I would love to play more Ranked PVP buuuutttt....

These queue times are just extremely bad ;/

It feels like if you don't queue and rank up once the new season drops then your queue times are forever screwed. I've sat in queue for a very long time with no pops so I can't even get the chance to try and progress my ranking.

Devs I dunno if you can do anything to improve queue times, and I know that the PVP community in this game is kinda small (coming from Primal) but if I'm in queue for over an hour and never get a single pop, that pretty much tells me to give up on ranked pvp

P.S. I really want to do ranked pvp

The queue times have only just recently died. Unfortunately, the way it works is you have to start the first few weeks of season, the queues are super fast then during prime time. However, this is far too late, unfortunately.

You don't have to queue up as soon as it drops, but within the next month and a half for the fastest queues. Starting now is far too late.

Yeah, I feel you man. Tbh, it's been like a month that I'm queuing almost everyday on prime time and after 40-50 min or queue I just give up. I wanna play really badly , buuuut, just can't :(

yup you gotta go hard and fast when the season drops. I wanted to do this but I also wanted to raid and that took up a lot of time during primetime pvp matching times, so here i am still sitting at silver. it's whatever tho. just another mount i'll never be able to collect.

I understand that, which is why it's very disappointing for folks like me, who don't participate during a certain time frame.

While this game isn't a PVP first type of game, you should be able to queue and fight and continue to work on progressing your rank at any point and time during the season. Missing out on this time window and then being screwed for the rest of the season isn't how PVP games operate. It really narrows down anyone who wishes to participate.

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Originally Posted by Syrus_Draco

you should be able to queue and fight and continue to work on progressing your rank at any point and time during the season.

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and how would you do this when there's no incentive to keep people around to be in the queue pool? if there was rank decay that would be one solution but there isn't so I don't know how you would keep people interested?

Remove rewards first of all it's sad that's the only reason most people play

Make more reason to get the wolf collars, I love the hellclaws weapons but when it takes two season just to get enough wolf collars to purchase 1 glamour weapons is deflating.

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Originally Posted by Cammel

Remove rewards first of all it's sad that's the only reason most people play

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If you do that then a large portion of people would stop playing and PVP will fall even deeper to less folks being around. Every PVP game has some rewards based on your rank. It's a standard to give people incentive to keep working on their rank

I think it's somewhat healthy to keep titles but the mounts and stuff just bring the worst of players

I should of clarified if your pvping to get gland or a mount, that's what is making pvp worse in this game rather than actually playing to get better at it

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Originally Posted by Syrus_Draco

If you do that then a large portion of people would stop playing and PVP will fall even deeper to less folks being around. Every PVP game has some rewards based on your rank. It's a standard to give people incentive to keep working on their rank

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Before Garo Frontlines was dead, queue times were always 20-30min plus.

He's not talking about front lines, that's not ranked

I mean if you want to get the mount (I really do) then you'll work on getting better at PVP. Otherwise you'll just be waiting over so many seasons to get the higher tier rewards.

In a majority of PVP situations, folks will try and work and improve, because the very nature in PVP is to try and be as strong as you can.

As far as toxic players, you get those players whether they are casual or hardcore, rewards or no rewards, quick match or ranked.

What I'm trying to get at is, the devs need to find a way to improve queue times. Whether it's rank decay or some other method.

Cant get better, cant study the game, cant do anything because queues.
Eventually i just go back to wow while i can Q for arena and games pop for me... Unfortunelly i push there because i cant push here nowadays.

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Originally Posted by Cammel

Remove rewards first of all it's sad that's the only reason most people play

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How does that make more people queue? If they remove rewards maybe people will learn their lesson and start playing just for the sake of self-improvement? lol I mean, if you seriously think that and arent just b8ing, yeah, I agree with the sentiment, but you cant seriously expect your average ffxiv glam/mount chaser to feel that way about pvp

obvious fix would be to make seasons shorter

If SE fixes their game, then the queues will fix as a side-effect.

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Originally Posted by Cammel

I think it's somewhat healthy to keep titles but the mounts and stuff just bring the worst of players

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Wouldn't even bother playing at all then, I don't have the incentive nor the will to continuously queue whilst safe and I don't have a single incentive to ever queue frontlines and do nothing but cast one spell over and over. The "mounts and stuff" are the only reason queues even lasted as long as they did this season (albeit understandably not on Primal which is probably the most dead PvP DC in the game).

We want to play, it shows by how active practice customs are on Chaos, but SE hasn't exactly given us an optimal environment that we'd want to continuously queue in. Whether you're 2100 or 2600, there is no skill gap, you're still both Diamond, so what do you get for another 500 points? A title that in many cases you already have (ie beta wolf). So why queue so many extra hours just to climb like 50 rating a day if you're lucky.

If SE wants to to increase participation without reworking PvP combat systems to fix the issues regarding the net code that makes combat feel clunky and unresponsive at times, they will need to the bite the bullet and do what the did with front lines and the garo event. Make feast exclusive rewards that anyone can obtain, or increase the rate at which you can earn wolf collars, give a reason for the causal players this provides bodies for those that join the grind late to farm rating off of, and couple that with ranked decay it may foster healthier competitive aspect at the mid to higher tiers.

SE really needs to think of a way to get more causal players to come in and try out the feast if they wish for it to be a sustainable PvP mode. Lower tiers need more bodies to allow players to progress up the higher ranks instead of banking everything on the first rush of a season.

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Originally Posted by BloodRubyXII

(albeit understandably not on Primal which is probably the most dead PvP DC in the game).

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I'm on Primal and yeah the queues are pretty much gone :( Makes me really sad

I think RANK DECAY can work in keeping the queues alive. I'm skeptical about the lower tiers though, between unranked to low Gold. However, it wouldn't hurt SE to give it a try. XD

I also think rank decay can discourage players from trying to take their alts to the Top 100, so-as-long as the decay is significant enough to warrant more frequent game time with their main toon. I think the players that made rank #101 to #110 will agree with me on this... and a couple of friends of mine will hate me for even suggesting it. LMAO

But anyway, I'm suggesting to the devs to take a look into RANK DECAY as a solution to the long queue time problem.

Don't remember past season having issues with queue times? Could be wrong.

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Originally Posted by Kai_Lee

Don't remember past season having issues with queue times? Could be wrong.

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They did slow down the longer it got, but they never truly completely died until s6 and 7.

The fact that they reduced the season in half and now ques seem to die twice as fast should be a indicator to SE that what they did is not working. Allowing people to keep their highest rating does not encourage queing but allows people to quit playing due to the fact they don't have any incentive to reclaim the points they lose from losses.

I think SE need to truly examine why Heavensward Feast never truly had dead ques compared to what we have now, especially when the seasons back then lasted well into 4 months.

Edit: Just wanna say s1/2 did die on the second half of the seasons, but that was because of major patches. However s3/4 were able to persist for the entire season.

They really should look into implementing rank decay and adding weekly incentives to play in addition to top 100 rewards.

Yeah, I think that rank decay is a good solution as well, it's something to try, like the dude over there said, it doesn't hurt to. It's gonna be disappointing if they don't do anything about queue times though.

The only solution is accepting ranked isn't going anywhere here, it is bound to stay marginal because the kind of people playing it will always dissuade the other 99% of the players that came to this game to have a good time. They disabled the chat and turned the PVP rotations into a 4 button mash fest in a blatant attempt to turn the pvp into some newbie friendly grounds where everybody is welcome.
They failed. And they will keep failing. No mount is going to make up for bathing in mud thorough months.

I do believe they're doing some things to make PVP more newbie-friendly. But simplifying the system and corralling us into a single map isn't going to sustain it. What PVP needs (in addition to the 1,001 suggestions already made in this forum) is something that people, at any level, can work toward. On their own time, at their own pace. Not this "everybody-rush-in-the-first-two-weeks-and-no-life-it-to-top-100-and-then-do-nothing-for-the-remaining-2-months" system we have now.

If they're going to keep the top 100 as an enviable pinnacle that so few can reach, then they need to 1) make rewards account-wide and 2) award other top achievements in the same way (top frontlines, top POTD scores..not necessarily the same items but with the same sort of "clout", if that makes sense).

But overall, PVP seems like this red-headed stepchild that lives in the closet and gets fed a few scraps from time to time.

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Originally Posted by Kisama

It sounds like you're blaming the players for Square's bad development team.

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Square's "bad" development team has tried quite a few things to encourage and promote ranked gameplay. Exclusive mounts, accessories, weapons, titles, wolf marks (GC seals), experience for your alts, even a complete revamp of the system. They've been feeding you all with all sorts of stuff. It has failed every season. A small minority of flamers and ladder posturers that will eat alive anyone who "stands on their way" to their precious rewards and elo. The removal of the chat goes to show what kind of players stick to your ranked mode.

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Originally Posted by Stormfur

But overall, PVP seems like this red-headed stepchild that lives in the closet and gets fed a few scraps from time to time.

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They've done quite a few things for PVP, they've messed up however at incentivizing ranked while leaving normal and frontlines into the oblivion coffer. If they kept updating their rewards for frontlines and normal mode people would play them and even enjoy them. However, no sane soul will ever go through ranked no matter what. It's 2018 most people know by now what you can expect from there, no reward will make up for a godawful experience for most people.

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Originally Posted by Gallus

The only solution is accepting ranked isn't going anywhere here, it is bound to stay marginal because the kind of people playing it will always dissuade the other 99% of the players that came to this game to have a good time. They disabled the chat and turned the PVP rotations into a 4 button mash fest in a blatant attempt to turn the pvp into some newbie friendly grounds where everybody is welcome.
They failed. And they will keep failing. No mount is going to make up for bathing in mud thorough months.

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It's weird you mention the people playing it dissuade others whilst subtly making out you're some kind of veteran feast player in the same breath. They don't, they actively try to help others for the most part because those "newbie" players are the only hope of having a semi-active season for at least a few weeks. And they're still trying. All things considered this wasn't even a bad season, it fared far better than S6. In fact your entire post is painful to read, because you played horrendously this season then ragequit WPD discord after people tried helping you, which was quickly followed by you claiming it was a Discord full of basement dwellers and all sorts of other lovely things. The grind is only a grind when you rely on strong stacked teams to carry you to top 100 btw, this could be why you're nowhere to be seen in customs. I can understand negativity given the state of feast, but you offer no concepts for improvement whatsoever and you come across as a massive hypocrit, even if in the occasional case you're right.

If you're going to go, just go quietly lol.

I always wondered why doesn't s/e mash all the data centers for feast specifically. Like if you were to play call of duty your not restricted to just one area and you wouldn't run into the same team 4 matches in a row

I liked how Astragalos did incentives. Want this awesome mount? Cool - win 100 matches. Not terribly difficult -- if you were the grinding type, you could grind it...if you'd rather do Astragalos a couple times a week for Wondrous Tails, no problem -- you'd get your 100 wins in time.

Sure, Astragalos had its fair share of problems and there are plenty of other threads that lay them all out. But at least it had something you could work toward, and do so in an environment that didn't penalize you for winning.

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Originally Posted by BloodRubyXII

It's weird you mention the people playing it dissuade others whilst subtly making out you're some kind of veteran feast player in the same breath. They don't, they actively try to help others for the most part because those "newbie" players are the only hope of having a semi-active season for at least a few weeks. And they're still trying. All things considered this wasn't even a bad season, it fared far better than S6. In fact your entire post is painful to read, because you played horrendously this season then ragequit WPD discord after people tried helping you, which was quickly followed by you claiming it was a Discord full of basement dwellers and all sorts of other lovely things. The grind is only a grind when you rely on strong stacked teams to carry you to top 100 btw, this could be why you're nowhere to be seen in customs. I can understand negativity given the state of feast, but you offer no concepts for improvement whatsoever and you come across as a massive hypocrit, even if in the occasional case you're right.

If you're going to go, just go quietly lol.

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Did you make up a story for your next book or is that really me you are speaking of? Who did you talk to that told you all this?
I played horrendously this season...?
Then a few people from a Discord Channel I've never been in attempted to help me?
I'm nowhere to be seen in a bunch of custom matches I've never even attempted to join?

Firstly, I'm by no means a Veteran player, I'm more like the newbie running away from a very unpleasant experience.
Secondly, not a single person offered me advice, all I got was harassment, insults, successive chat shouts, callouts and ignore mark spamming (there was that one day where no matter what I did things didn't seem to work out and I kept getting queued with the same people). I got a guy that literally quitted two times in a row when he saw me, then a couple more from Odin (which probably shared a linkshell there) who ignore mark spammed me for matches and matches. I was starting to get boycotted, so much for your friendly pvpers offering new players advice and trying to make the pvp community a better place.
Unless you are speaking about somebody else, because 90% of what you said about me is wrong.

That's pvp in this game if a few players don't like you, everyone hates you and you are trash. But even that being said it's your own responsibility to become better just ignore people like that

If you thought your situation was bad, try joining a league and play against one of the best teams in the world, using SMN for the first time in Feast against this team, streamed live in front of 180+ viewers in Twitch, and get destroyed. Then take a look at others negative and toxic comments about how bad your are at Feast in the chat box and discord.

Yeah, that was me. lol

My advice to you, as a veteran and friendly PvP’er, “Those who mind don’t matter, those who matter don’t mind.”

If you want advice on your game, the PvP community has a lot of veterans willing to help. All you need to do is ask. I mean, I managed to get help from some of the best players in this game, all of whom became a friend. ^_^

So yeah, the idea that all of us PvP’ers are toxic is a myth. And I think it’s up to the player to ignore the toxicity and trash of those that don’t matter, and focus on improving and enjoying the game with those that do.

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Originally Posted by Kisama

The 1 thing they haven't tried was making pvp good.

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Rather ambiguous no?

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Originally Posted by Astrophysx

So yeah, the idea that all of us PvP’ers are toxic is a myth. And I think it’s up to the player to ignore the toxicity and trash of those that don’t matter, and focus on improving and enjoying the game with those that do.

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A myth? You mean SE's decision to completely remove the chat due to the report bombardment they got involving harassment was a mirage? I'm glad you can deal with all the garbage sprinklers that infest the ranked mode, but I'll tell you what, it still sucks. These people have established insults and swearing as part of the ranked mode itself, turning the competition into something that more and more people are starting to avoid. Yes, your only choice as of now is either ignoring/dealing with these people or step aside. The problem is still there though.

The vast majority of the PVP'ers I've played with (I started in Season 3) have been very helpful. As with any game, there are some bad apples and some that are downright rotten. Ideally, SE would've cut out the most severe griefers rather than removing the whole chat interface. It could've been a three-strike rule. Strike 1: you get a warning, Strike 2: You get a temporary ban so you cool off. Strike 3: you lose your ranking.

But then that creates its own set of problems. Who determines what's toxic?

For example, if someone messaged you after a match and said something like "You only did 1700 DPS that whole match. Learn to play, you stupid noob." - would that be considered toxic? Or someone could message "I hope you die in a fire and get cut out like the festering cancer cell you are" (something like this was actually said to me the first season I played. Fun!)

See, there's no "one size fits all" approach to it. And GMs would have to investigate every single report to determine just how far the toxicity/tilt meter goes.

It's a lot like that guy/gal in General Discussion right now talking about mods that make their character naked, and how uncomfortable it makes them. Probably most players would shrug and say "big deal", but for some, the idea is really disconcerting -- because if they can do THAT, what else can they do? So it's a fine line that GMs have to walk to determine how much to let slide, and when to bring the hammer down.

Crimson Bloodrose, this is the only post I will make relating to you as I feel any type of logical conversation is pointless, based on your attitude and history.

Your logic as a whole is fundamentally flawed, and having sampled your recent post history, it's apparent that your arguments, insults and generalisations on 'reward exclusivity', 'ranked toxicity' and 'ranked players' mimic that of a pouty child whose feelings were hurt and tilted, now gate-keeping the official forums, forever dripping salt into anything relating to Feast.

Let me educate you with a single point that is based on reality:

• Whether it's ranked or normal, the same range of players will populate both modes and replicate the 'basement dwelling' behaviour that has triggered you. This voids a lot of your campaign, which is based on the naive thought that 'incentivizing' normal mode will filter out everyone in existence that 'tilts', thus creating a 'toxic free' environment where nobody's feelings get hurt. No.

Just quoted this because it's the only thing worth replying to, the rest is just pretentious senseless bashing.

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Originally Posted by FPZ

[*]Whether it's ranked or normal, the same range of players will populate both modes and replicate the 'basement dwelling' behaviour.[/LIST]

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You couldn't be more wrong.

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Originally Posted by Gallus

Yes, your only choice as of now is either ignoring/dealing with these people or step aside. The problem is still there though.

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Ignoring, dealing with, or stepping aside are the choices you can make for ALL toxic players in any competitive online game.

And there's no problem... if you don't care. XD

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Originally Posted by FPZ

Whether it's ranked or normal, the same range of players will populate both modes and replicate the 'basement dwelling' behaviour that has triggered you. This voids a lot of your campaign, which is based on the naive thought that 'incentivizing' normal mode will filter out everyone in existence that 'tilts', thus creating a 'toxic free' environment where nobody's feelings get hurt. No.

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I just want to add that this kind of behavior exists in PVE too, and some might say "well, why don't they have regular chat removed?!" And that's because EVERYONE plays PVE, and a fraction-of-a-fraction of a percent of the whole player-base plays PVP. In addition, PVP by its very nature is going to be competitive, and competition breeds toxicity -- especially if you are competing for such a small sliver of prizes available only to a select few in a select time window.

Nobody's saying we should all hold hands and skip through the tulips, but when you take a tiny fraction of the whole playerbase and make them go all Hunger Games for what fleeting rewards are available, you end up a much larger pool of the worst possible behavior.