that will feel much more rewarding to play than fighting the same three bosses with minor variations
Honestly, after taking a few breaks to play actual games XIV just does not seem worthwhile to come back to

[Reginald_Cain]

Wait is this true? That's dog holy roller dog in a trucker's diet square is actively trying to kill ff14 to shill ff17 online hyper gacha goon bait exvius.

We're actually cooked chat abandoned ship awooooooga! Sir the sahagins have infested the water! Our men are being eaten alive by leviathaaaaàaaa . Tidal wave of angry posts sweep away player.

For real tho wtf is that?! I haven't logged in yet but do I need to do criterion for the mount?

[Jeeqbit]

Again, you miss the point by focusing solely on the difficulty aspect. Advanced requires you to be in a pre-made group with at least one other person to even get into it, and for people who don't have anyone on who wants to do the content, usually due to time constraints caused by family and/or work, that's a major barrier in itself.

Right, it is... when you're looking for 48 people, 24 people, 8 people and maybe 4 people. But when you only need to find 1 person?

The only option left is Group Finder

When I wanted to do maps, which are meant for 8 people, I opened Party Finder and looked for 1 person. Finding 1 person is usually not a problem; it's finding more than that.

most of the people in there are toxic AF so we typically avoid it.

Some people are. You can't paint everyone with the same brush like that. You can just put "looking for a friendly and patient person to help me do this, let's do it together from the start!"

I don't know what the resultant difficulty is (people say easier than extremes?), but I believe the intention is that it's like Pilgrim's Traverse difficulty. Because to give an example, you can do that with 1-4 players, there can be wipes and prog due to the enemy mechanics especially on floors 71-100, and Final Verse itself can be quite a prog point potentially - my first time getting to it our party insta wiped to the first mechanics.

Also, just like Pilgrim's Traverse, they are trying to let you choose which boss to prog - so you can pick the easiest one if you want. It's all intended to make it similarly as casual to prog as the deep dungeon, and as flexible as the deep dungeon in terms of amount of players.

do I need to do criterion for the mount?

There is a mount from Criterion, and a mount from Variant (Advanced). So the Variant one is intended for those that don't want to do the High-End version.

[Valence]

I don't know what the resultant difficulty is (people say easier than extremes?), but I believe the intention is that it's like Pilgrim's Traverse difficulty. Because to give an example, you can do that with 1-4 players, there can be wipes and prog due to the enemy mechanics especially on floors 71-100, and Final Verse itself can be quite a prog point potentially - my first time getting to it our party insta wiped to the first mechanics.

Also, just like Pilgrim's Traverse, they are trying to let you choose which boss to prog - so you can pick the easiest one if you want. It's all intended to make it similarly as casual to prog as the deep dungeon, and as flexible as the deep dungeon in terms of amount of players.
There is a mount from Criterion, and a mount from Variant (Advanced). So the Variant one is intended for those that don't want to do the High-End version.

You compare it to Pilgrim Traverse 71-99, do you see the tragicomedy in telling people that were all about chilling and figuring out little path solutions in a baseline storymode difficulty dungeon with OP guardrails (variant duty actions) and no trinity to respect, that now they should go get their mount by doing something like PT 71-99?

[Jeeqbit]

You compare it to Pilgrim Traverse 71-99, do you see the tragicomedy in telling people that were all about chilling and figuring out little path solutions in a baseline storymode difficulty dungeon with OP guardrails (variant duty actions) and no trinity to respect, that now they should go get their mount by doing something like PT 71-99?

I don't see it, no, because 71-99 was perfectly casual friendly and plenty of non-raiders did it; it just wasn't as thoroughly unsatisfying as a lot of normal content is because things could actually kill and hurt and have consequences. Just enough to feel something. Enough to feel like there were stakes and that you had to use your eyes and be a little careful and think about your movement and action usage, but not so difficult that others couldn't save the day with theirs'.

The variant duty actions aren't particularly intended to be OP guardrails but rather to make up for lack of party members such as a DPS, a tank or a healer, and these are still present in Advanced. As overly easy as most variant dungeon bosses tend to be, the last ones or secret ones have often been quite rough, at least solo.

I also feel like if the main content I was interested in was exploring with no challenging fights involved, to do after a busy work day, that I would just do it anyway regardless of mount. Completing the book is a good enough reason to me if that's really all I want out of the game.