Idea: Commendation Coins

[Fyrebrand]

Helping newbies, excelling in one's role, and being a team player should be its own reward to be strived for -- but there's no denying that we all love getting commendations as recognition for our efforts. It's an ingenious system, and I think every MMO should have something like it. However, I think the reward system currently in place could be improved.

By this point, I'm sure many players have already gotten every achievement reward there is, so commendations don't really have any appreciable value anymore. It's also possible that many players have researched what the commendation rewards are, and decided a lot of them aren't very appealing. I think a lot of new players are motivated by the "Heart of the Party" title, but from that point on the appeal of the rewards feels somewhat lacking. From the Princely Hatchling that I never see anyone use, to the dinky hat glamour for our character and chocobo, to the very erroneously-named "Best Gown Ever." Admittedly, the Gilded Magitek Armor and Parade Chocobo are cool -- but, that's it -- after you have all those, there is literally nothing more to earn.

Enter: a new spendable currency called Commendation Coins! For each commendation you earn, you get one coin. You can spend these coins at special vendors for exclusive rewards. These are completely separate from your lifetime total of commendations that go toward the achievement rewards -- that old system would remain in place, untouched, and coins would not be given retroactively for past commendations.

Here are some quick and dirty ideas I had for Commendation Coin rewards:

Pay-It-Forward Token: For the cost of one Commendation Coin, you can gift another player in a Roulette two commendations instead of one.
Echo: Apply an Echo-like boost to your dungeon, trial, or raid group's stats (only usable if you queued solo via Roulette)
Superior Food Consumables: Unique food or drink items that grant a higher EXP bonus than normal (maybe 5% or 8%).
Rare, High-Quality Crafting Materials or Collectables (I don't want to risk harming the gathering/crafting community here, so feel free to yell at me if this is an inherently terrible idea)
Grand Company Seals
Beast Tribe Reputation Boost: A consumable that grants you increased reputation gain upon completion of Beast Tribe quests (perhaps applicable only to past expansions).
MGP
Chocobo Companion EXP Certificates
Grade 4 Racing Chocobo Feed: Grants higher stat boosts than normal and EXP gained in their next race is increased
Superior Free Company Buffs
Increased Loot Drops and/or Drop Chance: Applicable to any dungeon or trial.
Select Glamours, Minions, Mounts, Emotes, etc. I'm thinking some of the older stuff that was previously free if you played the game and has since made its way to the MogStation. I mean, would anyone honestly be mad if we got things like Wind-up Shantotto or Bomb Dance back if it cost us some commendations?

I'm sure you all can use your imaginations to come up with better rewards than I can, but I just wanted to put the idea out there. There can be big, long-term prizes to win -- but I think this system works best when the Commendation Coins are not something you hoard and hold onto, but rather something you regularly spend and are perpetually seeking to earn from your fellow players.

How about it? Do you like this idea, or am I completely off my nut?

TL;DR: What if commendations were a currency you could spend to buy cool stuff?

[ItMe]

How about it? Do you like this idea, or am I completely off my nut?

TL;DR: What if commendations were a currency you could spend to buy cool stuff?

That could be a cool way to keep commendations... relevant(?)
That doesn't feel like the right word...
My first thought was the shop could have glamour pieces and mounts like the achievement shop, but I think you've got a better angle with focusing on consumable items/effects.
If consumable they could be a consistent way to drain/spend commendation coins, so you wouldn't have to deal with the nutty prices a one time purchase like a glamour piece would have, and you wouldn't be saving up forever just to buy something.

Neat idea.

[Garnix]

Good idea. I would also be fine if each comm simply gave me a few gils to be honest.

[Shougun]

Loooooong ago, before the commendation system, I had suggested using the mailing system (because I really want that to be a thing in the game lol) to receive other worldly letters with gifts from other players who liked your presence in the dungeon/content (none of the reward token ideas were this creative though, it's a nice list ). One of the reasons why it was to be used to mail, not sure if I made it clear when posting at the time, was by not having it at the end of dungeon you could separate the issue of only having one free gift to give when there were more than one in the group (so like a day or two later you'd just get mail from another world). Also then it wouldn't be important to quickly pick who you liked because it's not like they received the 'commendation' right away anyway. I don't think I had thought of it at the time but having these delivered in bulk would have been smart, .. maybe because the game was less popular at the time but that'd clearly not work singularly delivered commendations in the mail lol. Anyway, these void gifts could be used to buy other things. In my mind a moogle would have been more important than they are now, so you'd get kupo feedback talking about good a person you are and cute stuff like that lol.

Btw I really like the echo idea. Blue Mage, for the most part once you get both a spam-able heal and healer mimicry (with basic, which is easy to get) becomes really strong solo but one idea had been an incense they could burn to greatly enhance their power (made by beast tribe quests) for solo content sync or doing like raid content unsync (1 person doing a 24 man content lol).

I have had reservations about some of the rewards and maybe people turning this into the new "Mentor" thing.. just seems like a few bad apples are going mess it up.. but in a vacuum at least I read the idea and think that'd be fun.

I really enjoy the ideas of people rewarding each other like a Death Stranding system. Wonder if there might be some cute mechanic in pay it forward where there is a chance a pay it forward commendation replicates itself into that person's possession (such that they can then pay another forward, not crazy high chance but still ).

[Fyrebrand]

That could be a cool way to keep commendations... relevant(?)
That doesn't feel like the right word...

That's a fine word, and represents my intent well enough. I guess "evergreen" would ideally be how I'd put it -- a system that is timeless and always useful no matter what the current state of the game is. Whatever terminology we want to employ, however, I realize this could be a real pain in the neck for the developers. With every new patch, they might have to make new tweaks to the Commendation Coin mechanics.

Loooooong ago, before the commendation system, I had suggested using the mailing system... to receive other worldly letters with gifts from other players who liked your presence in the dungeon/content...
so like a day or two later you'd just get mail from another world...

I like that idea. When you don't know who your benefactor is, you feel compelled to be nice to everyone equally. Obviously, this is why commendations are awarded after a duty is completed and all players have left and gone their separate ways. Similarly, in a lot of online games, exploiters and bots are banned in waves at set intervals, rather than acting upon them as soon as they're discovered. This is done so as to not give away hints regarding when and why they were discovered. The same could go for encouraging friendly and constructive play: when you don't know who is rewarding you, you seek to please everyone. I wish we didn't need that degree of artificiality to force people to be nice, but it is what it is.

I really enjoy the ideas of people rewarding each other like a Death Stranding system.

I gotta be honest, that aspect of the system only came to me as I was typing it out for my forum post, but it's my favourite part of the whole "Commendation Coins" idea and I think it has the most potential. Players will always be selfish and do what they want to do, but developers still have a lot of power to design mechanics that naturally bring players together and see each other as allies instead of enemies or obstacles. I have played MMOs where I strongly hated seeing other players around, because they would take my resources and quest goals, or try to outright murder me. But I have also played MMOs where having other players around is nothing but a good thing, we're all on the same team, and as a result we all feel an urge to help one another.

[Jeeqbit]

Echo: Apply an Echo-like boost to your dungeon, trial, or raid group's stats (only usable if you queued solo via Roulette)

This type of content is far too easy and you want to make it easier?

[DrWho2010]

while the idea is nice, the rewards you suggest I just can't see them implementing that. They would rather create something new and then get abandoned just like achievement certificate currency.

[Garnix]

The "problem" with achievement certificates is that achievements are a one-time thing. So the rewards pretty much have to be one-time things as well. I think they should have added at least a minion in each patch or something like that (or...*coughcruisechasercough*), so that's a bummer, and that's one of those things that I hope someone points out to them during the media tour interviews.

Adding rewards to the comm system is different, as they could provide usable/stackable rewards. So even if they abandon it, it could stay relevant.
Just like Centurio Seals are still somewhat relevant because of the teleport tickets, or the GC seals that you can buy retainer ventures with.
Those were added in ARR and I still use them sometimes, even though the reward list is unchanged.

[Recon1o6]

Here's one idea. Everyone's had that time at some point where the particular glamour or gear item just doesnt drop OR everyone keeps outrolling you no matter how much you farm.

These commendations can become a currency to purchase old content gear. Dungeons and alliance raids primarily is what I'm thinking but you could feasibly have it for all content. Hell you could have it with current savage content with jacked up prices to compensate for the fact that relic weapons never catch up till the last patch when they are worthless outside of glam.

Eg: I want the bonewicca caster boots so I have some armour on my feet as a rdm and I hate being in cloth all the time. I could spend some of my commendations to get that instead of fruitlessly wasting more hours, because I have never seen those boots drop in all my runs.
eg2: I was unable to play for much of 5.3 and 5.2 thanks to the pandemic, but I'd really like the edenchoir daggers. Now that's no longer current, I might as well forget about obtaining them because they're from E8s which is one of the most frustrating fights in the game and so nobody fills the PF's I put up.

[Illmaeran]

This is a great idea, but what about the poor DPS? I'm half-kidding, half not. Any coin prices would have to be low enough that DPS don't get priced out. I've been playing for years and have only received 128 commendations since I haven't played a tank or healer since ARR, and only then when I had a wild hair to level all my jobs to 50.

I like your list and would like to combine it with Recon's idea- allow people to buy specific items from dungeons ***they've already run***. Since dungeon gear is now untradeable I don't see this causing an economic problem and would be a boon to people trying to gear up and/or get glamour items.