I miss the old PvP.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

A lot of what you said has, in fact, been suggested. We're all aware however of SE's general trend when it comes to suggestions and feedback, so the bigger concern isn't "what can we do to fix it", it's "how can we actually get through to them?" Especially when this is the main method they themselves recommend for suggestions and feedback.

It's a community issue, and one not easily answered of course (even with a snarky "well do it yourselves then!" answer). We're in the very bad position of SE wanting a wider appeal, the "old" community wanting back what they had that was good, and the "new" community being largely unconcerned or uninterested besides. Worse than that, those who could offer some of the best feedback have grown bitter and cynical, and/or aren't even able to post here anymore, thus that's a voice more than "yeah you're right!" going yet further unheard. I myself have moments where I think "Why do I even bother?" so I won't try to paint a picture of being some kind of community savior at all here.

It takes no time to look around and see that legit attempts have been made to reach out to devs and reps, and with very sparse success, if any. What it takes to really change that, I have yet to figure out. But I know this: even if it's little more than "back in my day" PvP salt, or a circlejerk to yell at trees, saying something is better than nothing. SE needs to understand their attempt to appeal to a larger audience at the expense of the dedicated community was a bad move, despite whatever numbers/data they have on their side. Again, that's a community issue and not my own to spearhead, but nitpicking and mocking ourselves is the last thing we need.

[rxnin]

The old PVP system was amazing, because you actually needed skill to play and knowledge of your class. It actually separated the good players from the bad players. I miss the old days when I would spawn camp enemy base as a ninja. These days PVP is not as fun. Do you guys remember 72-man Seal Rock in the good old days? It was so much fun. Glad I spammed PVP before Stormblood.

[Zojha]

A lot of what you said has, in fact, been suggested.

I'm aware, that's the reason why I used some of them as examples for reasonable dialogue. It's something you can talk about. And since we're in a thread about "the ole days", it would be a very productive thing to pinpoint what exactly people miss from those days. The ability to burst people on their own? Did they simply prefer the large arsenal of skills at their disposal? Was the way CC was handled back then more fun? Did they prefer the job pacing? Did people simply prefer going 1-2-3 over 1-1-1? What are the key points for skill development you'd like to have back? The job complexity of PvE? The prevalence of OGCD weaving? Using your buffs before bursting? Monitoring the entire screen for buffs, debuffs, CDs, CC opportunities etc?

I know I'm missing the fact that I can't gib unsuspecting people as MCH anymore and require considerably more coordination from my teammates to kill stuff and I miss having sprint as baseline. Seal Rock bases are also iffy to defend in 72 man with no spammable AoE abilities. If they are going to run with the MOBA approach, I'd also prefer to have my abilities be powerful and have vector-based aiming, because the current ones largely feel weak and it gives just hitting abilities a dimension of skill which the game currently supposedly lacks. That's my opinion that 'that' topic.

There are only a handful of replies in this thread that go into that direction, though, and that is my critique and something I hope will change going forward. It is a very valuable discussion to have what the old PvP does better or worse and what the new PvP does better or worse and whether and how it might be possible to transfer the advantages of the old to the new. That's good, that's productive and it's something the community reps can translate and hand over to the dev team (Whether the dev team accepts or acts on that feedback is a different topic altogether. We had that discussion a while ago). And since the rest is offtopic, I'll put it in spoilers.

As for whether their attempt to appeal to a broader audience was a good move or not, I frankly find it hard to say. What I am going to say is that "if" in fact more people enjoy (Note: Not "play") the new than the old, it was a good change - in more than one way, because as Geryth said in the other thread, the bigger the community, the more likely they'll give it attention (And to add a cynical remark: The easier to monetize, the more likely to get attention as well, which will have played a part in the minion decision). If the numbers are the same, it's a pointless change and if the numbers are reverse, it was a bad change. Them constantly throwing rewards into the mix makes it impossible to single down the effect of other changes and that's the trap Yoshida walked into with his "More people are playing due to chat restriction" remark and that other people are also eager to walk into. You can only say:"More people are playing, these were the changes and I think that..."

But while we are at the topic of community: Only a fraction of it bothers with posting on the forum and neither team tryhard nor the frontline discord are an accurate representation of it. The vast majority of it will be silent and simply decide to play or not play. And these people matter as much as the vocal community on the forums. And disclaimer: I have no idea how that community looks or what it wants, it might share the opinions of the forum/discord/reddit community, it might not. I just want to put up a giant reminder that every view of the community, yours, mine and everyone else's, will be biased.
That's relevant when you think about whether shatter/objective based PvP is popular or not. It's in that other thread, hence it's in off-topic spoilers here, but it might well be that Shatter is in fact popular by its gameplay, even if it's hated by everyone in your social circle. And yes, there are also other factors that contribute - rewards, queue times, etc, - but it's important not to preclude something over your social circle. And with that, /endrant

[loreleidiangelo]

Fine, in the interests of "actual" criticism, I will say that I find the current 9-button PVP to be extremely low-skill and failproof, and to me, that goes against what PVP is. To continue with the MOBA comparisons, imagine playing a game like HotS or LoL where all your shit is just point-n-clicks and you are guaranteed to land them every time you use them. Then a match just becomes an assjam of mashing your buttons as fast as humanly possible with a minor element of coordination revolved around making sure you're all hitting the same target for maximum impact. That's XIV PVP right now - you dogpile against someone vs their healers dogpiling them with heals and hope that your damage is greater than their healing to win. Obviously, I don't expect them to turn XIV PVP moves into skillshots, because that's MOBA PVP and not MMO PVP, but in other games the surety of a "point and click automatically registers as a hit" dynamic is offset by having to make meaningful choices about WHAT is hitting the enemy player at WHAT time. Whether this is burst moves, CC, a long healing cooldown, whatever, the impact of choice has virtually been removed from us and all that's left is "who has less latency or can hit their buttons faster in a 1v1". There's not a lot of meaningful CC, healers no longer have the choice of using smaller AOE heals to heal up or bigger single target heals depending on the situation, tanks don't have mitigation CDs anymore, and DPS can no longer use a move with higher individual potency outside of a combo in order to finish off a low HP but mobile/fleeing target. You're using x combo or y combo or "heal I" or "heal II", with the odd utility CD thrown in. This works in MOBAs where stuff can miss, making your character basically a walking fleshbag for the next few seconds until their crap comes off CD. It doesn't work in MMOs where just being in range is enough to guarantee your abilities will have an impact.

[NessaWyvern]

I have literally stopped playing FF14 simply because of the pvp change. It killed the whole game for me, now I only log in to keep my chocobo-themed house. Same with my pvp FC. We have all moved on to other things. When I played Astro with old pvp, I felt like all my weaving of abilities was like a playing a beautiful piece of music. Now I feel like I am loudly bashing 3-4 keys over and over.
I got into the top 10 in the feast for a while back in old pvp, until I ran into speed hackers and ragequit ranked :P I would rather have 10 times more speed hackers and old pvp, than no speed hackers and the new pvp.

[Krolja]

Remove the 1 button combo crap. Really? You can't remember to push 2 after 1 and 3 after 2?. Enable all PVE skills with their standard PVE detriments & enhancements. Make stun, sleep, bind and silence resists work just like PVE

I agree with everything you mentioned. I hate the 1 button combo crap, and I hate the idea of it bleeding into PvE. The jobs skillsets are terrible. You speak nothing but truth, so we either suck it up and live with what we got or at least continue to voice our disgust on what they've done to it in the hopes that they listen to us for once. 4.06a showed that they really don't, but we can still protest.

[Krolja]

Go read "The New Chat Restriction in the Feast" and see where the first rep response is, and what it is.
Go read the feedback threads between Stormblood's start and 4.06a when the PvP balance changes actually happened for season 5. Then look at what changes were actually made.
Read all the feedback people have given about Shatter, then look at the Rival Wings description. . .

We have a very bad history with us and SE listening to our feedback, let alone following through with it.

I know they don't listen to us or the chat restriction would be dead and buried, but what else can we do? The housing babies caused an uproar to get them to take notice, so I guess I was trying to suggest we try our own? I dunno. I check these forums in hopes we get some news, but I mostly leave disheartened, frustrated, and sad.

[Synestra]

Perhaps we should be offering suggestions on how to improve PvP rather than sitting here "Back in my daying" PvP?

My suggestion would be that add all current PvE skills back to PvP and alter them just like current pvp skills are done at the moment, that way we can keep this separated PvE/PvP thingy while still having a access to greater pool of abilities. This was what i taught they would do in SB and they did do it but i was never expecting to see so heavy skill prune, having a comboes in one button already solved the button bloat issue HW had so why do the prune on top of that?

[Shirolumi]

I liked the old pvp. I like the new pvp.

[Redfame]

Ye, the old mode showed how good ppl can handle their job and now? Just a 111 222 4 3 6 gameplay and some ppl are still unbelievable bad...