How boring is PVP now?

So boring I would rather look up a guide on how to set up a bot program to do PVP for me... it's THAT BAD AND BORING...! Bring back the the 3.xx PVP!!! (note that I would not even attempt to use said bot program mostly because it violates Terms of Service... it's just that a lot of RMTers spend all of their time using bots anyways... RMT is bad...)

I don't think the game is boring but there aren't enough players on my datacenter for fair or unpredictable matches to occur.

In frontlines we only get 24-player mode and the same team wins every match, presumably a premade, crushing the other two teams like ants. I try to promote teamwork in chat but my best effort isn't remotely enough to combat the coordination of the dominant team. With a depressing win percentage of 0% for the week, I stopped queuing.

Feast, likewise mostly same people every match, every day. Some of them are top10 ranked players on the whole datacenter in previous seasons, so there are no casual matches left. You are forced to compete against some of the highest skilled people in the world because those are the only ones still queuing. It reached the point where you can correctly call which team is going to win before the match even starts 98% of the time, just look at which side got more blessed with familiar elite names by the DF matchmaker.

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

I don't think the game is boring

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PVP not the overall game that is FF14...

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

In frontlines we only get 24-player mode and the same team wins every match, presumably a premade, crushing the other two teams like ants. I try to promote teamwork in chat but my best effort isn't remotely enough to combat the coordination of the dominant team. With a depressing win percentage of 0% for the week, I stopped queuing.

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Ähm, Im also from Ragnarok and get in the right daytime every time 72 ppl at frontlines O.O.

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Originally Posted by Keysa

Ähm, Im also from Ragnarok and get in the right daytime every time 72 ppl at frontlines O.O.

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Maybe certain time when ppl do roulette? The window of that seems shrinking. Maybe DF doesn't like me, I just saw 24p matches, sometimes with long queue even at evening, as a freelancer. So I was just hoping the patch invigorates things

I have all languages active and in the timewindow from 16:00 - 00:00 o'clock (UTC+1) I get the most time "the big Frontlines" ;) And no I do not have the freelancer active =P. (Maelstrom ftw!)

It’s fun if you have a premade. Right now on Primal, Maelstrom is the dominant force. Getting a team together to knock them down is fun.

In chaos the dominant factions are wherever the pvpers premade are. It happened i was in maelstrom end adders oblitareted both flames and maels, one team of adders full of battle highs fought and held us on our base for legit 6 minutes and they even escaped safely.
Then on end score i recognized a full team of notable pvpers on adders

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Originally Posted by Mirch

In chaos the dominant factions are wherever the pvpers premade are.

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Yeah that's exactly my complaint. Every match I've been in recently has been that way so I just stopped playing. With all the highest skilled players stacked on the same team, the only hope of competitive matches happening would be to also form my own premade of highly skilled players, which might not be possible to find at the times that I feel like playing or at all. Can't just dip in any more solo queue and have a higher than zero chance of winning. If enough people still played that more than one match was happening on the datacenter simultaneously, at least then you'd have a chance to enter a match with different opponents sometimes. Rival Wings is a step in the right direction by not having teams based on GC affiliation and hopefully does not allow premades to exceed 4 people.

The beauty of Rival Wings is that we're ALL going to be new.

This is an opportunity to get in early, learn the ins and outs of it, find others that seem to do well and team up with them. Make new friends, network and find other players you can enjoy playing with. The "unstoppable" premades are little more than that. We're just people that played long enough with and against each other that we know how each other works and we back each other up. I tend to be slightly unorthodox, and a speedy risktaker. Doesn't always work out, but with strong support or focus from my team, it pays off.

Rather than restrict premade teams, this is a great chance to see new premades and new star players arise, and the possibility for that alone is exciting.

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Originally Posted by ThirdChild_ZKI

Rather than restrict premade teams, this is a great chance to see new premades.

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Premade with no restriction breaks the game. If they allowed a whole 24-player alliance premade into Rival Wings and compete against non-premades, they would probably have a 100% win rate and the opponents get 0%. Premade vs non-premade isn't fair and it would raise the barrier of entry significantly because now you must have good connections to basically form a static and be available to play same time as them to have any chance at making progress on win-related rewards. The only fair way for full premades to exist is separate premade queue and solo queue, the same way rated Feast never put premade against solo players. Unfortunately for frontlines, when matches shrink from 72 to 24 size then a whole force can be a premade, or all the good players can transfer to the same GC and not use freelance to get 100% winrate and unbalance the game.

I agree that a full alliance premade isn't terribly fair. But let me make a few corrections:

• First, premades aren't unstoppable. The only difference between a premade and non-premade is coordination, and I can say I've defeated/outsmarted premades with groups of randoms before. Takes some effort, but it IS possible.
• Connections have little to do with it. Sure, a good connection is what we all want, but it's hardly a requirement to make a team of friends to play with consistently.
• Freelancer is forced on any premade teams, so as to avoid a situation where players all transfer to one GC then queue as premades. I know there's been a movement to stop queueing Freelancer lately to reduce the chances of ending up on teams with bots, and it needs to be said that that does little more than return us to long queues because of GC imbalances. The skill of the players on your team matter far more than what color you're playing for.
• Speaking of, Rival Wings will not follow Frontlines' team setup, and instead aim for a conventional 2 team format. Ravens vs Falcons. Red vs Blue. No choice in which team you end up on. I would say that's a bit more fair, or at least less exploitable.

I appreciate theoretical possibilities and have seen a lot of crazy things in my time, including teams with no healers coming 1st. But I promise the matches I've been involved in recent weeks had such an enormous skill divide between teams that it would have taken divine intervention for the dominant side to stumble. I'm longing for the time when all teams had a chance and matches came down to the wire. That's my hope for Rival Wings. Close, competitive, exciting matches, fast queues, high participation.

PvP was re-worked in order to attract more players.
However, since we don't know numbers, it's hard to say if SE succeeded or not.

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Originally Posted by Zeonsilt

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I would call my datacenter critically bad atm. Adding exp reward did more to boost participation than gameplay changes but it was a temporary boost because the need for exp is finite and most people left when their jobs were capped. We've reverted back to no duty pops at off-peak hours (or 2 hour queue) and the peak hours having only 1 match at a time across the datacenter.

I expect largely increased participation tomorrow because it's a content patch. How long it lasts really correlates with how long it takes people to attain rewards. Garo was a huge boost to pvp activity because it gave people many gearsets and mounts to grind. That's the only time pvp ever had such a large injection of rewards all at once, and a garo pvp trailer to promote it. So... I stand by thinking the health of content correlates to the amount of time it takes to earn rewards and there usually are not enough pvp rewards to stimulate participation from patch to patch.

Can't read peoples mind or anything, but I'm pretty confident the nr. 1 reason people premade with 4+ players is to steamroll the other teams, ganking up those kills. Sure, on paper it's fully possible to beat a veteran premade team, I agree, and have done so myself, but for the majority of the times, playing with randoms vs premades (assuming premades are skilled) is a losing battle no matter how much of a skilled tactical genius you are. If people won't listen to you, tough luck.

Back in 3.x when queues were miserable it could become extremely frustrating when you'd play multiple days juggling between premades 24 vs 24, in an ever losing battle. These days it's not really an issue, considering the frustration factor, due to freelance and much better queues.

Imo, frontline should limit premades to light party. But I'm no nazi about it.

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

I would call my datacenter critically bad atm.

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We are from the same datacenter.
Well, yesterday i played 8vs8 Feast, and:
>Sunday
>Prime time - Evening
>Same people every match

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Originally Posted by Rufalus

I expect largely increased participation tomorrow because it's a content patch.

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Until everyone got that new mount, i guess.

TL;DR FF XIV PvP playerbase is too small.

With regards to premades, I again want to clarify a few things:

The only difference between a premade and non-premade is familiarity and coordination. Neither of those are exclusive to premades. Maybe tougher to achieve, but it is within the realm of possibility.
Most premades are veteran players who - in Shatter's case - have a deeper understanding of the mode, and the various ways to score. If there's no ice to score on, we actively fight other teams, generally the lead team, or whomever attempts to take the offensive against us. I personally am always scanning the field for prime targets like battle highs or healers, or weakened targets to secure points from. That might sound cruel, but it's simply taking advantage of the various ways to score. And it needs to be noted that the descriptions for all Frontlines modes include "as well as defeating enemy players."

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Originally Posted by Zeonsilt

TL;DR FF XIV PvP playerbase is too small.

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More like significant amount of player stopped playing PvP with new system :^)

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Originally Posted by Newmanxeno

It’s fun if you have a premade. Right now on Primal, Maelstrom is the dominant force. Getting a team together to knock them down is fun.

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I am on Hyperion as well and like to do Premades. I will look you up.

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Originally Posted by Mofafafa

More like significant amount of player stopped playing PvP with new system :^)

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- another reason why PVP in FF XIV is... not popular:

Unsynch - example -> People from NA playing on EU servers, or just people with garbage 56K connection.

Attacking a constantly "teleporting" healers as a melee is awful. While everyone moves alright, that one guy will "teleport".

The size of a premade team isn't the big factor. It's entirely their coordination and skill.

I tend to be rather up close and personal for a ranged. It's almost a signature technique of mine now to run past a lead attacker from the enemy team, or a healer in range, and Blank them back into my party while marking them, and my team usually follows up well. Much of what I and other premades do has been shared in the guides I posted here, so the information and strategies is entirely available, and possible with randoms besides.

Besides, the answer shouldn't be to limit the ability for skilled players to team up, but to instead strive to improve the abilities of ourselves to be considered one of those skilled players.

I am sorry but limiting premade to light party just demotivates team play for those who enjoy PvP'ing. I run with a group of 4-8 people regularly but on my Data Center all the players are transferring to Mael. Just because I form a premade doesn't change the shape of the match. Often time we end up going up against another premade. I often see Gracidea Shaymin who is amazing to go up against. We often lose but it makes it more fun to do it as a group of friends. This is a game that promotes group play so why limit it.

Was never fun.

4.1.5 - Still boring.

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Originally Posted by Wintersandman

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Yeah, that's why I'm on the fence here. Limiting it because there may be super vet premades isn't fair to others. Still, there are gathering of friends to play for fun, where I think light party would fulfil most needs, and gathering of premade vets where I suspect the main reason is to steamroll others in a well coordinated team (for fun, which is fair). But, as I said earlier, I don't find it an issue like it used to be (improved queues and all), so there is no reason to limit it. In 3.x there could be several days in a row, in seal rock, where all that happened was me with randoms vs another random team vs a super vet premade team. Needless to say, the super vet premade teams won 9/10 times, usually with less than 0 effort. The only reason they would not win would either be tunnel-vision or enough decent randoms who actually understand how to beat them. Combine that with looong queues I think anyone can see how frustrating that could become.


On topic if PvP in this game is boring or not. Not as boring as learning a new dance for every new PvE content released. As of know, it has turned into a chore for me. It was fun in the beginning, but somewhere mid-way through heavensward it got really obnoxious. To the point I only do any new dungeons once, with a few exeptions.

I can't put my finger on the why, exactly, but XIV's PvP has been one that more than any other MMORPGs just feels like columnic hitboxes beating on each other. Something about it just feels especially like an imitation of combative interaction, rather than players actually landing blows on or having any significant effect on the other.

There are still the occasional neat bits, like covering a healer or Machinist so s/he can move up that bit further and knock someone off the adjacent cliff, or melee approaching via their Dark Knight tank to eat up the Unmended target, but for the most part, it just feels abnormally empty, be it in urgency, player count over the given space, or the mechanical interactions possible.

I find the new PVP actually quite awesome, never had so much fun in PVP. Good job Square :D

I find the new PVP boring. Good job Square :D

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Originally Posted by Lunafreya

Was never fun.

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It was fun in HW and some what fun in ARR but not that much as barely any non-DD job had any burst back then. So the "golden age" of XIV pvp was from beginning of HW to release of Shatter(that is when pvp died for me).

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Originally Posted by Synestra

It was fun in HW and some what fun in ARR but not that much as barely any non-DD job had any burst back then. So the "golden age" of XIV pvp was from beginning of HW to release of Shatter(that is when pvp died for me).

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I agree with this. You could feel the difference between secure/slaughter to seize. The PvP skills were unique for each class and when looked at, it was extremely well balanced. Any job could take on any job. The removal of CC from dps jobs really made healers shine in present day PvP.

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Originally Posted by Wintersandman

I agree with this. You could feel the difference between secure/slaughter to seize. The PvP skills were unique for each class and when looked at, it was extremely well balanced. Any job could take on any job. The removal of CC from dps jobs really made healers shine in present day PvP.

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EXACTLY this. 4.0 brought good QoL and functional ideas, but what it did to the jobs and the overall gameplay was a huge step back.

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Originally Posted by Gorcka

I find the new PVP boring. Good job Square :D

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I agree. I have always had a blast in Shatter. But, man Rival Wings is so boring, I almost don't know if I even want to try for the mount. I played one game tonight after work, and was so bored and frustrated at yet another loss (4 wins out of 15 matches) I just logged off for the night.

I'm currently on a seven game losing streak out of eight games played and almost all of said games were totally one-sided with the opposing team having both towers intact when time ran out or the core was destroyed.

I don't know if it has to do with the party composition, the other team just being better, and/or people not knowing how to use the Brute Justice properly, but it's feeling more frustrating then fun, partly because the matches usually ended by timeout with my team fruitlessly struggling and being caught in a stalemate once both towers went down (This might be in part due to the cannons at the base being so powerful that it's difficult for anyone to mount much of an offensive on the core).

On a related note, I feel like it would better for the flow of the game overall if approaching the cores from the south with the oppressors was actually viable because having to scale the stairway before you have a vantage point to fire on the core from makes it extremely impractical compared to coming from the north where there's a corner out of the range of turrets you can blast it from.

I think the lopsided matches come down to coordinated groups vs uncoordinated groups. People need to learn to communicate or it will be frustrating. A coordinated vs uncoordinated group is like a bunch of random folks playing paintball against navy seals. I do hate that most matches end by timeout. Healers are really annoying kill.

I absolutely love the PvP in this game, but the que times & endgame rewards for it are just horrible.

I've warmed up to RW quite a bit. I'm enjoying it a lot more now. Though, I'm highly annoyed that they tout a "new, easier way to report PVP related incidents" and yet they still do nothing about bots. I watch the same bots run rampant weeks after I've reported them for obvious botting.