Feedback on my Experience with Wondrous Tails

[Bashe]

I've been forwarded to this forum by support for gameplay related feedback, so I'm posting this here in the hopes of it being seen by higher ups and I will not be responding to the thread afterwards or reading responses. And for anyone who does respond, I hope that you will treat each-other and the people in charge of this game with kindness. Thank you for understanding.

I have been playing FF14 for a decade since its release and finally managed to win 3 lines in a row in Wondrous Tails, which I'm told has only a 0.2% chance of occurring. But I discovered that where usually a "Khloe's Gold Certificate of Commendation" would be the reward, is instead 3 Silver Certificates.

I have learned that this is because I was not playing a character at max level at the time of accepting the Wondrous Tails, and that this cannot be rectified by attaining max level before the Wondrous Tails expires. This feels absolutely devastating and with the low chance of it occurring and after trying for 10 years, it may very likely never happen again. Let alone that there are probably plenty of people who it will never happen for at all. And I am not alone in this, I have seen threads where this exact same thing has happened to others as well.

I'd like to make my argument for why the Golden Certificate should be a reward regardless of what level you are when you accept the Wondrous Tails. I believe the game design logic behind this decision is because the dungeons and trials that you have to complete to finish a Wondrous Tails below maximum level are easier. But I feel that the cons outweigh the pros on this.

•Firstly, players do not always have the choice to pick up a Wondrous Tails at maximum level, in my case, I had just picked up playing Dawntrail only a recently, so all of my jobs were below max level. In the case of other people, it's possible that someone has started playing the game for the first time only recently, and may have multiple expansions to play through before attaining a maxed out job.

•Second, similar to point one, where characters do not always have a choice to pick up a Wondrous Tails at maximum level, players also do not have a choice for when they win all three lines, as it is completely up to chance. In my case, it happened to me the very first time without re-rolling any of my stamps.

(Continued in next post)

[Bashe]

•Third, the fact that this final reward is not always available is not very well communicated, after returning to the Wondrous Tails NPC and going through their dialogue, I don't believe this difference is explained at all. Because of this lack of communication, even if a player does have a maximum level character, they may not think that there is any difference between starting a Wondrous Tails with one of their lower level jobs. Even if this were explicitly communicated, to the point of it giving you a warning every time you pick up a Wondrous Tails that does not have a Gold Certificate as a reward, I still feel this does not rectify the issues with points one and two.

•Fourth, Wondrous Tails is not an effective tool at what it was designed to do initially. It's purpose from a game design perspective was to reward players for going back and doing older content so that newer players have people to queue with. However, it is very easy to simply run through the dungeons and trials solo in an Unrestricted Party. Moogle Tomestone events, which were introduced later, do a far better job at this as you cannot get their rewards via an Unrestricted Party. Even if you were to alter Wondrous Tails so that you can no longer gain stamps via Unrestricted runs, this does not help issues 1 through 3.

•Fifth and finally, the extremely low chance IS the most difficult part of Wondrous Tails. For such a low chance, the Golden Certificate is the appropriate reward.

My only other idea for the designers making this reward restriction, is that perhaps they were afraid of people "farming" Wondrous Tails with multiple characters. But I feel logic for that doesn't hold up very well either. Each character would need to make it to the second expansion, and then spend hours running through dungeons for a reward that is not guaranteed, as well as only being able to do this once a week.

When it comes down to it, I truly feel that the best solution for all this is to simply have the Golden Certificate be the final reward for all three lines no matter what level you start it at.

Anyway, if you are someone higher up that is reading my feedback, then thank you so much for thoughtfully reading to the end. FF14 is a wonderful game of well balanced and well thought out decisions in all aspects of its creation. But in my 10 year experience with this game, this is the only one I feel is a huge misfire. And I hope it can be rectified.

And despite me trying to sound as professional and kind as I am in writing this, I do have to point out the emotional devastation I felt from this. I will not go into detail, but it truly has effected me strongly.

Thank you again for reading.

[TaleraRistain]

That's weird. I guess I never realized that aspect of it. They really should change that. Her certificates should be based on lines, because 3 lines is pretty rare. I've only seen it once this past January myself and I've done WT since it first came out.

The tome rewards can remain as they are where that's chosen by your level, but the certificates should be by lines only.

[Raikai]

•Fourth, Wondrous Tails is not an effective tool at what it was designed to do initially. It's purpose from a game design perspective was to reward players for going back and doing older content so that newer players have people to queue with. However, it is very easy to simply run through the dungeons and trials solo in an Unrestricted Party. Moogle Tomestone events, which were introduced later, do a far better job at this as you cannot get their rewards via an Unrestricted Party. Even if you were to alter Wondrous Tails so that you can no longer gain stamps via Unrestricted runs, this does not help issues 1 through 3.

Yeah, it's pretty rare to find, or be able to get, a group to do one of those duties sync'd for WT purposes when you have an easier time unrestricted, even the duties that still require some sort of effort, like the ones from the last row.

I'd love if we had an optional good reward for turning in a journal with the 5 EX fights completed with level sync. Depending on how good that reward was, we could certainly see more demand for it in the Party Finder. But that would probably require those entries to be common among everybody, because it's known that people get different duties to complete every week.

[LilimoLimomo]

That's weird. I guess I never realized that aspect of it. They really should change that. Her certificates should be based on lines, because 3 lines is pretty rare. I've only seen it once this past January myself and I've done WT since it first came out.

I can see why they would do this, because Wondrous Tails has two entirely different kinds of "books" you can get from Khloe depending on your level.

• If you don't have a max-level character, then every duty in your book will be level 60 or below.
• If you have a max-level character, then many of your duties will have significantly higher levels.

Naturally, the book that caps out at 60 is incredibly easy to finish; a level 90 character can solo the whole thing in 20-30 minutes.

But the max-level book will generally require you to actually enter duties with other players, and by playing with other players and adding your body to higher level content, you help sustain the multiplayer aspect of the MMO.

So to me, it makes perfect sense that these two books should have different rewards.

That said, I do wish it was easier to realize that there were these 2 different kinds of books. I've played for years and never noticed this until a friend told me about it and demonstrated the difference. If they communicated the difference better, it would reduce the likelihood of someone feeling disappointed like OP.

For what it's worth, I'm really sorry for the disappointment OP. I can imagine it feels like a punch to the gut thinking you'd wont the big prize only to realize you hadn't.

[TaleraRistain]

I can see why they would do this, because Wondrous Tails has two entirely different kinds of "books" you can get from Khloe depending on your level.

• If you don't have a max-level character, then every duty in your book will be level 60 or below.
• If you have a max-level character, then many of your duties will have significantly higher levels.

Naturally, the book that caps out at 60 is incredibly easy to finish; a level 90 character can solo the whole thing in 20-30 minutes.

But the max-level book will generally require you to actually enter duties with other players, and by playing with other players and adding your body to higher level content, you help sustain the multiplayer aspect of the MMO.

So to me, it makes perfect sense that these two books should have different rewards.

That said, I do wish it was easier to realize that there were these 2 different kinds of books. I've played for years and never noticed this until a friend told me about it and demonstrated the difference. If they communicated the difference better, it would reduce the likelihood of someone feeling disappointed like OP.

For what it's worth, I'm really sorry for the disappointment OP. I can imagine it feels like a punch to the gut thinking you'd wont the big prize only to realize you hadn't.

They still have different rewards in regards to the tomes offered and the type of map, etc. The rarity of 3 lines doesn't change based on level so the certificate reward really should be something that's only determined by lines.

[LilimoLimomo]

They still have different rewards in regards to the tomes offered and the type of map, etc. The rarity of 3 lines doesn't change based on level so the certificate reward really should be something that's only determined by lines.

But the difficulty of earning the stickers is significantly lower, which means that if we're being holistic and taking into account both the activities required to earn stickers as well as the likelihood of rolling certain results, the difficulty of earning 3 lines is in fact easier with the 60 book.

[Iscah]

Because of this lack of communication, even if a player does have a maximum level character, they may not think that there is any difference between starting a Wondrous Tails with one of their lower level jobs.

While I agree that the gold certificate should always be available, this particular point is not a concern. It shifts over to the max-level book once you have a job at max level, not only if you pick up the book while set to that job, or this would be a widely known issue because people are going to almost universally hand in the book on a job that needs the EXP and then immediately collect this week's book.

[PercibelTheren]

But the difficulty of earning the stickers is significantly lower, which means that if we're being holistic and taking into account both the activities required to earn stickers as well as the likelihood of rolling certain results, the difficulty of earning 3 lines is in fact easier with the 60 book.

Is it? If you take a max level job, you can beat up most old Extremes within seconds. I can delete Bahamut easily before he does his phase transition. Have been able to since Endwalker. Nothing at max level makes the stickers harder to earn.

[FuturePastNow]

Is it? If you take a max level job, you can beat up most old Extremes within seconds. I can delete Bahamut easily before he does his phase transition. Have been able to since Endwalker. Nothing at max level makes the stickers harder to earn.

Yep, the "endgame" book is way easier, many extremes up to 70 are super easy to solo and it's easy to grab one or two other people for the ones that aren't. Four dungeons, two alliance raids, a few normal raids- you can just queue for those normally and they'll pop (though I usually just unsync dungeons 80 and below too). Then unsync a few ex trials, boom you're done. Shuffle until you get a potential 3-line if you're feeling lucky.