The 4th GC: Will it make or break PvP?

SPOILER

Ishgarde being the 4th Grand Company in a future content patch is something that will either completly ruin PvP, or be the big fix thats needed for many issues.

If they end up being a 4th faction that ques independtly of the other 3 factions, que issues will worsen to an alarming extent as many people jump ship to Ishgarde for the initial rush. That is to say, a 3 GC match will always exclude one GC and include Ishgarde.

On the other hand, if Ishgarde becomes a wildcard that is randomly assigned to whichever GC needs more people, then the PvP que may very well be fixed for ages.

Worst case scenario, Ish cant que for PvP, in which case rip PvP as many people leave and never return.

How do you think SE will handle this?

First time I hear about them adding a 4th GC. Can you post the source?

It could be a chance for them to get a GC, since they joined back in the Eorzean Alliance. (correct me if I'm wrong)
Which also goes in hand with the eventual/speculated housing in Isghard.

If they were to add it, how effective it could be would depend on how PVP rank were handled. No way in hell I'm going back to 0. That's an insult to the time I've invested and to the overall value of the time I could spend doing other things vs re-ranking up. If a new GC were added where it would drop members into parties for any of the other 3 GC's (i.e. 'Mercenary' solution that has been been mentioned since forever) and they'd retain their PVP ranks... I imagine most of us would do it. If it was smartly designed it would use the highest of all 3 possible existing ranks. If it means a rank reset, most experienced PVP players aren't going to be willing to swap over and I'd expect subpar results from Ishgard in most matches.

Can't find a source for this. I think it's just a daydream thread.

As far as I'm aware, Ishgard has no Grand Company, and from a lore perspective needs no Grand Company. Grand Companies were founded to consolidate a cities martial and economic forces under one banner to combat great threats; Ishgard already does this. The closest I imagine Ishgard getting to a Grand Company is the Temple Knights.

Even if SE was to give Ishgard its own Grand Company style faction, I cannot see them making it a fourth Grand Company. They would handle it the same way they handled new faction in Final Fantasy XI; You can join the Temple Knights, or whatever, but you're still a Twin Adder/Immortal Flame/Maelstrom. In Final Fantasy XI you could be part of Bastok, but you'd still join Salaheem's Sentinels, or you could go back in time and join San d'Oria. If they add a fourth faction I can't see them handling it any other way.

They are set up to form one though. Depending on how they work it it could work though and I don't remember the original source for this, but they could make ishgard a merc gc. What this means is that if you queue for frontlines as ishgard you get placed with whatever gc needs people to fill the match. You could be fighting for any of the 3 existing ones, but would remain ishgardian.

would kill it.. queue times are insanely long at times for 3 GC's if a 4th was added wouldnt even be worth queueing for

A mercenary type GC is the most obvious solution to Q hell except from downright removing the GC restrictions from frontline.

If a 4th GC is used as a wildcard GC, I don't see the need to develop it as a full-fledged GC. If so you would need to start from 0 pvp exp. No, 4th GC should only function as a flag (on/off) to allow you to fill out GC in need... And maybe get some extra bonus for it; invent a new currency for it. PvP exp should be streamlined to your "base" GC.

Ummm..... People hate the GC restrictions to begin with.... What makes you think adding ANOTHER is going to solve anything...?
This IS a daydream thread. Except it's a bad dream...

"Hey guys, we know you didn't like the GC restrictions so we've gone ahead and added another one to dilute the players even further than they already are. Please look forward to it."

If could help DF even if Ishgardian is not the Mecenary GC.

Maps are all designed for 3 Factions, they won't change them all just to add a 4th, if they would add another GC the Frontlines will occur just among the first 3 GC who has 8 or 24 players in que.
As I already said and suggested in a lot of old post XD

An example of 2 consecutive FL, considering a lot of adders in que, low immortal flames:
Adders vs Mael vs Ishgard
Adders vs Mael vs Immortal flames

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Maps are all designed for 3 Factions, they won't change them all just to add a 4th, if they would add another GC the Frontlines will occur just among the first 3 GC who has 8 or 24 players in que.
As I already said and suggested in a lot of old post XD

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You are making a huge assumption that only people from the most popular GCs will transfer

Thats a pretty gigantic and impossible assumption to make, at the end of the day this would split 3 pools of players into 4 pools

Just make it 1 pool, fix queues, fire whoever thought of the gc matchmaking, done

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Originally Posted by CeveArthu

You are making a huge assumption that only people from the most popular GCs will transfer

Thats a pretty gigantic and impossible assumption to make, at the end of the day this would split 3 pools of players into 4 pools

Just make it 1 pool, fix queues, fire whoever thought of the gc matchmaking, done

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My assumption is that in que there are far more people than 72, like sometimes happen, as Immortal flame I can say that sometimes we are the bottleneck, so we have a lot shorter queue pop, and usually on staturdays our queue time rise a lot while the mael one is faster.
I'm in a PvP ls where people usually report FLs pop and you can easily see that the average waiting time is different depending on hour/day/GC (and that DF is broken bacause ignore queue).

This won't fix the lack of players during very late night, but in the other moment of day, it will help.
I'm one who will prefere no GC restriction, but there people wasn't talking about it.

All if this is based on the assumption that MSQ = Actual in game changes?