Ballista or something of the sort?

I have to say the recent frontline has been an improvement somewhat over the last ones, however I was hoping Ballista or something similar can finally make its way to FFXIV. Of all the MMOs I have played over the years, Ballista was one of my favorites by far.

For those unware, Ballista was a game which involved PvP but also scoring. You had to get the item to score, PvP and survive long enough to score after the PvP and repeat.

The rules for Ballista are as follows (from wiki):

The main objective of Ballista is to /quarry for Petras in order to toss them into the Rooks scattered around the battlefield. Note that /quarry is not always successful at this: it may dig up a temporary item, a Petra, or nothing at all.

Petras may be found anywhere on the battlefield, but your chances of digging up one will increase the more distant from a Rook you are. /quarry's success rate is also affected by the current score; members of the winning team will have a lower probability of finding a Petra.

In order to score, you must first gain Gate Breach. Gate Breach can be accomplished by either defeating another player, or being in the immediate vicinity when a member of your party defeats another player.

Gate Breach will only last for a limited amount of time. If you are on the leading team, Gate Breach status will last for 1.5 Vana'diel hours (~3.5 Earth minutes); if you are on the losing team, Gate Breach status will last for 3 Vana'diel hours (~7 Earth minutes).

Once you have gained Gate Breach, you must now find a Rook to toss the Petras in. The distance and direction of the nearest Rook can be found by using /scout. The act of scoring can be interrupted by any number of actions (both beneficial and hostile), so be sure to have a clear shot at a Rook. You may score up to five Petras at a time, with each Petra counting as one point. If a majority of the opposing team has left the battle area, however, all Rooks' gates will open, allowing anyone to score without gaining Gate Breach.


If you have managed to successfully score for your team, Gate Breach status will be disengaged and you must regain it before being able to score again. The first petra you attempt to score will have an extra 3-5 second delay before throwing it into the rook. From there on, even if your shot is canceled, your throwing time will be shortened to ~5 seconds. This will be reset if you go back to camp or zone, but being revived will not reset this.
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The real fun with this is as a concept they had in 1.0 (the only good one in my opinion) early in design was PvP that involved DoL and DoH. Having miners quarry for example in ballista, or DoH create ship parts (for the 1.0 concept of ships battling) while the combat classes clashed would be amazing.

Something along the lines of Guild Wars 2 WvW would be good.

Ballista from ff11 was the sole reason I bothered with ff14 at all lol. In every way (save for an aggressive secure match maybe) it pretty much beats out anything we have now. For one thing, even though it was objective based, the most important aspect...fighting other players...was kept as the main element, NOT the other way around. (This is why I have an unforgivable disgust for sealrock..where an entire match can be won w/o having to engage even once...and shatter very closely can allow for such a match too.)

First...you had to kill someone, or be nearby. That done, you had to collect petras, as mentioned above, scoring a max of 5 in official matches. Thing is..your ability to sprint got disabled while carrying..and if someone caught you with 5 while trying to get to the 'rook' (scoring container where you toss your petras) you can believe they were gonna try their best to kill you. None of this 'go break an ice crystal in the NW part of the map no other team is gonna come even close to nonsense.

As well, we were allowed items to use. Some gave complete invunerability to physical or magical attacks (seperate) for a few seconds, while others completely reset our abilities.

Most important though was the fighting. Thinking about that makes me laugh my azz off at the complaints we hear about ff 14s system. People are annoyed by sleep...complain about some skill being too powerful w/e. Having to deal with these technocalities and little nothings after spending years of fights in there.

Imagine, for instance if an ff14 monk were able to stack more defense, vitality, and hp than a pld, then use a weaponskill (whats even remotely comparable to Asuran Fists?) like snap punch that was able to take off 4/5s of your hp, then pop a skill that pushed his auto attacks from 2 to 6 per second while countering yours? A war who for the next minute will hit you with nothing but critical attacks, then 'Provoke' you, keeping you locked on him while the blm unloads a thunder 5 (what ff14s flare USED to be like before..gee...people bitched about the OPness lolol.) Ninjas, able to use sprint while cloaked, along with 'shadows' (think 2-3 shields, each with an ability to absorb one physical or magical attack of sorts) while slowing, blinding, and paralysing you (with a MUCH more annoying paralysis than what we have now) while being nearly impossible to hit without some form of ff14pvpuseless accuracy. Where one smn could 1-shot an entire group with Odin and where garuda had a MUCH bigger bu..uh..nvm that.

What we have today by comparrison is so watered down and 'casual friendly' its a nightmare. We toss around the word 'relic' like its a household item. Imagine having to face an opponent with a weap that could hit you 2-3 times as hard as yours. With ff11s system..you were actually MOTIVATED to do pve content FOR pvp's sake. In otherwords, PvE enhanced the pvp experience. (unlike ff14 where anything over the cap will end up giving at least near same result) I can only laugh with joy at the energy ff14 pvpers would put into obtaining a weap or armor from wolves den that even if only in pvp, was 4-5 times better than the standard stuff, even if it was 50 million wolf marks, a weap you werent going to get for at least a year. Why....because the needs of the casual -drop-in -1-time-then-leave gamer MUST come 1st (and our current quetimes are WONDERFULLY showing how well THATS been working out.)

Ranking system? Seperation by class and skill level? H-huh? The only system of ranking came at match end where you trotted over to a board to see how well ya did..personally determined by the number of petras ya threw, attacks and so forth. Veterans and novices stacked up on both sides of the field. Did people get rolled? From the best to the worst..and yet...very very very few people ragequit.

So ya..while I kinda feel like that old 'I used ta walk 5 miles in da snow' guy....after experiencing Ballista...ff14 pvp (sealrock) ....leaves me feeling like a sexually frustrated mature woman (why am I comparing pvp to..nvm)

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Originally Posted by Vaeria

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Those examples bring back memories. I agree things are far too water downed and stale. Also as someone who played FFXI, my gear was usually no where near top class and I still managed and had fun. In fact most peoples gear was just alright, with the exceptional few, and rarely anyone made any comment about this.

Exactly lol! there were all ranges of skill lvls, gear types, everything. People then just didnt have all the hangups about every single little detail as now. You never heard someone tell a tank...ooh..you should have attack gear on, not def stuff, especially with the way provoke worked lol. As well..there were MANY matches with not a single healer, yet, was just as fun...moreso tbh, since it forced your team to wolfpack more heavily.

And ya..I got kicked outta my sky Ls because my friend snitched on me that I was playing Ballista on an alternate when I shoulda been up there XD It was that fun.

I would love Ballista! But first...gimme BLU! Nothing better than BLU/RDM one shotting folks with Cannonball