Why does this game make major things so easy and minor things so hard?

[RiyahArp]

If I want to go into savage, I just need to beat four easy missions, and add one piece of gear to bring me up to the needed Ilvl to enter. Yes, it is hard to complete when it's in there, but I can get into it absurdly quick and easy.

If I want a little moai minion to follow me around, I need to have one specific craft at 70, geared with HQ basic whites, spend probably a couple weeks or more to garden one item, and I need to find another piece called the colossus slab which apparently no one at all as found yet, as it might be gated behind lolsubmarine missions.

If I want a piece of absolute minimum ilvl gear from expert dungeons for glamor, I need to farm the dungeon for weeks and get lucky. Same for a minion from it.

If I want to make a silly little level 1 dress, I need to do maps with a party, which spawn another map, which then may give me a tiny chance of material popping that I need to win a lot against from 8 other people.

***

I don't know why this game really likes to make minor or optional things a lot harder overall than the actual main content of the game. It's harder to get the materials for an optional glamour bikini than it is getting the best casual ilvl gear in the same slot sometimes. I can do 4-8 pvp matches and get a pretty nice body piece for glamour; I can do 50 or more expert dungeons and not see the body piece I want drop, for what essentially is noob catchup gear. I just don't get it sometimes.

[HPDelron]

Once you have a minion you can't do anything with it from a gameplay perspective. Getting the minion is the gameplay and the minion itself is the reward. The same is true of glamours, mounts and anything else. They're rewards and getting them is the gameplay.

Savage on the other hand is not a reward. It is content to play through. The rewards from savage are the gear. It requires a major time and effort investment in playing savage to get the reward of items. Similarly it requires time and effort investment in the gameplay of maps & crafting to get the reward of glamour items.

Certainly there can be a mismatch between the content you want to play through and the rewards you want to get. I'm sure many folks would love to get i370s from hardcore crafting & grinding and others would love glamours to drop from savage.

[ViolaCrossfire]

This makes sense. Casual players do not want to be held back on main content. While on the other hand optionals can be timesinks just to make you have something to do. The fact that these things still feel minor/arbitrary is part of the design.

[KaldeaSahaline]

You know - hospital surgery waiting room thoughts - I really wish I could buy dungeon gear via other methods. I don't know if I can stomach running Skalla again to get the tank equipment that hasn't dropped once yet for me.

Hell I ran it 3 times last night to finish capping tomes. MAN did those runs depress me. I'm hesitant to post the results because they are UGLY.

[RiyahArp]

Savage on the other hand is not a reward. It is content to play through. The rewards from savage are the gear. It requires a major time and effort investment in playing savage to get the reward of items.

There's going to probably be less overall time investment and effort getting savage rewards than many of the glamour or alt ones. A lot of times SE had to give up and just let us have the items; minions like the red panda originally only came from HW leveling dungeons, and dropped so ridiculously infrequently that they cost more than the best crafted gear. SE just gave it too people from POTD. Or they dump the mats into scrip gear, new world glamour items I think.

edit: if anything some of the glamour items are ridiculous. I have a set of ultima horns from prey online that I only legitimately got because I have insomnia and tend to be up at 3 am when the darn thing spawns. And that's only because it is uncapped and can be lowmanned with a few 70s. You probably will see more people with savage gear than the spotted gear from couerlregina.

It's just odd sometimes, and not a little annoying.

[ErryK]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grinding_(gaming)

Hmm...

Another thing to consider is they want to be able to make certain things monetized along with giving them value via low RNG droprate. It's why people sell EX Primals and Savage content, due to the value of vanity.

[Vidu]

There's going to probably be less overall time investment and effort getting savage rewards than many of the glamour or alt ones. A lot of times SE had to give up and just let us have the items; minions like the red panda originally only came from HW leveling dungeons, and dropped so ridiculously infrequently that they cost more than the best crafted gear. SE just gave it too people from POTD. Or they dump the mats into scrip gear, new world glamour items I think.

They dont "gave in" - there are two ideas behind this:
1) They needed rewards for POTD - so they developed a few new ones (Edda-minion, Edda-plushie for the house, nightmare pegasus, music scroll... I'm surely forgetting something) while also throwing in some older things to have a larger lootpool
2) The red panda was "special" long enough - same goes for mounts and glamour pieces that need rare material (mainly from treasure hunts). Over time there will be the new hot shit - a new primal mount, a new glamourpiece, a new minion - thats "special" and the old stuff will become more common.

If you want those things day one - you p(r)ay. A few months later its gonna be a lot easier to get the materials for it.

Delron is right - they cant lock actual content behind massive gates. But wether or not you have that minion doesnt hinder you from enjoying the game - lets use this analogy:
There is a monutdrop from S4, the little Airship/Weapon-thing. You see that and you think "I want it!" and then you learn that its locked behind the current DoW/DoM-endgame.
You see the Moai minion or the Adventurer Sweater and you think "I want that!" and then you learn its locked behind current DoH and gardening endgame. And treasure maps. And submarines. A bit more convulted than just a savage fight, granted, but: also just buyable on the market board. So its also a way to make money for people - and not only for an endgame crafter! Seeing how you can sell just some of the parts.

You need to compare reward with reward - and the efforts put into it.
A lot of people also like to collect things and having rare minions etc. gives those people something to work towards - I like the whole crossbreeding stuff and I'm happy when I can actually grow things in the FC-garden that are useful to our FC-members! (I predicted we'd need royal fern for all new minions and started growing/cross breeding a month ago - we have a lovely little stack now and I'm very pleased with that. Before the garden had become almost useless to us and we only grew the occassional shard - royal fern made the garden relevant again, that content needs new content too!)
And look - if you really want to make the Moai minion for yourself, you now have a lot of content to do! And if you dont want this minion or cant get it day one, you're not locked out of any content or any major part of the game.
Unlocking savage is such a minor thing to do because it locks such a major thing behind it.
Getting a minion is so difficult to make it stay special for a while, to make it a reward for all the effort you put into it and to give contents like treasure maps/gardens/airships/submarines/crafting new rewards and content aswell. Having that content be purely cosmetic is pretty clever: you dont need any of it to progress within the game, its highly optional, but people will still work for it.

It hinders you when you say "oh, I'm bored! lets do side content."

Next thing you know, one month later you still haven't obtained the thing and have started to get sick of being run around on a chain. Ooh, here's a cool "meadowreaper" title. Here, you can go gather 6k items to get it. Oh, here's a cute little assassin fly minion! I hope u like spending weeks to months in mor dhona fishing. The window for it pops twice every hour only with certain kinds of weather. I mean, the effort for little things is so much more that it's absurd at times, to the point of why bother? They give us mounts for free from doing a fifteen minute seasonal event, then you have mentor and hunt mounts that take years.

Yes, and thats why the hunt and mentor mounts are special and people will be like "Woah, where did you get that?" (I dont own the tiger or the mentor-mount but I have the legion warsteed and I got Fenrir when it was still rare and I had several people whisper me after I passed them by asking me where those mounts came from - I didnt get them because I wanted the attention but because I fell in love with Fenrir the first time we fought him and I happen to like PvP, so I just got the warsteed)

The thing here is: If its to tedious to get a specific minion, you can drop it and it wont hurt your progression. You can come back to it later - or never - and it wont change your enjoyment of the game much. There is an ilvl requirement on dungeons, not a "own the assassin fly minion" one.
Its content you can always come back to if you feel like it - if it makes you only feel sick, you can drop it completly and still enjoy the game. And maybe, one day you say "Hey, I could go for a little fishing now, lets check the weather in Mor Dhona and sit there for an hour, I have nothing else to do!"
I know how grindy those things can be, but you're exaggerating when you make it sound as if you'd spend weeks on doing nothing but trying to get a specific minion when the truth is rather: you do a little bit of this and that to have a shot at it everyday.

The assassin fly? Keeping an eye on the weather and planning for 20-minute-fishing sessions when its right. It wont be right 24/7, so its always those 20 minutes.
The Moai? Getting the crossbreed going takes 5 minutes of planting plants. Then waiting for them to grow. I suspect the slabs coming from submarine ventures - I'll send out our FCs submarine in a bit, it will take me one minute to pick where it goes. Then wait for it to come back (granted, we had to build it first etc.).
This isnt content that involves you 24/7 - its indeed side content that you can do whan you're bored but want to do something in the game.

(I had to put this here because we still have this terribl daily post limit -.-)

[RiyahArp]

It hinders you when you say "oh, I'm bored! lets do side content."

Next thing you know, one month later you still haven't obtained the thing and have started to get sick of being run around on a chain. Ooh, here's a cool "meadowreaper" title. Here, you can go gather 6k items to get it. Oh, here's a cute little assassin fly minion! I hope u like spending weeks to months in mor dhona fishing. The window for it pops twice every hour only with certain kinds of weather. I mean, the effort for little things is so much more that it's absurd at times, to the point of why bother? They give us mounts for free from doing a fifteen minute seasonal event, then you have mentor and hunt mounts that take years.

[Tridus]

The fact that making a dress requires maps to do RNG doors to get RNG maps to do RNG doors to get RNG loot is really stupid. There's no getting around that. The whole system with Canals is awful and just designed to be as annoying as possible.

[Selova]

This really isn't anything new. MMO's are designed to keep you playing as long as possible, whether it's layers upon layers of RNG or some silly over-convoluted time gate to obtain whatever goal you are trying to reach. I wouldn't use the word "hard" for any time consuming task bar bahamut ult/OS, but it's definitely incredibly tedious and time consuming, which is intentional. It's always been this way and It probably always will be. Bear in mind, I'm not saying that these ridiculous systems they have in place are fine, they really could improve upon them to at least make them more enjoyable. Who knows, maybe one day they will find a decent balance between enjoyment and tedious, nauseating grind.