Lets Talk PvP! Current State of PvP and Community Feedback!

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Introduction
Hey guys! My name is Zero! i mainly play on the Japanese Server Shinryu, i am an officer of an english FC on the server which is compromised of both PvP and PvE players, i started the game back in mid 2014 and have been an avid player in both aspects of the game! Now lets get to the discussion! Now that ARR is coming to a close i decided to make this thread regarding the current state of the game for PvP and voice out our suggestions on how we can improve upon the current system of PvP and hope that these changes if possible, be added sometime in the future in Heavensward. I would like for you guys to also voice out what you feel that could help improve the current PvP system as well as what kind of content you would like to see added in the future!

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I think that if you ask an average player what they think of PvP they will tell you that in FFXIV it is just a repetitive gamemode for gear glamour/frontline standings, that FFXIV is a PvE game and your goal should be clearing the final coil every week and doing your daily dungeons, some might also add on to say that the combat in FFXIV is not suited towards PvP gameplay.

They are not wrong to say this, as it currently is, PvP is just a grind fest to get nice glamours and flashy titles. There is a very small community of PvPers who genuinely enjoy fighting other skilled players such as themselves in Wolves Dens and are always looking to improve themselves but they are not rewarded sufficiently for their skill.

Yoshida has stated in an interview for heavensward that he wishes to improve the PvP system in the game.

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24v24v24 or 8v8v8

Now in my opinion 8v8v8 is a much more better fit for frontline PvP not only does it increase the affect of your actions and make PvP less hetic and more skill focused, the same way why 24 player raids are easier than 8 player, it also reduces queue times by a considerable amount. With that being said, not in any way do i feel that 24v24v24 needs to be removed, however they need to be in a gamemode more suited towards larger numbers. In Secure it was well designed, you could have an alliance attacking the other capture zones and another alliance camping nodes at mid, one for defence. However in Slaughter its a big mess of factions all staying at mid for most of the match in an endless Tug of War against each other, and you barely feel that you're making a difference in the fight. What i feel is that Slaughter is a map much more suited for 8v8v8 while Secure is a map much more suited towards 24v24v24.

Wolves Den and MMR system

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It has been confirmed that we will be getting new Wolves Den maps and larger group sizes. But there has also been a hint at a leaderboard system for Wolves Den. We are not sure what kind of system Yoshida is plannning on adding but what do you guys expect or want to see in terms of ranking for Wolves Den? I personally would not mind a MMR system similar to that of games such as DotA 2, Although if there is a large enough PvP playerbase we can get to see a tiered rank system similar to that of Starcraft 2 or League. I am also assuming that Season matches will only be the ones that have this system in place and players can still play the unranked mode of Wolves Den.

Rewards for winning the season and PvP Vanity items
Now to reward these skilled PvPers who manage to surpass the odds and gain victory on the leaderboards there should be rewards such as exclusive titles and mounts given! And i feel that other than gear there should also be vanity items for high leveled PvPers 45+ such as mounts and minions. *cough* *cough* Armored Fenrir PvP Mount.

Frontline Rewards!

Now heres what would really be a great incentive for PvP, rewards to the Grand Company with the most victories in their respective Data Centers. Lets say for the month of May the Maelstorm on the Data Center of Aether has the most wins! All players in Maelstorm Grandcompany of their server will receive a juicy buff such as PvP EXP bonuses/Wolf mark or maybe even non pvp related things such as you would get from Company Actions. This gives more people an incentive to try out Frontlines.

Let me know what you guys think and what other areas that our PvP system needs to improve on!

The biggest problem IMO is that we have unnecessarily long waits for parties to be matched up than there would be otherwise due to the GC restriction; it doesn't take 72 players queued up to start a 72-man game, it takes several more than that because at least 3 parties of 8 have to be fully formed from whichever GC is the weakest. Long queues for the dominant GC, shorter queues but more losses for the least dominant GC, and so we have polarization between two GC's with the third somewhere in the middle; things might balance out with players migrating between GC's except for the fact PVP rank (and ability to make use of associated rewards) is tied to GC and so the higher someone's rank, the higher the disincentive to move.

Frontlines Rewards
I appreciate your starting this discussion, that said based on what I've observed on Primal datacenter the below would not help matters so much as make them worse. Rewarding people for being in the GC that already provides bigger rewards on a per match basis, isn't going to inspire the those in the other two GC's to try harder month after month. Experienced players will move to the dominant GC increasing the polarization, or they'll accept it but be very bitter about it and attrition will result.

Frontline Rewards!

Now heres what would really be a great incentive for PvP, rewards to the Grand Company with the most victories in their respective Data Centers. Lets say for the month of May the Maelstorm on the Data Center of Aether has the most wins! All players in Maelstorm Grandcompany of their server will receive a juicy buff such as PvP EXP bonuses/Wolf mark or maybe even non pvp related things such as you would get from Company Actions. This gives more people an incentive to try out Frontlines.


Match size
Agree that Slaughter, as currently implemented, is more suitable as 8x8x8 than 24x24x24, and likewise for Secure 24x24x24 is the preferable match size... and unfortunately it's one that so rarely pops these days. I think to have enough people for a 72 man Secure match, it takes many more players than 72 to queue up so DF can pick and choose amongst them all to form 9 parties of 8 with 3 from each GC, and the rest just get shafted I suppose. Now that we have two game modes, there aren't that many people willing to queue for as long as it would take to get a 72 Man Secure match to pop now that there's two separate game modes to funnel players between.

good points on all account but i stand on BUFF on this. with the way things are GC restriction all this rewards for gc specific will not work due to the fact that skilled pvp players will move to better gc which does inflation in the skilled players bein in one gc only. dont add gc reward thats one fix, second fix, if yoshi p plan to keep gc base pvp then add mercenaries for ishgard, since they have ties to ac specific nation they can be the mercenary GC where they can Q with either flames adder and or storm. third fix add all those reward mention except for the gc specific reward. 4th fix better map and it rules. the pvp in 14 right now pretty much kill or be killed for the win, they need to add emersion in the pvp. may be a match like labyrinth style where you are ported to a different parts of the map and have to face obstacle.

As I still hope for some Wolves Den revival I also hope for large scale battles without GC restrictions too and some type of small castle siege battleground.
Also some 1 v 1 like Olympiads in Lineage II would be epic, the classes were not balanced in Lineage II and it still was doable.

I know it is not going to happen thought. That is why i still have to play atleast one more pvp MMO all the time as my sidegame to the FFXIV.

Hi Zero. I am happy to see someone take the initiative to help improve the PvP system in this game. I made a similar thread almost a year ago and these were the results: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-Long-Term-PvP Although it is a little outdated, it is interesting to see that Square has in fact implemented many of the requests listed there, as well as mentioned implementing the other items later on.

Yoshida has made it pretty clear that he wants more involvement in frontline so that players get a sense for PvP and improve their skills before introducing more Wolves Den content, which makes perfect sense. That is why I would personally like to see more variety in terms of game modes for frontline to get players interested.

Frontlines
In my opinion, the game needs a Capture the Flag frontline of 8vs8. Yes, 8vs8. Not 8vs8vs8. This frontline keeps it to the classical CTF rules between two teams that most players are familiar with. How it's handled would be up to Yoshida's plan of keeping or removing GC restrictions. Keeping the GC restriction would simply have matches between two of the GCs, leaving the third GC out of the current match. But, if they do want increased pvp participation, the GC restriction should be removed entirely. CTF introduces a fun new mode enjoyable by many players and gives tanks a bigger purpose in PvP as potential flag carriers.

Wolves Den
Once the PvP playerbase has increased, then it makes sense to work on Wolves Den. I agree entirely with a seasonal MMR system, as competition generally increases participation. As far as 8vs8 arena, this does seem quite large for teams, and I personally liked the 4vs4 system. In terms of ranked play, having all 8 of your team members online at the same time seems like it would be a challenge in itself and might cause very few teams to queue, but teams of 4 might still be the sweet spot and allow for quicker queues.

I think there are a couple easy changes to make PvP better:

1. Cometeors don't overlap, like you get a 5s buff "resistant to cometeor" on getting hit by a cometeor.

2. Make it so that the center is not the focus for a Slaughter match. Start with the outside nodes, then spawn more outside nodes, and then maybe finish off with a big center battle, but spending 75% of the match in what can only be described as a laggy flustercluck is just plain bad.

Either that or just make it so that the slaughter matches are 24 man. Secure 72 man was pretty good but it never pops anymore and no one remembers how to do it even if it does pop.

Also, other changes include removing GCs altogether.

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Frontline Rewards!

Now heres what would really be a great incentive for PvP, rewards to the Grand Company with the most victories in their respective Data Centers. Lets say for the month of May the Maelstorm on the Data Center of Aether has the most wins! All players in Maelstorm Grandcompany of their server will receive a juicy buff such as PvP EXP bonuses/Wolf mark or maybe even non pvp related things such as you would get from Company Actions. This gives more people an incentive to try out Frontlines.

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I'd switch GCs in an instant, lol.