Many people, especially top players, see the new ranking system as a failure and rightfully so. More often than not, you can be a current top player on the leader board and somehow be INSTANTLY paired up with people who never played the game mode once in their life. Today as a Gold player I sat in a sub 1 minute que and I somehow was placed with 3 unranked players, two of which explicitly expressed they are brand new players and it was their first game ever. This is not fun to me or the players that ended up on my team because more likely than not the other team is likely to be more balanced than mine and will end up crushing us within 2 minutes in a game mode that normally last the entire 8 minutes.
The current matchmaking prioritizes unranked - silver and gold - diamond, which sounds good on paper for a established leader board. But when you completely wipe people's rank and everyone starts from scratch, it becomes far more likely that as top players start to rank up through silver and gold that they get paired with people who are unranked, causing disparity and unfairness. This creates a situation that no more how hard you may try, the people on your team aren't up to par with you and you have almost no chance to win. It isn't the new players fault, rather it's the matchmaking that places golds with players with 0 rating. In the bid to fix what a lot of people were complaining about in season 1 they created the SAME EXACT PROBLEM IN A LOWER TIER. The only difference now is that rather being platinum or diamond, we are just gold.
The only solution that makes sense to me is that they need to be far more precise will the matchmaking. They need to prioritize unranked vs unranked, bronze vs bronze and so on, it cannot just be the way it is now when a gold such as myself will get INSTANTLY qued with brand new players without the system even trying to put me with silvers first. It would be much more fun for a gold like me to be paired with people closer to me and for unranked player to be paired verse unranked players because then you actually have a fight, fights where unranked players can actually maybe learn the game rather than get crushed, and higher rated players can get the quality matches that they desire.
This is really about a sense of fairness across the board. right now the games are not fair, Gold tanks/dps get paired with unranked healers and automatically the unranked healer will just be permanently dead while a Gold healer with unranked dps can't hope to land a kill no matter how hard they try. It really just kills motivation to play not only for top players but for unranked players who want to learn but get overwhelmed in severely lopsided teams. Lopsided teams are no fun, balanced teams are.
I hope you fix this SE, otherwise the mode will ultimately just slowly die like it did last season. Remember why you made the change to matchmaking in the first place, the only difference now is that it is a problem for silver/golds rather than plats and diamonds.
New matchmaking system is a failure
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07-30-2016, 12:32 PMAviarsNew matchmaking system is a failure
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07-30-2016, 01:20 PMcoco1851
Did you ever consider that maybe this is for the best experience for everyone? Because my experiences show that inexperienced players would hardly ever get things done because nobody has knowledge to know what to do. In fact would promote people buying clears which I have never agreed with. Although I'm not quite sure why you feel your knowledge isn't up to par. A good teacher can help & make even the dumbest person good in fact I used to be that nub that didn't know anything my teacher taught me extremely well I'm not the nub I used to be when I started mmo's. I'm not the greatest but not nearly as bad.
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07-30-2016, 01:33 PMAviarsI can't teach people everything within the minute they give you at the start of the game let alone when I actually have to devote my keyboard to playing rather than explain to them what to do. Also it does no good for unranked players to be paired with me when the game is one sided, they learn nothing and I leave frustrated. They would have a better time being eased into higher ranked rather than thrown into the meat grinder. That is usually how a majority of games work, however in this one, they think that a balanced and fair team is simply balancing the rating numbers regardless of rank which isn't the case at all. Would you make a 1st grader do college calculus? No you wouldn't.Quote:
Originally Posted by coco1851
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07-30-2016, 02:04 PMcoco1851Well if you can't handle it, you can't handle it. I've seen plenty of people teach/tell inexperienced players how to do such & such without making excuses & clearing whatever, but hey what do I know? For me I'd rather be with people that know what they are doing (as long as they are not being elitist, pricks) or in your words being thrown in the meat grinder. No I wouldn't, but sorry to say no mmo should be referred to as hard as a 1st grader doing calculus, lol.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aviars
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07-30-2016, 02:16 PMAviarsDue to the current matchmaking, a majority of new healers are just getting utterly dominated. Most of the game they are dead and they can't handle what is coming to them. If they can't hope to live for a few seconds then how are they going to learn? They won't and are more likely to quit than spend time on the floor. Also it's great you enjoy being paired with people better than you, I highly doubt it's the same for those people though.Quote:
Originally Posted by coco1851
Also my comparison was fine, you can imagine a unranked brand new healer being placed against silver+ dps and not being able to keep themselves alive for more than a few seconds. You are just avoiding the reality of how bad it is right now. -
07-30-2016, 07:06 PMNoelNoelWhat a load of casual talk. And with the underlined sentence you basically advocate for carries. It's not the best experience for everyone, this is a ranked competition, if you are no good you shouldn't be paired with players who know what they are doing and who's rank might be affected by a newbie's inexperience. I do find sad that there's no way to properly practice how to fight at high lvl in PVP. There are even PVP specifities that you couldn't find anywhere if you didn't chat with other people, which is SE's fault. But anyway no, an unranked player shouldn't be paired with a gold player, they should keep being paired with silver and bronze until they get enough practice to pull their weight. As mentionned above the 1 min thing isn't enough to teach anything, and typing during the match is dangerous.Quote:
Originally Posted by coco1851
It's amazing to see all these people who pop in PVP who don't even know they have PVP abilities, and who can't even do a decent PVE job. You're left wondering what they were expecting, or if they even looked up what a PVP match could be like. We all start somewhere, but make sure your start doesn't affect others in a ranked competition.
And no, some people never improve, thinking of a WAR on Primal who after playing many games still isn't able to pull more than 40k dmg on a 8 mins match, or a MCH who ignores crates/kits after playing for so long... To the point I stop queuing when I see these people. -
07-30-2016, 08:56 PMZojhaThey shouldn't even be paired with bronze and silvers, ideally. Elo difference between the highest and lowest player should "ideally" be single digit while people who have yet to establish a stable skill level should primarily be paired with others who have neither. We just don't get any matches to pop if we had "good" matchmaking.Quote:
Originally Posted by NoelNoel
The PvP population here in FFXIV is downright dysfunctionally small on the NA/EU data centers and what SE really should look into are the reasons for that. I mean, just look at the consequences of it: You can't have good matchmaking, GC restrictions prevent games rather than being a minor annoyance, Newcomers are forced to choose between ranked and a completely different mode (It's like only having Ranked Summoner's Rift and ARAM popping) and matchfixing/wintrading becomes feasible (Since the chances of being matched against each other are high).
Somebody kindly did a player poll over in the general forums and so far, less people care for PvP than for Lord of Verminion. I'd not be surprised if that was actually accurate, because that's how it feels like ingame as well. Anyway, that is the core issue that really needs addressing. Everything else really is secondary - IMO. -
07-31-2016, 12:04 AMcoco1851Well I'm not going to even comment on what you & the op's talk is, because I'll get banned for that but anyways... Just because someone teaches you something doesn't mean your carried. Way to twist my words. Carried is when you sit back do absolutely nothing while someone does the work for you, so no I don't advocate it. If there is no place to practice other than in there & the time frame is that limited according to you guys which is some of your problem then wouldn't the proper question be: can we have more than a minute to teach new players a little bit before it starts & can we have something where new people can practice?Quote:
Originally Posted by NoelNoel
The way this is all being said gives me the impression that: 'I'm better than you so I should not be paired with the likes of you',' screw you if you want to learn anything because I'm not willing' ,'you are a nub so go play with the other nubs'. Which is elitist attitude at its finest. -
07-31-2016, 12:32 AMCommander_Justitia
@coco1851 this isn't pve where you beat a boss with some mechanics. You can tell the newbie an hour all about pvp, still, he is no match for the top players, putting the fact aside that you cant get proper gear or trait some pvp skills once you are in feast. But still he gets matched up with them. Yes feast 8vs8 is deader than the deadliest deadly dead dead but you could go frontlines to learn atleast a little about pvp, why go directly into the arena rating content ?
And I dont know what the hell you mean with "buying clears" this is a solo queue, you can't pay people to play with you and beat the other team. That just doesn't work.
And I certainly dont know what you are expecting from a content that comes with a ranking system, not all players can be No.1, there will be better players and not better players. But everyone probably started as a bad player and then learned. Just don't blame the better players that they want to play with other okay players. -
07-31-2016, 06:17 AMFebrusLOL. Beautiful.Quote:
Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia
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07-31-2016, 08:13 AMAviarsBiggest thing is PVP gets the shaft when they give mindless grinding modes like PotD decent rewards like useable weapons and grade V materia. PVP literally has nothing going for it other than bragging rights of skill, which is less enticing than what monotonous grinding can net you.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zojha
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07-31-2016, 06:37 PMZojhaDiadem had the V materia before it was cool and up until PotD was released was the only way to reliably get V materia that was not weekly capped. Did it help its popularity? Last I checked, it was barely kept on life support for battle classes while the gear inside was relevant and has since turned into a gatherer only thing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aviars
Savage has the best rewards in the game and yet pretty much nobody bothers. Nidhogg EX has offered i235 weapons before PotD was released, which means people enticed by the weapons are primarily people who cannot get into/beat Niddy EX. And then you have people put up with divebomb and meteor instagibs for as little as an orchestrion roll. Or doing 500+ FATEs for some glamour weapons.
Rewards are a factor, yes. But they're far from the only thing that matters. If it's too hard, people don't bother, which is why Savage cannot pick up despite offering superior rewards while people are well willing to grind the Anima instead. This is something PvP suffers from as well - I doubt you stand the sliver of a chance in PvP if you can't perform well in PvE.
Moreover, latency is a huge factor in PvP, much more so than in PvE, so people without a good connection will have a much worse experience (People randomly jumping around and being impossible to follow as melee, skills animating and even locking you in place as if they went off without actually doing damage because the other person was registered as out of range etc) and be less likely to bother as a result.
The community is an often cited factor, though I personally didn't make overly bad experiences yet - really just one WAR who took the rage thing a bit too literal.
Furthermore, it has a higher entry barrier - You need to grind a long time until you're on equal footing with other players (PvP skill points gained via PvP ranks).
There's also the barrier of knowledge, though that just explains low population, not why people who know about it do not bother.
And to name more subjective factors: It's likely not commonly considered fun to lose control of your character without means to prevent it (See Paladin advice in this very forum: "Run away from him!"). Newer DPS will often cite that it felt unsatisfying because they felt they did very little damage, even though that wasn't the case - the damage was merely healed back up quickly. And some people might have sticked to this game precisely because there's little competition - lack of rewards simply does not explain why Mana has a lot less issues with PvP despite offering the same rewards.
Just a few factors off the top of my head that have nothing to do with rewards. It's why I say SE should look into the factors why people don't bother - if people don't want to PvP "solely" because of the lack of rewards, well that can be fixed, no biggie. If it's another of these factors or something else entirely, rewards might fall flat, because you do nothing against the actual issue. To get back to the above, PotD weapons are relevant primarily because Nidhogg EX and Savage rewards fell flat for many people - otherwise people would already be decked out with better or equivalent weapons. They aren't, because that content is not accessible to them and no amount of rewards fill fix that, only changing the content would.
Sorry for the rant. -
08-01-2016, 02:11 AMDivinemights
Please kindly stop being irrational and realize that English FF14 PvP community size is rather small that not even WoW's matchmaking system would help. New matchmaking system is fine, it is just unable to effectively running a small PvP community size. To run a small size PvP community, the system will need to be smart and take any players to fill in the empty slot when there is one available. In direct comparison of JP PvP community size, I highly doubt that both Aether and Primal added together can even on par with one of the JP datacenter.
It is either you take it like a man (or woman) when you team up with a new player. If you really have problem with these new players, you can always do remade team match and give these new players time and chance to become a better player. Take a break from solo mode for about a month. These new healers will have better chance in learning when there is no so called "top players" blow them up in few CDs. -
08-01-2016, 02:48 AMKenjiMuyo
No matchmaking system will work when you don't have enough people queueing for the system so separate players by skill level. At most we've been able to independently confirm 3-4 concurrent games, max, during peak hours. that's 32 people? if even 8 of those people are unranked, guess what happens, they'll get into games with other ranked players, unless they magically all queue up at the same time, which they don't. Games as staggered so those unranked will get pooled with others because SE won't have people wait 10+ minutes just to match their pool.
Until there's enough players that there are multiple games worth of players at the same tier, no matchmaking fix will work. -
08-01-2016, 04:28 AMAviarsTo be fair I would rather wait 10 minutes for a half decent game than get a instant que to have 3 unranked people on my team. Seems like the system currently only accounts for who are currently in the que rather than the time you spend in the que. I personally would wait longer for the system to see if people who are closer in level enter the system that than what is immediately available.Quote:
Originally Posted by KenjiMuyo
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08-01-2016, 05:23 AMKoltikMe too.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aviars
With that said, we don't want a repeat of what happened with Wolves Den which absolutely killed the mode altogether. If restrictions are too heavy, then queues will be excessively long and games will not pop, which leads to people not queuing anymore, which leads to a dead mode. -
08-01-2016, 06:03 AMKenjiMuyo
I think people will largely agree that they'd be willing to wait for a good game. But how long? 10 minutes for a healer that gets instant pops can easily become 40 minutes for a range. And when queues get that long, unless they fix their UI to actually show someone's place in line, or some information concerning that the person will even get in a game at all, then people will give up waiting and just won't queue altogether.
And even then, the scenario provided was during peak times. Most times, you get 1 game running at a time, 2 at most. The odds of unequal skilled players being on and queueing are very high leading to this very problem. -
08-01-2016, 06:14 AMNalienPersonally, I think PvP has the best rewards currently... Exclusive rewards and bragging rights seem far more enticing to me, than some item level-who-cares weapon that'll be redundant in a few patches... I enjoy stuff like Palace of the Dead for its content, not its rewards... PvE rewards have long since become fairly irrelevant to me... That's not to say PvP rewards are fine... Wolf Marks are anything but, they're incredibly dull... SE could remove them from the game and I wouldn't notice, there is definitely a problem there IMO, but Feasts rewards specifically are fine, for the most part. The fact that Season 2 is actually reasonably active at all (despite zero new rewards) is evidence enough of that...Quote:
Originally Posted by Aviars
Where I think PvP really suffers in this game is the developers... They've got no clue what they're doing, they've got a "Throw shit at the wall, and see what sticks" approach to new PvP content... There is no structure here and no longevity in any of the content... Feast might break that cycle, but 4.0 might also render it completely irrelevant, and it's a competitive mode anyway... There is no solid foundation for non-competitive PvP in this game, the best we've got is Frontlines, which is terrible... Is it any wonder the PvP community is so small and unskilled? There is no where to practice without getting your head chewed off, and the developers show a complete disregard for the content itself... It's generally just off putting for new and old players alike...
They really need to focus on Wolves Den IMO, I don't think there is really a place for Frontlines in this game... Not if they're going to refuse to fix the damn thing at least... Why they wasted time on Shatter I don't know, though there are somethings that they just can't fix with Frontlines... It's a three sided cluster f*ck that takes too long to get into and goes on for too long, and is ultimately just a complete waste of development resources; Borderland Ruins and Seal Rock are collecting dust, Fields of Glory is certainly going to follow regardless of whether they add some new worthless mode to Frontlines... People get bored with the lack of variety, either you make them all relevant before of working on a new map, or you perpetuate this stupid cycle... Since I don't trust SE to fix any issues with Frontlines, I'm just going to ask that they stop developing it completely... Put that effort into new Wolves Den maps and modes, give us a Wolves Den Roulette, make that XIVs front-and-center PvP option, because filling a 4v4 match is so much easier than filling a Frontlines match... Wolves Den matches are quicker, more rewarding, more educational... Any fun I had in Frontlines, I'm almost certain can be better replicated in Wolves Den, and I'd be able to enjoy it more frequently...
I would say most successful PvP based games work by; Giving players a variety of similar game modes to play. Adding new maps to add variety to those game modes. Then adding a competitive mode on top of that... What SE has done is just a mess... Wolves Den and Frontlines are vastly different, and we have zero variety... Frontlines itself could have had variety, Secure/Slaughter/Seize/Shatter are all game modes, Borderland Ruins/Seal Rock/Fields of Glory are all unique maps, they could have had twelve combinations there... Instead we have one; Fields of Glory (Shatter). That's one way they could fairly easily improve Frontlines IMO, but it doesn't really matter... The issue here is with the competitive mode, and Frontlines is far too different from Wolves Den to really matter for that... They've effectively made two entirely different games and now we're stuck with the majority sucking or not being interested in the relevant one because they spent years focusing on Frontlines...
They really should either have never bothered with Wolves Den, or never bothered with Frontlines IMO... I'd rather have had one thing done well, than two things done poorly... Feasts a lot better than it has any right being, but the community had zero build up, we went from Seize to Feast... It's no wonder things are so terrible... -
08-01-2016, 07:26 AMMixZ
Ever since making silver and reaching 670 as of this morning I am now feeling the bad side of this system with a string of loses I am currently enduring. One example is that I finally got into a match with all silver players on each team except the other team tank was non tier along with our healer. Now I felt bad for the healer because he was pretty much was getting rocked the whole time when the other team realized the healer doesn't handle pressure very well and won the match. Why would the system do this if only 5 minutes have elapsed or so in forming the match? It is unfair to the player to be put in that situation with little experience and is frustrating to those more experienced as they wish nothing more then balance in the match that anyone team could win in the end. I have read some of the responses about teaching which is fine and all if it wasn't in a ranked season and an off season would benefit as a learning phase for new players and those trying new jobs.
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08-01-2016, 07:32 AMMixZ
Trying to learn your class is a ranked environment is selfish and only hurting your team's rating as you are using their time to learn your class. You don't send rookie players in a tournament if you want to win. This is getting to be part of how society is now, where everyone needs to win and needs a participation ribbon. I really enjoy the PvP in FFXIV but I feel SE is spreading itself out so thin in different systems that it won't improve what they have. Or they may have too many systems and nothing will reach it's peak.
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08-01-2016, 08:09 AMFebrusI get what you're saying here, but that's not exactly fair to new players. Telling a new player that they're not allowed to queue into Feast because they're still learning their class is basically the same thing as telling them they're simply not allowed to play that game mode, ever, because they'll never have enough PvP experience to play it without actually playing it. That's a pretty selfish attitude in itself, because it prioritizes the enjoyment and entitlement of experienced players over new ones who have just as much a right to be there as anyone else.Quote:
Originally Posted by MixZ
Now, I do agree that throwing them in fresh is obviously a bad idea, but at the moment we don't really have another option. I mean, where are the new players supposed to go to learn? Front Lines? They'll be lucky to get into one match a day, and they'll be playing a game mode that is completely different from the intensity of Feast. I can almost guarantee that if you take a player who's PvP experience is exclusive to Front Lines and dropped them in Feast, they'd be no better off than someone who is completely fresh at PvP. The same goes for 8v8 Feast, which is just as dead.
In the end, this is a problem for SE to fix. They seriously need to buckle down and figure out a way to ease the damn learning curve on new players. A pre-season would have been a hell of a good start. A pre-season which had Preliminary/Season qualifier requirements would have been even better. Then there's the practice mode that everyone was asking for in season one ... SE has options, for sure. They just need to explore which of those options would be best, instead of letting the PvP community spit venom at each other because of unfortunate match ups. -
08-01-2016, 08:34 AMMixZ
Not saying they don't belong in the Feast just not rated if they are not ready. SE has spread itself so wide trying to grab every type of player into their game that none of the systems are really fleshed out. Verminion, Diadim, PotD, Aquapolis, and whatever new thing they included since Heavensward seems like they are just wasting development time to find out what sticks instead of improving upon them.
Just seems they are trying to do everything WoW does but we just don't have the population for that. They need to hone down on certain game mechanics and improve them before thowing more new features and leaving old ones out to dry. Otherwise we have another "the Fold" dying. -
08-01-2016, 08:50 AMMixZ
The one thing I always found tough to sallow with SE is how they put just enough systems in (like the Feast scoreboard being very general) for community to turn on each other and do the blame game when they lose, but then this long period of not responding to any improvements. Even at the start of season two I was surprised they barely tried to improve it as I am sure they had enough feedback how to make it better.
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08-01-2016, 06:24 PMFebrusI understand what you mean, and I don't necessarily disagree with you. It's just that, when it comes to PvP in FFxiv, it's basically Feast or nothing right now. Queue times for alternative game modes ensure that fresh players either get into ranked matched, or they get into no matches at all. It definitely shouldn't be that way, but that's the unfortunate reality of the situation.Quote:
Originally Posted by MixZ
I do agree that SE's non-committal attitude towards PvP is the root of the problem, though. They've spread themselves too thinly, and that's mostly because they insist on replacing old game modes instead of fostering them and fixing their flaws. They seemed to be turning over a new leaf when Season One of Feast hit. For a short, happy, time I was actually impressed that they were making an effort to sustain a PvP game mode instead of just putting it out and ignoring it, but their commitment to Season two has been less than encouraging. The lack of a pre-season and the resounding silence from the developers has made me think that they're falling back into their old ways of flagrantly ignoring the PvP community ... -
08-01-2016, 07:33 PMEnlialThats a bit of a hyperbole... Yeah the game modes are very different, but at the very least its certainly better if, to give a few examples, players know that they can sprint without expending tp, understand how ilvl sync works and how to gear, bards and machinists are aware of the range penalty and so on. Not to mention have a few PvP attribute points (and hopefully by extension are aware of their pvp abilities). Going in with 0 puts people at an even further disadvantage.Quote:
Originally Posted by Februs
A preseason would have been really nice though...
And yeah matchmaking is crap. Another thing about it Ive noticed is that at times it tends to match you with the same people, against the same people, repeatedly. Had some nasty losing streaks due to that -_- Its a bit unfair that players from the more populated servers can often check to see if someone is still queuing. Also, hey call me paranoid, but given how much easier its been made I'm almost positive some people are using alts to boost each other. No way to prove it, of course. /shrug. -
08-01-2016, 07:37 PMNalienI suspect they've scheduled for 3 Feast seasons before kicking it into the same ditch as Secure et al... 3.25~3.35, 3.35~3.45, 3.45~3.55, then 4.0 takes us to Lv70 and all current content passes peacefully into the night... No time for pre-seasons with that schedule...Quote:
Originally Posted by Februs
You know what I think they need to do? Give PvP a similar progression system to Palace of the Dead... Remove gear from the equation and just standardize everyones stats, that allows you to effectively manipulate players level... Right now we need i150 for PvP, that means we absolutely have to be Lv60 in order to wear that gear... Remove that, and like Palace of the Dead, you can just boost players levels... That means you can potentially open PvP up to literally everyone, rather than just the people at Lv60... Some issues with that, depending on how far you take it (one does not expect a Lv20 to have any clue what they're doing with Lv60 skills), but just lock ranked behind the level cap and I don't care, more players is more players... It also means you don't need to leave Fold/Secure/Slaughter as they are, they can be made relevant for the new level cap, as can Feast/Seize/Shatter when 4.0 rolls in... That allows them to provide variety without rendering previous modes moot, assuming they also address the roulette...
As it currently is, they're going to be making modes irrelevant... The 2.0 options have to remain there for people who don't buy Heavensward... The Heavensward options have to remain there for people who don't buy whatever is next... Slap a Palace of the Dead style level boost on PvP though? Someone who doesn't buy Heavensward can do Lv60 Secure, perhaps even Lv60 Shatter if SE does the right thing and doesn't split the community by locking modes behind expansions... It would allow them to build up PvP, rather than constantly replacing it... -
08-02-2016, 12:23 AMAraxes
Well i think it was a mistake to put a Rated PvP System into a very small PvP community. It also caused Frontlines to be wiped out from the Board and i personaly like Frontlines much more. Why not implement a 2v2 mode without Healers. Most people hate to heal in PvP anyway. First off it would need much less players wich is good for a small pvp comunity and it would open up much faster. Also you dont need to wait until someone forces himself to heal and makes it possible to actualy open a 4v4 match. Lets be honest. the only Reason why it takes up to 26 minutes for a Feast match to open is because noone really wants to Heal and i can totaly understand that. If someone really wants to Heal he can Q up for 4v4.
Just my 2 cents. -
08-02-2016, 06:21 AMFebrusIt's an exaggeration, sure, but it's not as big of an exaggeration as you might think. You'd be amazed at how many casual PvP'ers (typically Front Line players) don't actually know about any of those things. They just get away with it in game modes like Front Lines, because there's just too much going on in large format matches for people to notice if one of their teammates is doing something wrong. There's a lot of dedicated FL players out there who know how PvP works backwards and forwards, but the more casual crowd is a different story. You can get away with only the basics in Front Lines, so details like range restrictions (something you'd need to have read the patch notes or the forums to have learned) are utterly lost on them.Quote:
Originally Posted by Enlial
That said, it's still a problem caused by SE's lackluster PvP management. Part of the reason that casual PvP'ers are so lost is because there are absolutely NO quests, dialogue, or tutorials for PvP. Every time SE makes a change or adjustment, the simply post it in the fine print of the patch notes and assume everyone got the memo. This is not the best way to keep the community up to speed, especially when our various weekly PvE responsibilities dominate the majority of our time. -
08-02-2016, 06:46 AMFebrusI really hope that's not the case ... Personally, I'd rather see Feast become the much needed anchor of PvP, rather than see it replaced as soon as the next expansion comes out. For all of it's problems, which really aren't that terrible, it's still one of the best and most consistent PvP game modes that we have. It's also a closed environment that is easy to adjust and build upon, if SE would just put in the effort to do it. Instead of a whole new game mode at 4.0, I'd rather see them use the massive patch time to completely overhaul the game mode we currently have, give Wolves Den Pier a face lift, adjust and expand the vendors, re-spec our PvP menus, etc. Wolves Den was a disaster, so it's no surprise that it was tossed into a bin, but Feast isn't nearly as bad. There's nothing so broken about it (including the debated matchmaking) that it needs to be swept under a rug and replaced.Quote:
Originally Posted by Nalien
As for your progression idea, I'm not sure I agree with it. Honestly, it seems a little overly complicated when they could just simply re-scale all of the PvP game modes up to 60 and re-evaluate the rewards to make them equally competitive. Personally, I'm fine with PvP being an end-game thing, because no one really wants to play with only half their skills. The Front Line Roulette would also benefit greatly from having every FL game mode be on equal footing. As for Feast, that's simple. Pre-seasons and preliminary matches (probably via a token system) would solve that problem, or at least ensure that players have at least some experience with the game mode before they start queuing for Ranked matches. -
08-03-2016, 06:35 AMNalienI don't think that helps grow the playerbase... It locks PvP behind the current expansion and a significant PvE grind... OK new players are going to suck if boosted to the current cap, but so long as they're kept out of competitive I really don't care, most people in Frontlines (and sadly, Feast) already suck regardless... There's also situations where new players may be interested in PvP, but quit during the PvE grind to even get there, that's just limiting PvPs growth... The mechanisms for boosting players to the cap already exist in Palace of the Dead, it shouldn't be too hard to transpose them to PvP... There's potentially a large pool of players that PvP could be opened to (I recall the census data having some shockingly low levels), which is only a good thing IMO, their skill level is fairly irrelevant to me... Like I said, just keep them out of competitive (which needs some form of gate as is anyway) and I'm fine with it...Quote:
Originally Posted by Februs
It would do little for competitive, with that in mind, but I would hope that getting people into PvP earlier would both help with non-competitive queues and boost result in better players in general... That's going to pay off in competitive in the long run... As it is I don't think a non-competitive Feast option is particularly viable... The only issue I really see is that, from the perspective of a newb, suddenly getting Lv60 skills is going to be confusing, although it's not like Lv1s would be queuing up, there would have to be a sensible minimum level, IIRC Grand Companies are locked behind Lv20 so thats the starting point given Frontlines... Regardless of minimum level though, it is still potentially confusing and that's why Palace of the Dead builds players up to 60, if they want to address that it's going to be slightly more complicated to implement, but they can easily address it with something we want them to implement anyway; Some form of PvP tutorial... Slap in a quest upon joining a Grand Company that sends you off to the Wolves Den to make players aware of PvP, then have a Hall of the Novice style introduction that also lets new players play with their Lv60 skills...
Done, PvP is less hidden away and opened up to a much large portion of the playerbase, that's only going to be good for PvP in the long run... How skilled they are ultimately doesn't matter to me, I want the PvP community to grow, and locking it behind the current level cap doesn't help that... That's only going to get worse over time as the level cap rises, unless SE opts to implement level boost potions, but then what's really the difference? -
08-04-2016, 07:49 AMFebrusI'm just wrestling with how this would actually work, in practice. I'm not sure I'm following what you mean by 'boosting.'Quote:
Originally Posted by Nalien
As far as I know, PoTD resets everyone to lvl 1 when they start, and you have to work back up to 60 within the palace itself. Then you get a portion of the exp you earned within PoTD when you leave. The thing is, a carbon copy of that wouldn't work in PvP, because PvP'ing at lvl 1 would be just plain silly. Even if they started at lvl 20 or 30, there'd still be a problem with divided queues. The original Wolves Den had a similar issue back when there was a lvl 30 queue option. Eventually, the more dedicated PvP'ers get to cap, and the queue times for the more casual crowd at lower levels becomes astronomical. If we want to be as inclusive as possible, then this kind of system doesn't really work. It would seem fine on the first day, when everyone is reset and starting from scratch, but after a week or two there would be a huge divide in the player base and what level of matches they were getting into.
The alternative is just boosting everyone up to 60 within PvP content (which I think is what you're suggesting?), but I'm not sure that would work either ... Even with a tutorial, new players would have a ridiculous learning curve when setting up their hotbars and trying to figure out what all of their lvl 60 moves did. There are some things that only come with experience. Hotbars and specific move usage/utility are two of them. No amount of tutorials will solve that. The system would be much simpler and inclusive, but the actual player experience would be far more complicated and might intimidate new players, especially when a sizable amount of old-time PvP'ers already know what they're doing.
Increased lvl caps only compound that issue, because players who opt out of buying expansions will be left to awkwardly juggle a hotbar that has moves which they only have access to in PvP content. SE has FINALLY allowed us to store action points separately, but they have yet to allow PvP gear-sets to act independently from PvE gear sets, so there is no way to save a PvP hotbar separately from our PvE loudouts. Even if you have 'Pld' set up with two different gear sets (PvE and PvP) they share the same hotbars. Making changes to one, currently, changes the other as well. As things are, that's fine, because we only have PvP moves to worry about. However, if we allow non-expansion players to play at 60 in PvP they'll not only be adding PvP moves to their hotbars, but also all of the PvE additions from 50-60. That can seriously screw with their hotbars, as many of the lvl 60 moves are part of pre-existing combos or rotations. Without being able to save them separately, it would almost not be worth it to even try PvP, because they'd have to reorganize their hotbars depending on what kind of content they want to play that day.
I'm definitely not against the idea itself, I'm just not sure it would work smoothly. SE would have to make a lot of concessions and adjustments to implement it, and I'm sad to say that I just don't trust them to handle it without causing more people to be afraid of PvP, rather than open to trying it. -
08-05-2016, 11:09 AMSuperZayThere aren't enough players for this which will result in hours long ques and dead mode in the end. Season 1 died for different reason, there was no incentive to que for higher rated players, but with new rating system they pretty much have to play the whole season or they'll drop from Top100.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aviars
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08-05-2016, 11:23 AMEnlial
I cant really see upsyncing happening not only would having all job abilities thrust upon you at once be overwhelming but I think it'd detract from the experience of slowly unlocking them.
The problem with level 30 wolves den was primarily, I think, that wolves den is a more hardcore mode that isnt going to have appeal to a broader casual playerbase looking for an alternative means to level up. So yeah I'd rule out fold/feast, but nobody in their right mind takes frontlines too seriously. I leveled characted almost solely in battlegrounds back when I played wow so I can definitely see a low level synced mode offering the equivalent xp of low level roulette working. There'd need to be balance adjustments for sure though (adlo was obscenely overpowered in 30 WD iirc). It might be fun to screw around pvping on "non-jobs" xD
As far as splitting the playerbase, I dont know. Ultimately, though, we really have to get more players attracted to pvp. Something like GC restriction removal is just putting a bandaid on cancer. Even if it does make queues pop more frequently, pvp'ers will still be an extreme minority seen as deserving one or two updates per expansion. I'd much prefer that whatever dev resources get spent on us go towards finding ways to get more people to play (and in turn justifying greater attention towards pvp) -
08-05-2016, 04:59 PMRose-Wild
The new system is terrible and needs to go away. To have this system you might as well make the matchmaking be 100% random. Because right now it does the oposite of what's it's ment to do.
You go higher on rating thinking you will scape the new players and find more balanced matches to find out that it's even worst than before because the system will see you are high and usually give you 1 or 2 new players wich is pretty much a free loss specially if it's a healer. If the game can't handle a rating system just remove it or give us 4v4 training wich is really way more needed than 8v8. -
08-05-2016, 05:13 PMAviars
What's worse is the system right now gives people free rating up to bronze, some people actually deserve a negative rating, just the way it is, some people just can't be helped.