Why is it so difficult Ranking up from Bronze to Crystal

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Originally Posted by flowerfairy

I find this point more agreeable than population and time invested. Yes, every rank should be rewarded.
It's a specific reward which OP wants, which is commendation crystals, which are used for glowing weapons and the feast glamour. Right now those are deemed as "prestige" as getting a Diamond/Crystal portrait background, proof of your personal progress.
If I understand you right, you're talking about a generalized, more rewarding system, which doesn't specifically have to be commendation crystals. And when I take a closer look, I suppose the reward from Bronze to Crystal is just a portrait background, basically a "all I got was this stupid tshirt" deal :D
If there was another reward glamour for reaching at least Bronze to Platinum, would that also be satisfactory? Or does it HAVE to be commendation crystals?
I guess the point I'm trying to make is, if all rewards can be reached through any rank, is it really motivation to climb or continue playing?
Or maybe the "ultimate" reward just be the Diamond/Crystal background, and glamour should stay accessible to everyone?
This is sort of why I brought up Ultimate weapons. Perhaps the weapons can be more easily achieved, but the legend titles go to those that made that end goal.

I think another fair point is that it takes months for a season to finish, which means months until you can receive your reward, and this is really unacceptable for a monthly subscription game. You should be able to receive your reward as soon as you get the rank.

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Ah ok, then I understand your point better now. Thank you for clarifying!

I cannot speak for others of course, but personally I think as long as there is any satisfying/truly motivating prize that rewards the principle of progress/your journey it would be good.
Because you're right, my point is that the current reward structure doesn't work for new and lower-rank players in my opinion.

(The rest of my reply is so long, I put it under the spoiler thingy to be less obstructive.)

I think some long(er)-term goal that keeps you playing even at lower ranks but that is still reasonable to achieve is needed.

It's correct that you only get a portrait frame and tbh I just don't think this incentivises anybody to play (in fact I guess for many people decorating your portrait with a bronze frame would probably feel like inviting others to point at you and laugh that "you didnt even make it out of bronze").

I can understand other people's point with the glamour sets though (I think a user discussed this in another thread) because tbh for most people glam is probably the only really valuable reward outside of meta weapons/gear.

Whereas I think it's fine if some extra effects like weapon glows are reserved for the crème de la crème I can also see why fashion rewards in a broader sense being impossible to get is more frustrating for non-crystal players.

I know this circles back to the fundamental debate whether cosmetic rewards (in a game with character customisation as an important aspect) should be tied to top performance or not (welcome back, chaotic raid discourse - at least you could buy the hair from the market board which doesn't apply to PvP rewards). It also begs the question how far you can stretch this (should mounts not be tied to performance since they're basically transportation cosmetics? How about minions and furniture? etc.).

And then of course casual players could also say "hey, I want that glam but I don't want to play ranked. So cosmetics should not be tied to your ranked progress".

I can't give a satisfying answer to all that (dodging this issue like I dodge the crystal in CC).
But I think
1. there can be a middle ground between "cosmetic" and "top performance" rewards, e.g., cosmetic rewards that very specifically communicate "performance" (titles, trophies, medals, a big victory belt that matches the bag you bought in an earth kingdom boutique)
and
2. cosmetics for some performance are still a perfectly fine reward. If the whole system for a long-term, progress-based ranked reward structure is based on putting in effort (as opposed to results only) then it means everyone can get them (in a reasonable time frame) while also rewarding good performance because you'll get them faster.

My guess is that the current topic about commendation crystals might also have a lot to do with the fact that this simply is SE's current reward structure. And the chance that they will fundamentally change it is lower than just slightly adjusting what they already have.
So instead of asking for them to rethink the system more thoroughly, making commendation crystals more accessible might be a more realistic fix.

This is also made more complicated by the fact that we already have several cosmetic rewards in PvP via trophy crystals and the battle pass, and a third avenue to get glams (via playing ranked) might feel too convoluted for SE.

But I still think that high-quality cosmetic rewards (incl. mounts, minions, hair styles, furniture and emotes) is where it's at if you want to reward long-term/loyal participation in ranked. Because in my opinion those are the kinds of rewards that draw in players the most.

So I'd make:
1) glams for all (casuals/ranked) via trophy crystals, as we have them now
2) long-term participation cosmetics for ranked CC (fashion, hair, emotes, mounts, minions, housing items, some universal/funny non-champion titles)
3) "Champion" rewards (cosmetic and/or otherwise) via collecting (something like) commendation crystals that very specifically showcase high performance

4) battle pass for all I guess (I'm not a fan of the whole fomo business but I don't see SE axing it for something better)

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Originally Posted by TimotheusReed

And I wasn't even mentioning that you are locked out of even ranking up during the season if you dont play at the right time.
But you can ALWAYS do an Ultimate as long as you find a group of players willing to do the content.

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I'm going to add to this that, when you do an Ultimate, you can strategize with your party. You can keep practicing until you get it. Imagine if Ultimates were done like CC:

"Okay guys, you've got 3 weeks to get this weapon. We're going to pair you up with random people, some of whom may never have set foot in an Ultimate in their lives. Also all your skills are different. Oh and no potions or food. You can't chat either except for these five pre-selected commands. Also if you're not one of the first 300 people on the server to clear it, you don't get squat and those weapons will never be made available again."

People. would. lose. their. MINDS.

I understand PVP is a different beast but you can still make a mode competitive without turning the suffering knob up to 11.

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Originally Posted by Stormfur

I'm going to add to this that, when you do an Ultimate, you can strategize with your party. You can keep practicing until you get it. Imagine if Ultimates were done like CC:

"Okay guys, you've got 3 weeks to get this weapon. We're going to pair you up with random people, some of whom may never have set foot in an Ultimate in their lives. Also all your skills are different. Oh and no potions or food. You can't chat either except for these five pre-selected commands. Also if you're not one of the first 300 people on the server to clear it, you don't get squat and those weapons will never be made available again."

People. would. lose. their. MINDS.

I understand PVP is a different beast but you can still make a mode competitive without turning the suffering knob up to 11.

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Completely agree. Nothing more to add to this from my side.

But how do we make SE aware? Do they know?
Do they simply ignore EU feedback? What do we have to do to be recognized?

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Originally Posted by TimotheusReed

Completely agree. Nothing more to add to this from my side.

But how do we make SE aware? Do they know?
Do they simply ignore EU feedback? What do we have to do to be recognized?

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That's the million-dollar question. I made a post here: https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...81%84%E3%80%82 (hopefully the link shows right, it's on the japanese PVP forums)

I have translated that post on my end and barring any oddities in translation, I fundamentally disagree with the takes found there. People are blaming the system for not progressing or not being able to reach their peak again?

The system IS broken. 30+ people read that post and said "Yes, something needs to change."
We can agree to disagree.

Not disagreeing that the ladder is not a great design, but if you think it's because of the system you're not climbing, you're entitled and delusional in my opinion. Odds are you're just rusty and need to get back into it. Or work on consistency. Peaks are also peaks and not an average, people need to stop seeing them as the rank that corresponds to their skill, and more like personal records.

Like, I'm not reaching Omega this season, should I blame the system because last season I did so in all logic I should be able to this season? No, I should just play more, try harder, and improve my own play. There is no secret there, else why do you think the same people are always in Ultima if the system is broken? Shouldn't they also have the same issues than you do? If not then why are they achieving this in twice less victories then all of us?

Like for real, people in the pvp community need to stop coping and trying to find excuses, if you're not climbing, then you need to humble yourself and start looking at what you could be doing better. It's the same in every pvp game and there is no secret about it. It's a mentality issue, if you're not ready to accept that, you'll not be able to achieve the results you're after.

If anything the system is broken but in reverse of what people are saying: it pushes people way too high for their skill level, they end up in diamond or crystal in their first season because they have decent skills, and then they immediately drop down back to diam4 or even plat because they're not consistent and they peaked there precisely because of the system, that shouldn't have let them that high in the first place. Same thing happens with all the gold players that streak into plat, then get stuck at the bottom of plat4 because they didn't acquire the skills required to be there.

I'm sorry if this sounds harsh and unfair, but that's the cold truth.

I’m not blaming the system because I “can’t climb.” I’ve hit high ranks before and I’m fully aware that personal performance matters.

What I’m pointing out (and what a lot of people here seem to agree with) is that this ladder has structural issues that make consistency harder than it needs to be, especially with matchmaking volatility, streak dependency, and MMR swings.

Saying “just improve” doesn’t address that. Both things can be true at the same time: players should work on their play AND the system can be flawed.

Also, using the same handful of top players as proof the system is fine isn’t very convincing. The fact that exceptional players can brute-force it doesn’t mean it works well for the rest of the ladder.

Critiquing design doesn't equal refusing accountability. I’m doing both.

I'm not saying the system is fine, we do agree it has serious shortcomings.

For me, it's climbing to and staying in the top 300 that grinds my gears. When you can get 9-15 losses in a row, while consistently doing the best in the team in terms of damage/damage taken ratio, crystal uptime etc and your teammates are similar rank but nowhere near your performance, it's demoralising.

I just wish the playerbase didn't have such a huge skill gap across Diamond, Omega and Ultima. Every match becomes, can I carry 4 other people, instead of can we work well as a team?

This comes down to the player retention issue again. In CC the snowballing happens very soon and sometimes matches become very one sided bullying. It is not fun to just be the punching bag the entire game, and if you get rat just because you play better(or sometimes being a healer or a caster, just any reason) will totally ruin your experience. You can't really run for safety and there is nothing to stop a mnk and a pld chasing you the entire game just because they think your are a bigger threat, and there is no way to punish them if your team also fail to apply pressure. Sometimes it takes one super horrible experience to make a player completely stop playing.

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Originally Posted by NevaehQuest

This comes down to the player retention issue again. In CC the snowballing happens very soon and sometimes matches become very one sided bullying. It is not fun to just be the punching bag the entire game, and if you get rat just because you play better(or sometimes being a healer or a caster, just any reason) will totally ruin your experience. You can't really run for safety and there is nothing to stop a mnk and a pld chasing you the entire game just because they think your are a bigger threat, and there is no way to punish them if your team also fail to apply pressure. Sometimes it takes one super horrible experience to make a player completely stop playing.

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I completely agree with this and I think it's a problem they could work to alleviate.

I personally don't really have a problem with putting effort into getting better and working for the rewards.

But the current system, especially in EU, discourages lower-ranked players to play, which leads to matches completely dying down for any rank lower than Diamond.
The current system would propably work well if there were more players playing in EU all across the matchmaking pool.

But right now no amount of skill, effort and time can compensate a lack of players in lower ranks.
There is no way for people to improve and get better if matches on some ranks are just completely dead.

You could propably create another character and try to train and play in NA or JP, but let's be honest, especially lower-ranked and newer pvp players don't want to commit to create a whole new character just to play Pvp.

The current system does not work for lower ranks at least for EU. I can't really speak for NA and JP. The whole situation might be different.
In EU you either have enough time to commit at the beginning of the season or you won't be able to rank up at all later.

If you look at current scoreboards the lowest Top 300 rank in EU is Diamond 3. And it has been this way for a long time. This already shows the situation on EU compared to other datacentres.
At the top ranks matches are still happening on EU, but for the majority of people Pvp Ranked queues have died down.
And don't even let me start with OCE.

Ok I'm gonna step on a lot of toes here but ranked video game ladders are just glorified gambling. Look at league of legends and overwatch, you will get gatekeepers who just troll on purpose to keep people low rank, smurfs that play on alts to bully low skill noobs and the worst part of it is that people who participate become deluded and think they'll be rewarded for their effort but don't realize despite trying hard you need to learn things you didn't even know exist like macro and tempo. If your progress is completely at the mercy of not only your performance but a bunch of other people then it's better to step back and figure out how to better yourself in something more tangible. I think video game ranked modes are degenerate by nature.

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Originally Posted by Reginald_Cain

Ok I'm gonna step on a lot of toes here but ranked video game ladders are just glorified gambling. Look at league of legends and overwatch, you will get gatekeepers who just troll on purpose to keep people low rank, smurfs that play on alts to bully low skill noobs and the worst part of it is that people who participate become deluded and think they'll be rewarded for their effort but don't realize despite trying hard you need to learn things you didn't even know exist like macro and tempo. If your progress is completely at the mercy of not only your performance but a bunch of other people then it's better to step back and figure out how to better yourself in something more tangible. I think video game ranked modes are degenerate by nature.

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Unfortunately, in their infinite wisdom to want to turn ranked PVP into an eSport, SE decided to lock highly desirable rewards behind this function.

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Originally Posted by TimotheusReed

But right now no amount of skill, effort and time can compensate a lack of players in lower ranks.
There is no way for people to improve and get better if matches on some ranks are just completely dead.

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Yeah, that is one of the most frustrating things. You basically only get proper training in your bracket for a couple of weeks and then have to wait months. Whereas there's stuff you can also practice in casuals it just doesn't compare.
This makes it even harder to bridge the gap between lower and higher ranks because Diamond+/Crystal+ players queues being active longer (or even throughout the entire season) also means they have more opportunity to train/gain experience.

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Originally Posted by TimotheusReed

You could propably create another character and try to train and play in NA or JP, but let's be honest, especially lower-ranked and newer pvp players don't want to commit to create a whole new character just to play Pvp.

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And unfortunately it also isn't a great training replacement because the ping leads to completely different gameplay experiences. I've tried to rank up on the Japanese side and the delay is so strong you have to play a much bigger game of "foresight" than on your home server. That in turn makes you play differently (in my case a lot more defensively) compared to scenarios where you know you can react much faster. You just can't practice "split second" decisions (sniping an enemy that is about to break LoS, escaping by a hairbreadth, etc.). Skills also get refunded or cast into the void much more often.

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Originally Posted by Reginald_Cain

Ok I'm gonna step on a lot of toes here but ranked video game ladders are just glorified gambling. Look at league of legends and overwatch, you will get gatekeepers who just troll on purpose to keep people low rank, smurfs that play on alts to bully low skill noobs and the worst part of it is that people who participate become deluded and think they'll be rewarded for their effort but don't realize despite trying hard you need to learn things you didn't even know exist like macro and tempo. If your progress is completely at the mercy of not only your performance but a bunch of other people then it's better to step back and figure out how to better yourself in something more tangible. I think video game ranked modes are degenerate by nature.

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Or stick to more established mano et mano formats for less of that. But ye. Even when just speaking 'bout this game, sometimes it's less than clear as to just what you're fighting against (with that sentiment stretched to accommodate those playing alongside you as well...) than what a token rank badge suggests... and no, not a skill diff thing. Not a combat-related one anyway!

Good too many posts insinuating that it's totally squeaky clean here lately, and an exclusively finesse vs finesse matter. Nope! Just like in other games you get this behaviour here too, and it's more off-putting than any genuinely bad teammates, easily. For me anyway, cuz you just get those overall team diff moments too, it's part and parcel. It's way more noticeable the more insular a community is, and MMO PvP is about the worst it gets. Unfortunately.

So nah, not stepping on that many toes mate, for putting it like that.

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Originally Posted by Stormfur

Unfortunately, in their infinite wisdom to want to turn ranked PVP into an eSport, SE decided to lock highly desirable rewards behind this function.

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Esports are like a cancer that ruin any new pvp game.

Remember everything square Enix did right with dissidia 012? Yeah they threw all that away to make dissidia nt a forced 3v3 esports wanna be with a trash story mode and single player experience in general. Ff7 last soldier was some garbage wanna be csgo clone that they wasted money on to join the esport hype train. Make a good game first then let it become an esport if the community supports it do not design games from the ground up to be an esport. The only time that sorta worked was with overwatch but that had its own issues too.

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Originally Posted by NevaehQuest

This comes down to the player retention issue again. In CC the snowballing happens very soon and sometimes matches become very one sided bullying. It is not fun to just be the punching bag the entire game, and if you get rat just because you play better(or sometimes being a healer or a caster, just any reason) will totally ruin your experience. You can't really run for safety and there is nothing to stop a mnk and a pld chasing you the entire game just because they think your are a bigger threat, and there is no way to punish them if your team also fail to apply pressure. Sometimes it takes one super horrible experience to make a player completely stop playing.

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Likewise;

- Not enough people to rank up
- Queue times are obnoxious and work only at late night hours. Specially after a few days of new season start.
- Get to see 10-20 same faces every single day. Enjoy it.
- Getting useless people who troll / afk and spam emotes in your team. Just unlucky and you lose the game that could have been won otherwise. Forces you to quit queuing up or be at their mercy again.
- People who class queue snipe you.
- Broken classes that never got adjusted like GNB, where it's very common that throughout the entire match they don't die a single time and can hold against 1v5 easily.
- Unbalanced teams. A team with scholar and GNB is more likely to win against a team that has full dps or just 4 dps + astro. GNB alone makes a huge difference to who is going to snowball.

Square won't fix it, your best bet is to spend time here and play until you finally reach crystal and get your desired weapons. It's pain, it will take a lot of time. What you can do is play 1 game per day and rank that way which will eventually be faster if you manage to keep your streak and luck of course.

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Originally Posted by NevaehQuest

This comes down to the player retention issue again. In CC the snowballing happens very soon and sometimes matches become very one sided bullying. It is not fun to just be the punching bag the entire game, and if you get rat just because you play better(or sometimes being a healer or a caster, just any reason) will totally ruin your experience. You can't really run for safety and there is nothing to stop a mnk and a pld chasing you the entire game just because they think your are a bigger threat, and there is no way to punish them if your team also fail to apply pressure. Sometimes it takes one super horrible experience to make a player completely stop playing.

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I agree. The way the game mode is designed certainly favors early snowballing much more than anything else once you get kills/moving the crystal far enough and overtime becomes an issue. The PvP map design lacks any robust way to tackle this, but players in your team can also just be clueless on what to the most optimal thing to do is while you're busy getting chased (far more often than not, this is the case at lower tiers). Sometimes it's just a team skill gap and can't be helped. Other times, dying too often can put you too far behind when needing to chase the crystal past a certain point and people don't know to regroup instead of going in and dying 1v5 while there's still time because they panicked.

Maybe it could be better if there are player guides on how to play CC with a job for the community or a way to create a game with npc job enemies in casual matches to practice the basic mechanics (kind of like a pve version against bots). The chat restriction is both a positive and negative as some concepts are just hard to communicate on the fly and there isn't a solution for practicing and learning at your own pace other than 'trial by fire', even in casual matches. This might also help account for noticing any big disparities in jobs with more data.

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Originally Posted by MayuAmakura

- Getting useless people who troll / afk and spam emotes in your team. Just unlucky and you lose the game that could have been won otherwise. Forces you to quit queuing up or be at their mercy again.

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This is a reportable offense. Make sure to report people like this and if possible, provide evidence through a screenshot or video recording. There's not much you can do about it other than making sure these people don't return to future matches when climbing.

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Originally Posted by MayuAmakura

- People who class queue snipe you.

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Interestingly enough, I find this quite useful information when it happens to me. If someone at the same tier level as you is so confident that they can beat you in a different job/role that they may or may not be accustomed to and make such a big difference, they either do not belong in that tier (and will eventually climb up anyway regardless of whether you are there or not) or you do not belong in that tier (in which case, becomes a skill issue). You should take anyone who tries to queue snipe you in stride and either confidently beat that person up on a job/role you are familiar with for thinking you're an easy pick or figure what you're doing wrong that makes people think you're so easy to beat in this tier.

The latter is an exceptionally useful thing to note for anyone who wants to climb, because it means you're facing some sort of wall that players in the higher tiers take into account when climbing. If players at lower tiers notice the mistake now and it's big enough to capitalize on to climb up, players at higher tiers will naturally also see the same mistakes if you don't correct it earlier, making the climbing process much harder since you're relying on luck of good teammates to climb and cover for your mistake rather than your own skill. If someone specifically tries to snipe me and makes me lose matches consistently that not even my team can cover due from my own skill gap, it means I am doing something really wrong with the job I'm playing and I will start recording and watching the old footage to see what mistake I'm making.