In-game items being tied to irl merchandise

[PerrinTaveren]

Hello everyone. I would like to share something that bugs me in this game for a while now, which is exclusive minions & mounts & emotes that are tied to real life products, pre-orders etc.

While i have no problem having this kinda stuff available, i also think there should be a way for buying the in-game rewards in some different way, at least the way they do with in-game events. I will try to explain what i mean but first let'see which rewards in-game aren't obtainable as now unless you are forced to buy a merchandise or if you didn't pre-order.

MINIONS: Cait Sith Doll, Wind-up Dalamud, Wind-up Bahamut, Model Enterprise, Wind-up Delivery Moogle, Chocobo Chick Courier, Peridot Carbuncle, Heliodor Carbuncle, Set of Primogs, Wind-up Relm, Spoony Bard, Namingway, Wind-up Yuna, Wind-up Rikku, Wind-up Lulu, Wind-up Hraesvelgr, Wind-up Nidhogg, Wind-up Red Mage, Wind-up Yotsuyu, Wind-up Tsukuyomi.

MOUNTS: Original Fat Chocobo, Flying Cumulus.

EMOTES: Diamond Dust, Zantetsuken.

I don't have a problem this game is having merchandise but i have a problem about in-game items are locked behing these merchandise pretty much forever. I am a collector in the game. I almost have all minions that can be gettable by in-game methods and working on mounts. But i feel like having in-game minions locked behind merchandise like this butchers the collector's side of the game. I feel like there will always be some kind of stuff i CANNOT get in this game in any way, so i say to myself why bother collecting then. Since i cannot achieve a point that i can say "i have all the minions yay", why do i bother doing it. This is removing the whole point of collectability in the game since i know i cannot get %100.

Let's discuss another topic. The in-game rewards that are not gettable anymore in the game.

Apart from the above (which %80 of those cannot be gettable even if you have the merchandise, because reward timeline has passed), we have some minions and mounts that were gettable but no longer in the game, which are:

All Yokai watch minions & mounts.

And PvP mounts that are: Love Hellhound, Pack Hellhound, Lone Faehound, Pack Faehound, Magitek Conveyor, Prototype Conveyor.

Again, even if you have all mounts in the game and missed one of these, you simply CANNOT get it right now. Which again, butchers the collector side of the game. I think Yokai rewards can be implemented in some different way or event becoming permanent like the PvP event mounts and MHW rewards. (Yeah don't kill me for asking this oki? ). Also PvP mounts should be gettable at some point by others as well imo.


All in all, promotional stuff should be gettable either with mogstation or in some other way, because i cannot order anything from SE for example, it doesn't ship to my country. And certain rewards should not be missable so easily.

This was a long post. These are my opinions about the matter. Thank you for reading

[Vidu]

I hate to be so cynical, but: Not gonna happen.
You said it yourself: You are a collector, there are many people like you and those people will buy the merchandise not because they want the artbook or plushie or a CD (sometimes I wonder if I'm a bit of a dinosaur for having a CD-collection...) but because they want the minion attached to it. Ever noticed how this merchandise is only attached to the first edition of the merchandise? Thats in order to incentive more sells to people who only want the ingame-item and who are told "You need to buy this NOW or you'll miss it forever!!!"

Yokai-Minions are a bit difficult, since SE doesnt own the franchise - so they cant sell this on the mogstation (unless Level-5 agrees to that).

I very much agree that they need to think of a different way to let us get the PvP-tournament-mounts - dont get me wrong though! This way needs to involve PvP-tournaments and it needs to involve you to get a high ranking in any current tournament. Switching to a token-system based on your rank that allows you to purchase any reward from the current and previous tournaments would be my prefered methode.

As far as I know this practise is not uncommon for japanese devs, specially because their (japanese) audience loves it - look at pokemon and how you have to travel across the country to get rare pokemon, sometimes to complete your pokedex! They dont seem to mind and actually like it.

All in all... I'm not seeing this happen - for one reason or another. But who knows - they gave us the White Ravens, maybe they'll give us Wind Up-Dalamud for the 10th anniversary.
Til then I'd advice any collector to go with the cheap excuse of not counting the minions that you cant get anymore anyways.

[Duskane]

promotional stuff should be gettable either with mogstation

well the Butler/Maid get up was promotional item now its on mogstation
but it also doesn't have the benefit of being stored in armoire like the original gear
generally how it should be available for all but the people who get it originally get some sort of extra QoL thing.

if Odin emote and Shiva emote come to mogstation it will be such a mess to those people who spent $150+ just for the emote and not the figure.

[PerrinTaveren]

I know the issue with selling these items with other means as of now, since there are already players who bought them. But then, they need to ship world-wide instead of just a couple of countries in EU etc.

[JunseiKei]

if Odin emote and Shiva emote come to mogstation it will be such a mess to those people who spent $150+ just for the emote and not the figure.

All I can honestly say to this is the fact that the statues are $150. The emotes are an added free bonus if you play the game. I'm all for adding them to the Mogstation (and I bought both statues and have both emotes; exclusivity in a digital world is dumb).

A lot of the merchandise that came with add-ons were only made available in the first run of these products. Once second print and onward came out, the price didn't drop once these incentives were no longer there.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

if Odin emote and Shiva emote come to mogstation it will be such a mess to those people who spent $150+ just for the emote and not the figure.

As someone who owns a Shiva statue, I couldn't care less whether the emote gets tossed on the Mogstation or not. I didn't throw down $200 for an emote. I wanted the statue, and am happy to have it. Now if they could bring back the Odin one. >.>

[Kaurhz]

well the Butler/Maid get up was promotional item now its on mogstation
but it also doesn't have the benefit of being stored in armoire like the original gear
generally how it should be available for all but the people who get it originally get some sort of extra QoL thing.

if Odin emote and Shiva emote come to mogstation it will be such a mess to those people who spent $150+ just for the emote and not the figure.

I would feel deeply sorry for anyone that spent that much on just the emote and didn't care about the figure, truly sorry. But if they have the disposable income...

[Doki]

Given they just gave out White Ravens, you can bet these items will appear for cash at some point.

[HyoMinPark]

As someone who owns almost all of these items (save two or three), I really wouldn't care if they became available later for others. The minions and emotes are bonuses for me buying a product; they aren't the sole reason I bought said items. I bought them for their contents (art books, lorebook, and albums) or for display (plushies, statues) because I like to collect things I'm a fan of. If someone wants to pay $5 for a minion or $7-12 for the emote, have at it. I get to enjoy lore, pretty art, great music, cuddly plushies, and amazing statues still.

[enthauptet]

Bonus items and things are pretty much standard fare for any merchandise item released in Japan to be honest. This is just a part of what they do (like CDs for Japan usually have 1-2 bonus tracks, etc.). It makes it exciting for people to go get items at release and such. I don't see it ever changing. It sucks because a lot of times it is hard to get the items as a foreigner but it is what it is and getting first copy preorder is pretty hard. I can't say whether or not they would care if they got released later or not but the excitement from having it would fade eventually I would imagine lol.