There's always something in the Final Fantasy 14 community. Most of the time it's silly memes or soundbites, sometimes the third-party tool argument comes back around, but this week we're in the midst of yet another mount debate. This all started when Square Enix added a new mount to the Optional Items Store - the Shadow Wolf.
There are a couple of reasons players are riled up, one of which was the widely-made assumption the community came to when the mount was discovered from datamining. Most thought the mount would be related to completing Blue Mage content, like an achievement reward for leveling or collecting spells, and they're now worried that there won't be a decent reward for all their hard work - they have peeked under their parents' bed for Christmas presents, found them, and discovered it was actually just for a good report at school, so now they're worried Christmas will suck.
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The other reason is because the mount is based on a Shadowbringers raid boss, and some people don't like the idea that players can ride around on a mount originally awarded for content they've never bothered to complete. But this would not be the first time this has happened.
It wasn't that long ago that there was a similar debate going on in the community for the opposite reason. The adorable Axolotl mount - the Megaloambystoma to give it its full name - was added as a reward for completing Anabaseios: The Twelfth Circle (Savage). If the name doesn't give it away, that's some particularly challenging content. Plenty of players were up in arms, including one who's forum vent post went viral, outraged that such a cute mount was locked behind such difficult content.
The core issue for both of these mount discussions is that FF14 has more than one type of player. You get the hardcore endgame players/raiders who want to earn impressive titles, armour, minions, and mounts, to flaunt them in game (deservedly so) to showcase their accomplishments. Then you get casual players who don't necessarily have the time or skill to complete the hardest content in the game, but they typically roleplay and immerse themselves in the world more, and so want all the shiny tools that enable them to do that.
How do you keep the whole community happy? Seeing as both hardcore players and casual players both got a mount recently, it would seem fairly simple, but I think the current issue is the mounts in question. Would people care as much if the cool raid mount came from the raid content and the cutesy axolotl came from the store? Probably not.
There is a solution here, and it's one that Square Enix has used before. In 2017, FF14 had a cross promotion with Amazon where players who purchased a qualifying item would get the Flying Cumulus mount in-game, a cloud mount based on the tale of the Monkey King. Players who missed out were sorely disappointed, but in 2019 Square Enix added the Sunspun Cumulus mount to the Optional Item Store - a reskin of the original, turning the drab little grey cloud into a yellow cloud more befitting of Dragon Ball Z's Goku.
Those with the original could still stay safe in the knowledge that others knew theirs was earned through the promotion, while those who just wanted the mount because they wanted to fly through the sky on a cloud could do so with the purchasable option in a different colour.
There are lots of reskined mounts in the game already, but Square Enix could please both groups of players by employing a similar tactic more often to mounts in the store. I'm not saying every hard-won mount from in-game content should be purchasable in a different colourway on the store or vice versa, but let's face it, people only care about these two mounts because they look particularly cool or particularly cute. If Square Enix added any of the more boring raid mounts to the Optional Item Store (or kept them as raid only), few people would care. Now excuse me, I have an awesome wolf mount to go and buy.
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