Starlight Celebration 2024

[Collin_Sky]

Once again all I can ask when doing a seasonal event is "Where is the gameplay?" because it sure isn't there.
FFXI, SE's 23 year old MMO has better, more engaging seasonal events, complete with remixes of city music with a Christmas theme.

[CosmicDream]

This year is trash, the new area is cool I guess. But the rewards are absolute dogshit. It's a duuumb barding (Yippeee), Than we are insulted with a lame ass cup of hot cocoa and a poster... My account got suspended last year at this time for EMOTE spamming and I lost the ability to get the nice outfit they released that year, then of course it's gone this year (Probably to be sold $$ Greedy jerks) and instead of the sweet santa getup. We get to dress our chocobos up, I never use my chocobo for a mount and I never fight with it out in all my years (From ARR Release) My chocobo is rank 5 and that's because of it being fed while stabled. I cannot believe we got such a nice reward swapped with such god awful trash items.

My disappointment is immeasurable and my holiday is ruined.

[CVXIV]

This year is trash, the new area is cool I guess. But the rewards are absolute dogshit. It's a duuumb barding (Yippeee), Than we are insulted with a lame ass cup of hot cocoa and a poster... My account got suspended last year at this time for EMOTE spamming and I lost the ability to get the nice outfit they released that year, then of course it's gone this year (Probably to be sold $$ Greedy jerks) and instead of the sweet santa getup. We get to dress our chocobos up, I never use my chocobo for a mount and I never fight with it out in all my years (From ARR Release) My chocobo is rank 5 and that's because of it being fed while stabled. I cannot believe we got such a nice reward swapped with such god awful trash items.

My disappointment is immeasurable and my holiday is ruined.

maybe shouldnt spam snowballs or something idk
clearly people took issue with it and if you got suspended i have a feeling it wasnt your first offense
/emotelog off can help if you have the chat message spam on

[Miguel85NYC]

Small step forward but they still have a long way to make this "event" any good

[Eyrilona]

Aside rewards, where is the gameplay? This entire event was walk here, talk to npc. Sure, the backdrop it was set against was festive, but compared to previous events where we've had things like mini games, non-standard dungeon duties, hidden item hunts, and unique-to-event boss FATEs, this was... pretty much the epitomy of a fetch quest. We literally fetched three people some mulled punch, and that was the whole event. Quest plot/story was very short compared to events from previous years as well. No twists, no turns.

[Birdbrain]

Enjoying the music and the little festival area with some working shops. I'm still giving props to whoever animated chocobos 15+ years ago; they're delightful to see in cutscenes.

Considering the "little helpers" quest theme and the barding reward, I am disappointed the festival area doesn't allow us to actually summon our chocobos out. I'm sure they could manage to code it. Our always-reliable, eternally loyal chocobos can't gpose with us in the shops with their new barding, a travesty. Chocobos are such an underutilized, abandoned feature and they don't have to be.

I like the handful of NPC cameos too, though I once again wish there was more! I recently finished Endwalker and can think of a few NPCs who would absolutely show up for hot, spiced punch. I'd love to play the old minigames too like the caroling one. Holiday events have been giving me a terrible case of 'wouldn't it be cool if's.

[TemporalFruitsAndVeggies]

This event just wouldn't feel like modern FFXIV if it allowed for any player interaction whatsoever, I suppose. I gave up on the "this is a video game and I expect to play it" argument a long time ago. The community has spoken, and what they want in their massively multiplayer online game is to play dress-up using one of the worst cosmetic systems in the genre, walk around listening to NPCs talk (largely to each other, since their character is mute most of the time), and to never have to interact with another human being. This event delivers on that front, I suppose, like much of the rest of the game does. How do you argue with all the people claiming it's fine or even good?

In GW2's Wintersday 2024, going on right now, you can do:

* Tixx's Infinirarium, a group dungeon where you have to assist with out-of-control toys
* Toypocalypse, a group tower-defense game where you set up and upgrade structures to defend against incoming waves of toys
* Winter Wonderland, a jumping puzzle with three different paths
* Bell Choir Ensemble, a minigame where you play songs on bells with other players in groups of three
* Snowball Mayhem, a team PvP snowball-fight brawl with multiple different roles
* Secret Lair of the Snowmen, a 10-man "raid" mission against an evil snowman
* Snowfall Sprint, a mount race through the city that serves as the winter event hub
* Donation drive, which lets you buy rolls of wrapping paper for your rewards from all the other events and pass them out to orphans for extra Karma (another currency)

This is all in addition to various other things going on throughout the world. There are tons of rewards to earn, or money to make, if you don't want the rewards but want to sell the currency items. The entire population of the game comes together to enjoy the holiday for weeks. It's awesome. GW2 isn't a perfect game by any means, but they sure do know how to do seasonal events.

Meanwhile, in FFXIV:

"Oh, you wanna hand out hot drinks?" -- spread out over nine lines of dialog

*Camera zooms in on a mug of punch for six hours, nineteen minutes*

"This is a hot drink." -- paraphrased from a series of novellas

*Walk back to aetheryte, teleport to different aetheryte, talk to NPC to teleport back to instanced area*

"Hi, we're those kids again. I see you made it back here. Just to recap, we're doing the only thing we've talked about thus far, handing out hot drinks. Do you remember those?" *Stops talking for several seconds to flail arms about to emote the previous spoken line*

But no, don't believe your lying eyes, it's a good event. The worst part is that the instanced area is really pretty, and it would be awesome if there were reasons to spend time there. But there aren't. A couple vendors you'll look at once, one who inexplicably sells level 1 food, etc. It's just sad. They're not even trying, and they should have the biggest dev team in the industry.

[Krokov]

Even FFXI has more activities for holiday events.

[VeleriaEvenstar]

This event just wouldn\\'t feel like modern FFXIV if it allowed for any player interaction whatsoever, I suppose. I gave up on the "this is a video game and I expect to play it" argument a long time ago. The community has spoken, and what they want in their massively multiplayer online game is to play dress-up using one of the worst cosmetic systems in the genre, walk around listening to NPCs talk (largely to each other, since their character is mute most of the time), and to never have to interact with another human being. This event delivers on that front, I suppose, like much of the rest of the game does. How do you argue with all the people claiming it\\'s fine or even good? (...)

Just like you, I gave up on trying to explain to people that if I want to play a game, I want to *play* it and if I pay a subscription for FFXIV specifically, it means I want to play FFXIV, not "go play other games". A lot of people seem to be happy with getting the bare minimum though, I guess to each their own. Maybe this game is just not for me after all. I followed Yoshi's advice and "went to play other games", closed my subscription (maybe even for good), so I wanted to leave my opinion here while I still can.

I've never played GW2 past the first few quests, but that sure sounds like a lot of fun. I used to play LOTRO though and I absolutely looooved their seasonal events. For Yule Festival there was (and probably still is) a whole new instanced area called Frostbluff where you could do a ton of daily activities, some of them were more boring quests like "clean the mess", but there were a few really fun quests as well, like participating in a Yule theater play, snowball fights with other players, building snowmen, seasonal dungeons where you had to fight waves of cold and evil snowmen and raid bosses, like a huge ice giant. For each of them you get tokens and then you can spend them on really nice rewards, like mounts, pets, cosmetic clothes, furniture, emotes. And they composed special Yule music for all of that, which made you feel even more festive.

When I saw that they added a new area in FFXIV this year I got excited for a bit, because I thought that maybe they made it with something special in mind... Only to be brought back to reality when the last quest ended and all I could do there was speak to some vendors and take pictures.

Oh well. It's a shame, but it's just a game after all. While I'm still here, happy Yuletide, Christmas or any other holiday you are all celebrating!