How about we change the "dps check" a little?

[Tsukino]

Participation awards are one of the many things wrong with society these days. Life isn't going to just give you everything you want. If you're bad at something, life won't give you some money and a pat on the head and send you off. Life will let you know you're bad. Life will punch you in the gut, take everything of worth from you, and leave you sitting in a bath full of ice with one of your kidneys missing. Participation awards do nothing to prepare children for the harsh reality of life, and we don't need any of that junk here.

While I agree this is a bad idea, this is definitely not why. First of all, it's completely irrelevant to this game - the game is not designed specifically for children and it doesn't matter what it "teaches" or "prepares" anyone for.

But more importantly, the very idea that "participation awards are bad" is a distraction from the actual problems of society, mostly repeated by the same idiots who think that <insert generation name here> don't have whatever they think their made-up generation had. Real life does in fact hand out rewards to people who put in no effort to achieve them, and poops all over people who work hard all their lives, and does the opposite and everything in between. Real life is not about rewards for hard work, it is unfair and often random. Giving out participation awards doesn't prepare anyone for anything, but neither does the most fair achievement-based rewarding anyone could ever come up with.

So yeah, FFXIV shouldn't give out things to everyone without achieving something. It should reward achievement specifically because it is a video game where you can make it do that, and not like real life at all.