Feedback for 4.2 Feast (Preseason)

Initial feedback after doing solo queue and pvp team custom battles:

- New map and rules have made Feast seem mindless and boring. Spectators have also mentioned that it's not as exciting to watch. It's become fighting full-time, with less strategy of pulling in and out. Respawning where you die was a questionable change. Perhaps it was better respawning back at home point.

- New medal system didn't really seem to improve the system, only made medals more annoying to pay attention to. It's becoming less and less about the battle, and more about figuring out who needs to pick up medals, how to split them, etc.

- Is light medal even necessary to begin with? Seeing as most roles have more health now and additional ability cooldowns are shorter, it made players more difficult to kill.

- New Map is too bright and tiring. Difficult to see things.

- All the different wall rotations on the new map seem annoying and unnecessary.

- Box health for adrenaline and wolf heart is too low.

- Paladin is absolute king of tanks. Warrior and Dark Knight can't compare.

Personally, I'd like to see the other two maps back in the rotation and have Crystal Tower have only one wall option. KO'ed players respawn back at point.

I don't think Feast needed all these drastic changes, just small job and medal tweaks to the old system.

-Change back name/medal/job display or show job names instead of icons

-NERF PLD Why a tank suppose to heal over 200k in 6min

-Increase kits hp (It’s way too low atm)

-Nerf light medal system (The system does nerf healer power but the decreased damage taken buff should go down a bit)

-HIDE AETHERFLOW ICON FOR SCH

I only did like 5 games but so far i hate it... Not having a way to fall back takes the fun out for me, and as Ninja i cant hit the box and go into stealth anymore making that skill in opener pretty useless.

I don't like the new mode. Now that there is no fallback, there is even less strategy. What's next? They'll probably remove macros because a countdown is too much strategy at this point.

There's a lot to say abou this patch... PvP really feels like it's being handled by people who don't PvP at all. It just keeps going downwards.

Anyway:

About the new MAP and rules: the map itself is ok but something to actually fall back to would be better. Boxes have too little HP, at this point just remove them all and increase the rate at which adrenaline generates. Everything feels super fast paced, without much strategy involved, DRG is the absolute best example of this but I will talk about it more later. Some traits have been made useless or almost...
I'm not gonna touch some jobs because I haven't seen them played well since the patch, or haven't tried them myself.

PLD: Hello? Who ever asked a buff to that job? Who ever felt that job even needed a buff? It needs to be reverted to what it was, cover is up so much now it's not even funny, and 3k clemencies...?

WAR: This might just be me on that one but WAR doesn't feel like it does its job well anymore. Let's compare it to PLD who can use Requiescat to deal 3 x 2k every 30 secs, with a CC tied to it, WAR can do that every 1 min, and is generally less useful to the party. I'd rather WAR gets reverted to what it was before with a nerf to Upheaval maybe, but if they revert PLD maybe it's ok to keep it as it is. The buff to Thrill or WAR is most welcome though.

DRG: The most broken melee at the moment, it benefits strongly from that narrow map with AoE damage, and dieing it's just wonderful because if you die all your ressources reset (save Spineshatter Dive and Dragon Sight) and you're ready to do a full burst as soon as you are revived. I don't really know if it needs a nerf, I think the problem is mostly the new rules, being revived so quickly and right where you died. DRG also doesn't need any preparation to burst like MNK or SAM, for which the loss of breaking boxes at the start is a direct nerf.

MNK/SAM: No more boxes at start, longer build up resulting in overall less pressure/damage. Boxes having low HP is a nerf to Higanbana.

MCH: Way too powerful burst, CC is just over the top, Limit Break is too strong (that goes for BRD too of course).

SMN: Tri-bind till triggers Wyrmwaves... It's hard to save anyone with that.

tl;dr : bring back 3.0 PvP.

Keep the feedback coming people. We need this to stand as a record just in case they pull what they did in Season 5 and claim they "didn't get enough feedback" for balance changes and such.

For me, I tried it and the new map is. . . okay. I get they wanted a more "Final Fantasy" style map, but now it feels so out of place, as opposed to the original 2 maps feeling like a part of Eorzea. Not a bad thing, but not great either.

I'm sorry, but Quick Chat is still a deal breaker for me. It's annoying as hell, even when it's not being spammed, and no way to adjust the volume makes it less of a help and more of a sudden, shrill, distraction. I have eyes. I can see markers. I know how to Feast. I really don't need a "HEY LOOK AT THIS THING RIGHT NOW!" notification.

I was worried about Light Medal, and perhaps it is a bit strong, but honestly, I can't see much of a point to it in the first place. Like, a player with less medals is a lower priority target anyways, so why give them a defense buff? Speaking of defense buffs, the only thing I miss about the buff boxes is being able to build gauges on them. I don't feel any huge loss without them now.

Adrenaline and Wolf's Heart are totally made of paper now. And while I'm glad it doesn't feel like Mini-Shatter anymore, it's really a bit too low.

Reviving in place isn't so bad actually. I had concerns about that, but I haven't seen any issues because of it, though I've only done a few matches so far.

Overall: Please stop trying to make the Feast "foolproof". Light Medal, role-based medal caps, Quick Crap, all of it feels like you're trying to refit the Feast itself into something where players don't have to actually know what they're doing to win, just as long as they press the right buttons out of the 9, and it's doing more harm than good to the mode. There was never anything stopping people from actually learning how it worked in order to play well and win, and you've got several seasons of records to prove that. Please stop trying to make the Feast foolproof. It's really just dumbing it down and making it less enjoyable, "pro" or not.

Light Medals has made the mode very... awkward. Heavy medals already made games hard enough if you got the lead, now the game straight up punishes you if you do well and get early kills. With the constant back and forth damage that the mode is now, having 10% extra vuln while the enemy has 10% mitigation (which is kinda like a full swing) is ridiculous. Comebacks are not exciting when they are handed to you on a silver platter. Don't punish players for playing well. It doesn't make the game exciting or competitive.

The map is too bright, the whole istance is.... it hink inside the crustal tower where you fight that dragon with tons of minions could do, it' a lil darker because the arena ground is colored blue and not light blue and around there is no sky but the walls of the crystal tower which are blue as well

I've been pondering about the new system for a few days, and this is what I've got:

Light Medals
It feels as though this was not a necessary addition. It feels like another method to punish winning teams by giving them a harder time to land kills (i.e. mitigate damage when they have heavy medals). I'm sure if light medals were removed, it would not have much of an impact on the games; the current debuff of heavy medals would suffice for evening out games.

New Map
The new map is big. I like it. However, it is too bright in contrast with different colors, which can make it hard to read enemy names/jobs. People need to be able to read names to monitor the position of players. The new map also feels very weird because the quick chat options "Fall back!" doesn't hold merit. Because we can't go back to our spawn points, it is hard to gain a sense of direction of which way is forward and back. Because of this, I've noticed most teams do not really move around in the map too much, making the game feel slower despite the arena's large size and constant fighting. However, I believe this is mainly due to my next point: the new respawn rule.

Respawn
I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand, it punishes teams less for having bad healers or tanks because they are revived right away, making harder for the other team to gain follow-up kills. Unfortunately, this also results in very minute movement in the match. Most matches I've experienced, people have stood in one corner of the map with minimal movement. This is also a little boring and makes the match feel slower.

Potential Solutions

• Make respawn times longer to make the death of an ally more punishing
• Keep the current respawn time, but have them respawn at the spawn point in the beginning of the map

Boxes: Wolf's Heart and especially Adrenaline boxes have too low HP. Please give them more HP because currently, it's just whoever has members closest to the box that gains them and does not give other teams a chance to compete in getting them.

New Display
The new icons next to people's names that are supposed to display their job icons are very small and in my opinion unnecessary. In contrast with the bright background of the new map, they look like small black squares that add to the clutter that's already in the screen. Please remove them and make the names bigger instead.

Job Feedback: WAR
The new Thrill of War change is very nice. The removal of Upheaval and re-addition of Inner Release is not. Their relatively slow build-up paired Inner Release makes gauge management a bit harder compared to the other two tanks (DRK builds it with their resource replenishment Souleater combo and TBN; PLD builds it with every attack and now with Shield Bash), especially when the player gets gauges with the value of 5. The removal of Upheaval makes the job seem weak in practice. It gives the job the feeling it had in 4.0 where it felt clunky and the bursts felt non-impactful because the 2000 potency is spread out in 10 seconds, similar to RDM.

Potential Solutions

• Remove Inner Release and add Upheaval.
• Make instead of having Inner Release halve gauge cost, make it similar to its PvE counterpart where the player does not consume gauge for using certain skills while it is active.
• Similar to PLD's Shield Bash buff, give WARs more ways to conserve/produce more beast gauge. For example: remove Beast Gauge cost for Onslaught, have Tomahawk give 10 gauge, and have Thrill of War give 20 gauge.
• Buff Fell Cleave and Onslaught's damage.

Note: These changes are to be applied exclusively (one, not the others), not collectively.

Quick Chat Options
If there are no intentions of re-implementing the Offensive/Defensive Kits at ALL, can you remove the quick chat option for these and instead update it?
I'm sure wanted Quick Chat options are: [LIST][*]Ready to attack![*]<target> pick up the medals![*]Also please add a sound effect for the Quick Chat command for Attacking Target.[*]A good addition would be an option to let your team members know how much gauge you have. For example: "Beast Gauge at 70!" or "Oath Gauge at 15!". It would make games higher quality by letting your teammates know if you are able to Cover them or use Onslaught or something.

What are everyone's thoughts for Feast? Keep that feedback coming so we don't get an unbalanced/frustrating Season 7.

It is crazy difficult to see the job nameplate of the person I am targeting. I can barely see the icon and the blue text on the bright blue background is just too much.

I would like to suggest that the text above the character be colored according to their job -- Blue for tanks, green for healers, red for DPS. Then, bring back the abbreviations in addition to the medal count. So you'd have something like

Stormfur Greymane (DRG) - 100 (written in red since I'm a DPS).

There is absolutely zero strategy to a match anymore. It's all about who can mash buttons the fastest.