Frontlines are just fine, no need for any changes.

http://i.imgur.com/nwa04Oc.jpg

It's the servers being the servers ;p... nothing to see here.

I'm sure it's fine in Japan

Never waited that long, but then again I do queue up for those during high volume hours

Quote:

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Originally Posted by myahele

I'm sure it's fine in Japan

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During the daytime, it is like this.
But at night, the wait it usually about 5 minutes.

A lot of people participate.

There are even weekly Seal Rock events that players organize. Just queuing for Frontlines Roulette will put you in Seal Rock on those days.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by myahele

I'm sure it's fine in Japan

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Always fine in evening

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Eul

Always fine in evening

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Sorry I disagree. Although there are times where the Ques are fair and one right after another, you have to be lucky enough to hit that rotation. Often I am spending 30+ even in evenings. Whats more its starts as 12 min...then goes to 18...then 21...then 26...then over 30 lol

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Keramory

Sorry I disagree. Although there are times where the Ques are fair and one right after another, you have to be lucky enough to hit that rotation. Often I am spending 30+ even in evenings. Whats more its starts as 12 min...then goes to 18...then 21...then 26...then over 30 lol

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Sargatanas server is not on Oceanic Datacenter. (But please correct me if I am wrong.)

Shinryu server is on Oceanic Datacenter. And my server, Carbuncle is also. Although Shinryu and Carbuncle are different datacenters, we both seem to be fine in the evening for PvP.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Keramory

Sorry I disagree. Although there are times where the Ques are fair and one right after another, you have to be lucky enough to hit that rotation. Often I am spending 30+ even in evenings. Whats more its starts as 12 min...then goes to 18...then 21...then 26...then over 30 lol

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Well it's NA problem, JP data center always popped when frontline.

*cough^"GC restrictions"*cough* nothing to see here....working as intended

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Originally Posted by Alexander_Dragonfang

http://i.imgur.com/nwa04Oc.jpg

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1-up. I was doing some drunk dungeon runs and decided to do some drunk PvP. I apparently forgot I was in the queue, and went to go pass out in bed... woke up in the morning to see I was still in the queue.

http://i.imgur.com/ZyCUNv2.jpg

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Originally Posted by Ryannex

It's popular in Japan but dead in NA/EU.

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Not necessarily popular, but: It's not dead. But that's similar to how Japan has a over three times the raiding success and likely population as NA/EU despite offering the exact same rewards. Different culture and all that.

The core of the issue is hard to nail, though, because PvP as such is far from unpopular - League of Legends is probably still the biggest game on the market and counter strike and DotA2 are popular as well. Which is why I tend to go broken record mode when it comes to rewards - they're not the issue.
The primary issue is: People in this game don't enjoy the PvP offered in this game. Why? Gods know.
It probably isn't repetition.
Part of it might be the community, but LoL has been notorious for that as well and it didn't kill the game.
Might be a bad fit between the community and the content - FFXIV isn't exactly catering to the high competitive type.
Might be the gameplay - The trinity was not made with PvP in mind.
Might be the fact that newbies play with veterans due to a lack of MMR - especially in frontlines where 8-man premades are possible.
Might be queue times, but even when queues are swift as when Feast got introduced, it always dies.

But since this thread is in General Discussion where many Non-PvPers look:
Have you given PvP a try?
If not, why?
If yes, do you still play occasionally?
If not, why?

I have tried pvp.

Don't currently play it.

It's not fun.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zojha

But since this thread is in General Discussion where many Non-PvPers look:
Have you given PvP a try?
If not, why?
If yes, do you still play occasionally?
If not, why?

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There have been a few threads on this in the past. It generally comes down to people not appreciating the attitudes of PvPers.

Frontlines is boring. Its basically head smashing against other players with little to no tactic involved other than, run away and let other team bash their heads, grab bases, attack nodes that pop around the same times every game, and thats it. They should've made Sieze like an actual SIEGE mode so we'd be defending actual areas like castles with walls and crystals on the inside, nodes that don't require everyone to smack their heads against as they pop up all over the map (looking at you Shatter you POS) and grants the team points they can use to obtain upgrades like monsters and summons that defend the bases or something.

Frontline slaughter and Secure USED to be fun, until they removed the assist node spawns that would buff teams depending on their damage output. It added more tactics and thinking in the whole battle, but apparently thats bad because now its all redundant and boring. Grats on Shatter, it still sucks, and Feast can go starve. -_-

Unpopular opinion here but I'm pretty sure a big problem with the queues are premades. Premades jump ahead of the line and that can make it so that you're waiting for a match far longer than the estimated time will show. If there happens to be a premade queueing back to back you can end up waiting several hours and never really get a match to pop. So because it is so unreliable it makes it so that anyone that has to plan their activities around a limited amount time has to avoid frontlines/pvp which just further shrinks the already small number of available players.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zojha

But since this thread is in General Discussion where many Non-PvPers look:
Have you given PvP a try?
If not, why?
If yes, do you still play occasionally?
If not, why?

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I've tried PVP on a few occasions. The old level 30 Wolve's Den once for the PVP participation trophy, Secure out of curiosity back in the day (but not Slaughter), Seal Rock (curiosity again), 8 man Feast when it was released to try to get a Fenrir Pup, and Frontline Roulette (mostly Shatter matches) to farm Wolf Marks for stuff like minions and Orchestrion Rolls.

I haven't played since getting the rewards I was interested in this patch. I'm not a very competitive person.
Shatter is probably my favourite PVP mode for the same reason a lot of PVPers hate it-I can contribute a lot to my team's points without engaging other players

Feast in particular also had players with very bad attitudes. I was playing in the unrated mode during preseason and I was still seeing abuse directed towards players for poor performance, especially healers.

It's most likely an ease of use problem. There are plenty of people that would like to pvp but stop queueing for it because queues take forever, which causes queues to become longer, which causes fewer people to queue, which makes queues take longer, repeat until queues are dead.

The best fix would involve 2 things:
1)Remove GC restrictions, they're silly.
2)Make a cross server PVP lobby like they're supposed to be doing with the cross server PF. As is, there could be 100 people in queue to do frontlines, but if every GC doesn't have at least 8 people then the queue won't pop and pvp will seem dead. A cross server pvp lobby/instance would make it easier to figure out that those 80 people are, in fact, interested in doing some pvp.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zojha

But since this thread is in General Discussion where many Non-PvPers look:
Have you given PvP a try?
If not, why?
If yes, do you still play occasionally?
If not, why?

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Yes, I did PVP enough to get a book I wanted for glamour purposes a while back.
No, I stopped participating when I achieved my goal above.
12 year old attitudes: Ain't nobody got time for that.

Abolish the three teams into just Claws and Fangs.

Add in more than just King of the Hill. Seriously three years and we don't have Capture the Flag or Assault and Defend?

Copy GW2 and allow entry into all forms of PVP at level cap. Right now the only way you can get any taste of PVP is by getting to 60 and being greeted with insanely long queues. In GW2 both the World(server) versus World and the regular form of PVP you can start minutes after creating a character, and in WVW actually level up your PVE character. In WoW you can start at a very early level and actually level up while doing PVP. In FFXIV... you wait for the chance to wait to play PVP. Huge issue there.

Lastly make all the maps at the level cap, and all the frontline achievements universal. There's no reason to restrict rewards to a single map as it funnels players to that one map, neglecting the rest. I've seen people (and myself I admit) quit the level fifty maps because of the drop in level, and it wasn't benefitting them towards the glamor from Seal Rock. Solves this issue easily, and keeps all maps relevant.

Im pretty sure there is still some problems with que system, its not uncommon to sit in que closer to 30min then drop it re-que and get almost insta pop after that. Roulette messes ques so i stopped using it and now i just que manually for SR and Shatter.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kurogaea

Frontlines is boring. Its basically head smashing against other players with little to no tactic involved other than, run away and let other team bash their heads, grab bases, attack nodes that pop around the same times every game, and thats it.

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Couldnt be more far from the truth, it just that majority of players dont know how to play these modes properly. Now if you could do Shatter as an alliance premade vs 2 other GC's being also premades it would reveal real meta behind this mode(in 72 there would be multiple 4man "blackops" teams scattered around map securing/camping small ices for example), lastnight i witnessed how Immortal(dunno if it was premade or not)literally owned both Mael and Adders strategy vise, they literally abused our push against adders and flanked them and as soon as we managed to get adders base they retreated to kill big ice leaving us fighting useless fight with respawning adders.

So for those immortal players i must say "GG well played and keep it up!"

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Synestra

Snips

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Your aware that all it takes is Maelstrom to be angry at Flames to just constantly harass their team making Black Ops groups somewhat useless? If Mael and Adders weren't busy duking it out they'd realize, oh right, THAT mechanic. Yeah no, the mode is plain as the Sieze.

PVP would be more fun if it felt different than just playing PVE. It'd probably help if you didn't use your PVE skills at all and just PVP skills. I like the bard 205 gear a lot, but the queue is so long and the gameplay is so dull I'd just rather not do it.

The main issue here is the GC restrictions. Lets say people notice that a particular GC has a higher win-streak, so they switch over to them, then you have 50+ people queuing in as that GC. If restrictions were removed and it simply was a "Insert color here" team style, those players would be distributed around to the other teams to create a full match. Thus cutting down queue times easily.

As it stands, one team can be formed entirely while the others remain half full, if not empty, thus not allowing the game to initiate a match.

They really didn't think too far ahead when making this system..

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zojha

Have you given PvP a try?
If not, why?

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No.

No, because:

1. MMO PVP is always horribly unbalanced. Either because of overpowered healers (healing in PVP should DELAY death not PREVENT it, big difference) where no one ever dies, overpowered DPS that can burst someone down instantly and it becomes that OP class 2-3 shotting people, or drastic gear imbalance where whoever has the best gear always wins even if you're better than the other person. I honestly prefer PVP where everyone is given the exact same stats and abilities and it's on you to use them to maximum effectiveness. But I've always maintained the first and only ever truly balanced PVP was Pong.

2. The attitude of PVPers has often been really awful, competitive gameplay really brings out the worst in people, sore losers and sore winners especially are the worst types of people to interact with. I notice a certain element of people tend to be attracted to that mentality and they generally infest games with PVP.

Khalithar, while your first point is rather true, I would like to dispute your second point and say that I personally have seen a stronger and more cooperative community within the small number of PvPers than I've even seen on my own server. Yes, there are some bad apples and notorious players, but largely, the PvP community on Aether has become a very pleasant experience and memory for me. It would be unfair to simply say "all PvPers have nasty attitudes" based on evidence from other games, and especially without actually giving it a chance and experiencing it for yourself.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

It would be unfair to simply say "all PvPers have nasty attitudes" based on evidence from other games, and especially without actually giving it a chance and experiencing it for yourself.

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That experience from other games (and I've played a lot believe me) really soured me on the whole PVP thing. I played on PVP servers for years with a "kill or be killed" attitude and based on the players there and in all those other games, that's been my experience. While I don't claim "all PVPers have awful attitudes" the ones I've dealt with almost always do and it really soured me on the whole thing.

However, even if what you say is true and the PVP community in this game is as good as you say, reason 1 is more than enough to stop me from PVPing.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kurogaea

Your aware that all it takes is Maelstrom to be angry at Flames to just constantly harass their team making Black Ops groups somewhat useless? If Mael and Adders weren't busy duking it out they'd realize, oh right, THAT mechanic. Yeah no, the mode is plain as the Sieze.

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Again its not really modes fault if peoples are stupid and i agree it sucks when it happens, this is the reason why i personally prefer 24mans instead 72 as there are less derps there to screw things over.

Reason #1 has been an issue in the past, but if you look carefully enough, you'll see SE has been rather proactive about balancing PvP. No, it will never be a perfe t balance, but gear imbalances aren't an issue with ilvl sync, jobs largely have their strengths and weaknesses, but there is no "OP" job effectively, and even what seems like the most unbeatable strategies have their counters.

I would not ask you to force yourself to try the PvP in this game, but to withhold any justifications for disliking until you at least have tried it. 3.4 is bringing some very positive and long sought changes. That perhaps may be a good time to approach a friend or someone you know that may actively PvP, and giving it a legitimate try.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alexander_Dragonfang

http://i.imgur.com/nwa04Oc.jpg

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The problem with queues that hit over 30 mins is that you get pushed into queue purgatory. Just shows how much SE needs to improve their matchmaking algorithm in pvp instances. They also need to increase the amount of simultaneous instances that can happen at any given time. A matchmaking lobby would alleviate all these issues and make pvp a lot more viable and more fun. Though I feel we may have to wait till 5.0 for that to be a reality.