Please fix PvP queues, and not just temporarily.

Hello,

First of all, I'm not complaining about PvP as the content itself. I really enjoy it - and that's the issue here.

Myself and many others are fed up of waiting over 1 hour for a PvP queue to pop. This is unacceptable. There are many achievements and rewards which are acquired through PvP and involve a lenghty process in order to obtain them. This is being made very difficult due to the queue times.

Adding new PvP content itself only fixes the problem for a short time until it dies out again. Joining a PvP linkshell also doesn't fix the problem, due to so little players wanting to play it, and due to the Grand Company restrictions.

All I am asking for is some way to allow us to PvP effectively and without having to wait a ridiculous amount of time. Maybe allow us to queue on behalf of another GC while still awarding us with our current GC marks and experience. Some people have even suggested removing the GC aspect altogether. It would just be nice for players to enjoy content they like to the fullest, and not be held back by something they can't control.

Thank you for reading.

I am in the Maelstrom gc and last time I checked it is the most popular gc for NA players. My ques are around 45 mins if not over an hour while my fc is majority Adders and have a que time of 10 mins or less if not instant que. This is something that will not be fixed until SE takes off the gc restrictions for Frontlines. I do not pvp anymore because it is a major issue and I'm 10 wins away from the pony mount. If I switched gcs my wins would not carry over so I just wait until the day when maybe this happens.

On primal servers everyone rotates to the "flavor of the month" gc, that being the one with who seems to be winning the most. However a a guy in my fc states that the flames are getting 15-20 mins queues as flames while me (maelstorm) am getting 30-45 mins queue, if I'm lucky. How is this possible? aren't we all queuing for the same/similar instance? The only explanation I can come up with is that flames are lacking in pvp atm so the queues are quicker, similar to tank/healer queues in other content.

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Originally Posted by Marxam

On primal servers everyone rotates to the "flavor of the month" gc, that being the one with who seems to be winning the most... How is this possible?

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It's not that difficult to understand, 24 or 8 people from each GC, everyone in Mael = stacked Mael wait lines. No one likes Adders/Flames due to supposed lose rate = no one queueing = ones who do queue = insta queue into those instances.

Removing GC restrictions would unbalance the nature of the game and make GC related rewards harder to get if left in place.

They need better incentives in my opinion for people to join and play otherwise we'll be left with another Crystal Tower scenario where there are possible rewards and no one wants to queue/run it.

Like in any MMO with instanced PvP.
The majority of playerbase joins the winning faction, which leads to massive queue times.

Problem ist the player not SE.
Spread yourself through ALL three GCs or live with 1hr long queues.

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Originally Posted by Cheraa

Like in any MMO with instanced PvP.
The majority of playerbase joins the winning faction, which leads to massive queue times.

Problem ist the player not SE.
Spread yourself through ALL three GCs or live with 1hr long queues.

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They could introduce AI to supplement for the lack of players like a 3 vs 3 vs 3 Front Lines match for down times in individual data centers, if each time has AI then it'd be 'fair' though it could be abused but at least we can get into games for EXP/wolf-marks.

Ähm...no. You are kidding, right?

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Originally Posted by Marxam

On primal servers everyone rotates to the "flavor of the month" gc, that being the one with who seems to be winning the most. However a a guy in my fc states that the flames are getting 15-20 mins queues as flames while me (maelstorm) am getting 30-45 mins queue, if I'm lucky. How is this possible?

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If 32 Maelstrom, 16 Flames and 8 Adders are queuing for frontlines there will be only one 24 man match occurring at a time. If each match takes 10 to 15 minutes, Adders will have near instant queues (as they jump into the next match when they requeue), Flames will have 10 to 15 minute queues (as each 8 man party will alternate matches), and Maelstrom will have 30 to 45 minute queues (as the 4 parties will have to wait for the other 3 parties can have a match before they have their next).

The long queues are a major turnoff for alot of players, I love the PvP content and I wish I could play PvP, but waiting in a 1-2 hour queue is unacceptable. I wish they would fix this, but seeing their track record, we will see new modes while the queue will stay very long.

I believe that the issue is not the GC restrictions its more lack of people queuing up due to

a) the long wait time
b) not giving a .... about PvP content past the oooo new content effect

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Originally Posted by Ageofwar

I believe that the issue is not the GC restrictions its more lack of people queuing up due to

a) the long wait time
b) not giving a .... about PvP content past the oooo new content effect

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But isnt the GC restriction not the reason we are getting a long queue wait time?

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Originally Posted by Laerune

But isnt the GC restriction not the reason we are getting a long queue wait time?

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i believe removing GC restriction will be yet another temporary fix.

i do count myself as part of the crowed that don't give a.... about PvP content

Reminds me on the latest szenario at World of Warcraft:

November 14, Addon Release: "OMG Human Racial is sooo overpowered in PvP, everyone is stupid not to faction change!!!!"

April 15, 5 month later: "WTF Blizzard, I am Human and have 1-2 hour queue time, fix it!!!!! I don't care that every PvP Player changed to Alliance!!!!"

As said, Players made the issue with queues. So solve them for yourself. The solution would be easy.


@SquareEnix
How about we could see a Ratio of the three Nations in our PvP Sheet. Something Like:

Adders--------Legion--------Maelstrom
15%-----------30%----------55%

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Originally Posted by Cheraa

How about we could see a Ratio of the three Nations in our PvP Sheet. Something Like:

Adders--------Legion--------Maelstrom
15%-----------30%----------55%

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the ratio is :

http://www.finalfantasyxiv.com/Eorze...N_Census_S.png

but some data centers are more packed on Flames others in Melstrom and others in adders i guess

Maybe include that at least 1 pvp match should be played in the last week to be count. I bet than we would have another kind of ratio. :D

Is that the percentage of actual qing pvpers or just overall every account gc?

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Originally Posted by Stupiduglytaru

Is that the percentage of actual qing pvpers or just overall every account gc?

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overall pop (JP included)

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Originally Posted by Cheraa

Like in any MMO with instanced PvP.
The majority of playerbase joins the winning faction, which leads to massive queue times.

Problem ist the player not SE.
Spread yourself through ALL three GCs or live with 1hr long queues.

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Again, this isn't solving anything. Achievements and rewards lie with all GC's and these don't transfer when you switch GC's. For some, switching GC's would defeat the point of PvPing to begin with when they lose all of the progress they made.

Remove GC restiction. This is one thing they SHOULD have kept from xi. In PvP there were 3 factions as here. Let's say it was 8v8v8. The 1st 8 people of a faction would rep their faction. The 9th guy wouldn't get locked out til next match. They would just be an honorary member of faction B but their points and shiz still went to them. Eg: im an adder and I need 10 more wins for my mounts. I'm number 25 so they make me an honorary flame for the match. If flames win it counts towards my adder pvp rank and my adder achievements because I'm a darn adder. I just played with blues instead of waiting another 30 min.

The system is so brutally simple, kills fotm problems, let's you even play with your friends of dif GCs, makes cues faster for every one (1st 72 people to cue go immediately regardless of GC), and you just make your wins count for your char so you get all your achievements and crap.

It's mind boggling how backwards SE is on this subject.

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Originally Posted by Ageofwar

i believe removing GC restriction will be yet another temporary fix.

i do count myself as part of the crowed that don't give a.... about PvP content

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Removing GC restrictions is a must-have fix for them to implement any longer-lasting fixes. Even if millions of people on every DC (ie more players than the game currently has) constantly queued for PvP and the game could create enough instances to support enough matches, so long as there's an imbalance between GCs (which will ALWAYS be the case), then there will be wait times that differ by at least 10-15 minutes (the length of a match) between the GCs.

It literally doesn't matter at all what else they do to fix PvP. If they don't remove the GC restriction, queue times will not change. It's really that simple.

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Originally Posted by Vandril

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I can't see SE doing this any time soon since from a back end point of view it's more than likely same amount of effort as retro fitting the 2.0 areas for flying in which case its more than likely a 4.0 task (so 2 year wait?)

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Originally Posted by Ageofwar

I can't see SE doing this any time soon since from a back end point of view it's more than likely same amount of effort as retro fitting the 2.0 areas for flying in which case its more than likely a 4.0 task (so 2 year wait?)

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As someone who took a Programming Data Structures class not too long ago and learned all about how the queue data structure works from the back end point of view, I can say that, unless SE royally screwed the pooch with their queue design, this could probably be done by one of their programmers over the course of an hour, tested in less than a week, and out by the next hotfix, all with little to no new bugs.

All they would likely need to do (again, unless they screwed the pooch with their queue design) is remove the check for what GC the player queuing for Frontlines is in and replace the snippet of code that sorts players into groups for a match depending on their GC with one that simply places players in open spots in any of the three groups for a match.

Something like this would be far less work than that fix to the queue algorithms they pushed out after 3.1 that took only a few weeks to locate the problem, make the fix, test it, and push out to live.

Aside from the actual rework of the queue system, the only other thing they'd really need to worry about and figure out is how to handle achievements that were previously GC-based. This could be as simple as leaving them as they are. The queue system doesn't need to know what GC you are in for the game to tick the proper GC's achievements with the proper credit. And it still makes some level of sense since your winning your own GC glory as an active soldier of their ranks, even if in a joint team also comprised of members of the other two GCs.

As for the PvP lore; it's already a joke. And the only currently relevant Frontlines doesn't even HAVE lore. There's nothing to worry about here.

So, no. The amount of effort this would take is trivial. How long it would take or how many resources it would cost are not the problem. SE must have other reasons they're hesitating.

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Originally Posted by Vandril

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i would think its not just about the queuing system only but also about user data as well such as PvP stats (which are kept per GC), Wolf marks and achievements (which are recorded per GC) and they have already gone on record saying they are having issues with this for another problem

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Originally Posted by Ageofwar

i would think its not just about the queuing system only but also about user data as well such as PvP stats (which are kept per GC), Wolf marks and achievements (which are recorded per GC)

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I'll admit that I forgot about this, but it would also be a simple fix. Just need to run a single query through all the user PvP data fields on their database(s) which are split up into the three GCs to combine them. Then, anything over any sort of caps after the merge (pretty much just Wolf Marks and PvP experience) would be reduced down to the caps. Of course, ranks would need to be recalculated afresh from the new, combined PvP experience field, because Rank 27 + Rank 23 != (does not equal) Rank 50, experience-wise.

I already mentioned achievements in my above post with my edit, so you can just read that there.

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Originally Posted by Ageofwar

and they have already gone on record saying they are having issues with this for another problem

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I can't really comment on how difficult/simple a fix would be if the problem is so vague.

I'd like to try the PvP in this game since I usually play PvP mmos, however the wait bores me and I usually log out and go play Aion or GW2.
I think removing the GC restrictions would help greatly but I thought they said they aren't removing that at all due to lore reasons. One solution I can think of for large scale pvp would be to have a pvp map outside the duty finder. That way even if they kept the GC restrictions you can still enter at will.

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Originally Posted by Warlyx

the ratio is :

http://www.finalfantasyxiv.com/Eorze...N_Census_S.png

but some data centers are more packed on Flames others in Melstrom and others in adders i guess

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Interesting find, thanks for sharing! But I don't think that any sort of ratio will really be beneficial. I'm with Maelstrom, but my alts are not, and I'm sure they would be tossed into the pool of data if/when SE does another poll (assuming they do one for NA servers as well). Obviously. I don't focus on alts as much, so they won't be in PvP for a long time, if ever. This also likely doesn't take into account players that have been unsubbed since 2.xx, or just aren't subbed at the moment.

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Originally Posted by Terribad

I think removing the GC restrictions would help greatly but I thought they said they aren't removing that at all due to lore reasons.

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Their most recent word was that they were considering removing the GC restrictions. But that was months ago, and we've heard nothing on the matter since. As is how most information flows with PvP; that is to say, excruciatingly slowly.

I would hate say this, but they probably should consider doing a PvCPU mode where you fight computer characters in an arena to get marks or whatever is that you get from PvP. Kind of make it like a fighting game like Mortal Kombat or the like, where you fight a string of characters with each successive character being more difficult. Kind of like when you fight certain characters in Class / Job Duties. For each character you beat, you get certain marks. The harder the character, the more marks you get. I've been wanting to try PvP, but the long waits I constantly hear about, just does not seem to be worth it. I would only do it single player mode like I suggested which would be insta-queue.

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Originally Posted by Antonio_Xul

I would only do it single player mode like I suggested which would be insta-queue.

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Heh, if PvP was PvE, I'd play it as well.

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Originally Posted by Antonio_Xul

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I believe what you are describing is the kind of think that happens in Chocobo Racing, were if the system can't find 7 players in 60 second it fills the missing slots with CPU racers

Bump - because I want this to remain on the front page for as long as possible and hopefully grab the attention of the mods/devs!

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Originally Posted by UlricCraft

Bump - because I want this to remain on the front page for as long as possible and hopefully grab the attention of the mods/devs!

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don't hold your breath, sounds more like a recipe for getting this thread locked

I miss how the PVP ques used to be. You could go in almost instantly… :/ The last time I registered for PVP (as Maelstrom, registered for Seal Rock, Slaughter and Secure), I waited over 2 hours and 45 mins before I gave up. It’s crazy.

Bumping this thread because the problem still exists, maybe not with the new PvP but definitely with Seal Rock and Frontline.

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Originally Posted by WinterLuna

Bumping this thread because the problem still exists, maybe not with the new PvP but definitely with Seal Rock and Frontline.

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I swear, if you're queuing solo, click PiP. Works pour moi.

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Originally Posted by WinterLuna

I always do, thanks for the advice, but it still takes 30+ minutes and sometimes 45+ minutes to pop. :(

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Yeah, Can't comment on Chaos(Aether #maelstrong<<) but I haven't had a FL (roulette or direct queue) longer than 15 mins in months.

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Originally Posted by Iagainsti

I swear, if you're queuing solo, click PiP. Works pour moi.

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I always do, thanks for the advice, but it still takes 30+ minutes and sometimes 45+ minutes to pop. :(