We don't need them anymore.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Adding more rewards won't make more people care about pvp. It will make them tolerate it for longer to obtain the reward, then once they obtain it, they will stop pvping. If the reward is seen as too difficult to obtain, they will not attempt to obtain it.

You simply can not convert people who don't wish to rank currently into future rankers at a ratio that would be meaningful. In the best case scenario you would increase the amount of people willing to play in casual queue once they've obtained their rewards.

That's not to say I don't support more rewards mind you. But it won't translate into more players, or any meaningful amount of players who want to suddenly get better. They will get to whatever minimum they need and the seasons will still be dead a few weeks in.

I want to kindly ask you to widen your scope a little bit here. You are currently addressing "people" as a homogenous blob with essentially the same mindset rather than a collective of wildly differing ones.

Players that interact with PvP are the following:

• Type A - wouldn't mind trying out ranked, but only "tolerate it" for the sake of rewards (we still care about those)
• Type B - wouldn't mind trying out ranked, actually doesn't hate or "just tolerate" pvp, but would still like rewards
• Type C - would like to try out ranked for other reasons (skill divisions, similar matching of players, simply trying it out etc.)
• Type D - would like to play more ranked, regardless of rewards
• Type E - would like to play more ranked, but want their time to be worth their investment (hi, I'm one of them)
• Type F - will play ranked religiously at any cost (veteran pool usually)

Some of these groups care about rewards, some of these don't. In FFXIV, engagement is generally driven by rewards existing, paired with accessibility and quality of said rewards. But I have personally met a lot of players and taught them how to PvP, that genuinely enjoyed Ranked PvP and would like to do more of it.

But you know what not a single player type likes? Long queue times. Only the most die-hard ranked veterans can tolerate being in a 30min+ queue, where every other player is just utterly discouraged by it and goes somewhere doing something else - which means queue times REMAIN long.

Boosting engagement by having an accessible reward structure will encourage players to go and try it out. If queues are short, it will encourage players to do it even without the rewards. And then it keeps cycling. Some players will drop out (player churn), more can come in (player onboarding), some will realize they like it and stay (player retention) and become a core audience.

But here are the important parts that need to be in place for this to work:

• It needs to be accessible, i.e. a reward structure accessible from Bronze to Ultima rank. Not Diamond+ like Commendation Crystals, these discourage players.
• It needs to be giving immediate feedback by giving you the currency after every won match, not just at the end of a season - just like Wolfmarks, but Ranked only.
• It should have a challengelog that will encourage you to do say, 10 matches & 5 Wins per week for a bonus of said currency. Could even make it a daily, or maybe have 10 wins grant you a small bonus too - lots of options
• The rewards need to be desirable - a parasol, a title and some niche earrings will absolutely not do here. Replica gear from the past Feast is one good way, but it could also allow for NEW stuff to come since it wont be FOMO locked anymore.

I'm sorry for being so passionate about this topic, but hearing "nobody will care" when there is so much nuance to it kind of grinds my gears.