We don't need them anymore.

[Stasya]

Throw them away. No on needs the old Veterans anymore. We have their money.

Or so it feels.

I played since shortly before Heavensward and spent much more time in the Game than i should have. I played every possible content back in those days when you had to level all Jobs for cross-skill and learn what does what.

My biggest passion was PvP and i was so damn happy when we got The Feast. I spent even more time in the Game, practiced, WORKED on my skill as a Healer. Scholar was the only Healer i had at Max Level and they were not that great in the first Seasons of The Feast.

Yet i kept going. From getting stomped to outhealing the then Rank 1 Whitemage and in the End earned my Top 100 Lone Wolf/Eaglebeak Set. I have worn it ever since because i worked so hard for it. Sure i switched every now and then but never could wear other stuff for long simply because of how much i worked for the Set.

Now it appears that the old RANKED Rewards are coming back as Replicas. (if Translations of the Live letter are true.) That would be the last straw for me. The Game has changed so much over time... there are so many features many don't even know existed and are now lost. I still held on. I never unsubbed but i don't play all that much CURRENTLY (due to time, seems i needed to point that out). If this is truly happening then that's pretty much it for me.

As someone supporting FFXIV for a bit over 10 years, this feels like i'm being robbed of the greatest accomplishment i ever achieved in the Game.

For now, this is just a discord Translation from a live Letter and i know how many will just dismiss what i say.. but to ME.. this mattered. If it comes true, i am gone.

If Yoshi P should read this (yeah as if that would happen) How many times can you go back on your Word before your Word means nothing?

Have a good day.


Edit: I just was told that the Replicas might not be dyable as it was with the Garo Replicas. If that is the Case, i can live with it i suppose.

Are you sure you want to add Araxes to your ignore list?
Yes (*clicks button)

[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.

[Cynric]

snip

No need to apologize for your passion.

If anything I do feel bad saying these things because over the years I've seen how passionate you are about this.

Normally, what I would do at this point is type a long wall of text with lots of evidence to try to show you my point of view, or why you are incorrect.

But that would honestly be very depressing, and I think you already know well enough what I would say anyway more or less.

So I'll just leave you with this.

I'm sorry that you feel like your passion for pvp needs to be apologized for, and I'm sorry if I made you feel upset over what I've said. I actually quite respect your tenacity for pvp. Which is why I hope you'll accept that for me I've seen this song and dance occur multiple times over the past 10 + years, and since my aim is not to depress you or stifle your passion.

I will abstain from arguing my point.

I wish you well Reinhardt. Happy Holidays.

[SalamanderIX]

There's a lot of people who don't want to play ranked at all. Even some people who consider themselves competitive.

There's matters like, ranked anxiety, or not wanting to get caught up in the frustrations of a ladder system.
I think there's a larger issue with any ranked fomo, since a lot of people *do not want to interact* with ranked. It's not like Savage. Savage isn't for everybody but you can get the rewards with less effort next expansion, but rather even if ranked rewards were recursive, some PVPers will never want to play ranked, ever, for any reason.

I'd know from my time in other online games, most people don't really play ranked for the rewards anyway. They play it for wanting that rank. I rarely hear XIV players care about it, which might be partially because the PVP just isn't very engaging or competitive anyway, and I don't think rewards will help. Those Augmented Hellhound weapons looked sick, but it didn't make me want to bother trying to grind ranked CC to the top 100. I got other things to do and not sure I'm in the top 100 of the server anyway.