I was going to grind hundreds of hours of Blue Mage...

[Jhoira]

...with the thought of Shadowkeeper being a possible Blu Savage reward but now it will only cost me ~30 minutes of work to get. Thanks SQ.


Jokes aside, this is gross. Switch the stupid axolotl w/ shadowkeeper and everything will be right. Give all of the people who want cute mounts from the store and let the sweaty idiots earn the cool mount from actual work and effort.

[Nav_Fae]

I think it's fine the way it is. This is nothing new. People are just unhappy they gotta pay is all.

[Reimmi]

I think it's fine the way it is. This is nothing new. People are just unhappy they gotta pay is all.

No, players are unhappy that the mount quality in game has been dropping and mounts like cruise chaser and shadowkeeper are ending up on the store when they could be in-game rewards.
I don't have a problem with the store as long as the stuff on there remains like the fat cat and seasonal event items

For the record i'm not saying it needed to be a blu reward or a raid reward, it could've been an easy achievement or a quest reward, even MGP.

[ForteNightshade]

=For the record i'm not saying it needed to be a blu reward or a raid reward, it could've been an easy achievement or a quest reward, even MGP.

Now think about it from Square Enix's perspective. They could design a unique mount and either write a whole quest chain, dump it in the Gold Saucer where they know everyone has more MGP than they know what to do with or... make a profit off of it. Are you at all surprised which they landed on? People need to accept they aren't going to do quest chains just to give you a free mount. You can certainly argue the mog station is getting excessive or any number of complaints as is your prerogative. They aren't going to change it.

Not to mention, putting Shadowkeeper in some easy achievement or as a MGP reward would devalue it more or less in the same way. The whole point of argument for it being a Blue Mage rewards is it fit thematically with Blue Mage tackling the Eden series and required actual effort. Making it a MGP reward doesn't exactly accomplish that

[Fawkes]

It has been a while since they did something like this.....last one was odin's horse wasn't it?

Cruise Chaser.

[KitingGenbu]

Cruise Chaser.

Yeah, said it was added about a couple of years go to the shop.

[Eorzean_username]

People are just unhappy they gotta pay is all.

This is a grotesque oversimplification.

I can guarantee you that many of the people upset by this sort of macrotransaction exploitation of game content are very capable of purchasing the item if they want it. In fact, I think there's a lot of anecdotal evidence floating around that some of the biggest "whales" and "transaction-enjoyers" tend to be people who are actually not in a financial place to really be doing it — a commonly-seem outcome of addiction and FOMO-manipulation mechanisms throughout modern commerce.

It's true that if you throw enough darts at a large enough population, some of them will surely strike something — so I'm sure that "some" players indeed are "merely" angry at needing to spend real money on a cash shop mount, with no other concerns.

However, I will, again, outright-guarantee that many others are more than capable of trivially-affording the price, and their hostility instead stems from what they want out of a game, and how they want games to distribute rewards. They believe that this is inappropriate or unsatisfying "gameplay" (or lack thereof), and they dislike the idea of obtaining something without actually "playing the game" — especially something that feels closely-tied to content or story that they feel connected to.

This should not be a foreign concept to anyone old enough to be playing FFXIV — the idea that it's satisfying to most human beings to "work towards" rewards within a given context or system.

It's the same reason why we feel excited for athletes who work hard to earn trophies by playing a given game-system's rules, and rather apathetic towards individuals who simply purchase old trophies on eBay — even though, technically-speaking, the end result is the same either way: someone has obtained a piece of metal or crystal in a certain shape.

Trying to boil it down to "people just don't like paying money" fundamentally fails to understand what it is about gaming that motivates a lot of participants, and why the rewards have meaning beyond their literal possession.

[DayHealer]

This is a grotesque oversimplification.

I can guarantee you that many of the people upset by this sort of macrotransaction exploitation of game content are very capable of purchasing the item if they want it. In fact, I think there's a lot of anecdotal evidence floating around that some of the biggest "whales" and "transaction-enjoyers" tend to be people who are actually not in a financial place to really be doing it — a commonly-seem outcome of addiction and FOMO-manipulation mechanisms throughout modern commerce.

It's true that if you throw enough darts at a large enough population, some of them will surely strike something — so I'm sure that "some" players indeed are "merely" angry at needing to spend real money on a cash shop mount, with no other concerns.

However, I will, again, outright-guarantee that many others are more than capable of trivially-affording the price, and their hostility instead stems from what they want out of a game, and how they want games to distribute rewards. They believe that this is inappropriate or unsatisfying "gameplay" (or lack thereof), and they dislike the idea of obtaining something without actually "playing the game" — especially something that feels closely-tied to content or story that they feel connected to.

This should not be a foreign concept to anyone old enough to be playing FFXIV — the idea that it's satisfying to most human beings to "work towards" rewards within a given context or system.

It's the same reason why we feel excited for athletes who work hard to earn trophies by playing a given game-system's rules, and rather apathetic towards individuals who simply purchase old trophies on eBay — even though, technically-speaking, the end result is the same either way: someone has obtained a piece of metal or crystal in a certain shape.

Trying to boil it down to "people just don't like paying money" fundamentally fails to understand what it is about gaming that motivates a lot of participants, and why the rewards have meaning beyond their literal possession.

So... People are just unhappy they gotta pay is all, instead of raid reward.

[Kaurhz]

I think it's fine the way it is. This is nothing new. People are just unhappy they gotta pay is all.

Disagree. I also don't think it is an issue that people are unhappy that they need to pay.

The Shadow Wolf is a raid boss mount from the Eden series, which would have made it a pretty suitable candidate for BLU. I would go as far to argue that the reward for completing raids on BLU this time around is likely to be a simple title when in reality it should have been this mount.

You could have released the Megaloambystoma via Mogstation, and yes whilst you would get some complaints, I could guarantee you that it wouldn't be nearly as prevalent as this.

[Fawkes]

The Shadow Wolf is a raid boss mount from the Eden series, which would have made it a pretty suitable candidate for BLU. I would go as far to argue that the reward for completing raids on BLU this time around is likely to be a simple title when in reality it should have been this mount.

BLU got a morbol for doing coil and alexander raids. The Twintania mount is from the invite-a-friend campaign. There have been lots of mounts that you could only get from PvP that were things from other content, like ADS or the Magitek Conveyor. By now people should know not to expect SE to give thematically appropriate mounts. If you look at some non-beast tribe datamined mount and think "this would make a ton of sense as the reward for ____" then you should know by now that you're probably not gonna get it there.