Bring back 24 man PvP please

I don't get to play in the peak times and used to be lucky and get the odd match. Now there is nothing.

People keep saying this but from my recollection for the last year or so it was mostly only 72 man pvp that popped for me.
I really dont think thats the main cause.
The Garo gear and mounts are gone now which for a long time was a popular source of glamor.
In the update all we got was new not so popular armor sets but no weapons or other wolf mark items which isnt much of an incentive for people to contue the wolf marks grind.
Not to mention the awful update to the battle high in pvp means its much easier for one GC to snowball and completly annhilate the other 2 gc's

Not to mention some times the 24 man matches were just plain more fun. Instead of nixing the mode they should have changed how the maps worked to accommodate them... But SE would rather forget /WHY/ the 24 mans were put in place to begin with than invoke real and meaningful change.

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Originally Posted by Metalwrath

People keep saying this but from my recollection for the last year or so it was mostly only 72 man pvp that popped for me.
I really dont think thats the main cause.
The Garo gear and mounts are gone now which for a long time was a popular source of glamor.
In the update all we got was new not so popular armor sets but no weapons or other wolf mark items which isnt much of an incentive for people to contue the wolf marks grind.
Not to mention the awful update to the battle high in pvp means its much easier for one GC to snowball and completly annhilate the other 2 gc's

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It depends both on your data center and when you play. Here on Crystal if you don't play on peak hours you definitely were put into 24 mans more often than not. Even without a good portion of the carrots being removed taking away one of the ways to ensure Frontlines queues keep popping isn't a good idea. Especially when it was implemented /because/ of queue issues to begin with.

Most time when I did frontlines got 24 man raids since it was very early mornings when was able to run them. Now don't even queue for them since don't want to wait 30+ minutes for it to pop now.

Did we really need another thread about this. I swear there's like 3 on the recent posts page.

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Originally Posted by Doozer

Did we really need another thread about this. I swear there's like 3 on the recent posts page.

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Yes, this keeps being ignored by SE, they just dont care if divided europe could even play pvp.

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Originally Posted by Nedkel

Yes, this keeps being ignored by SE, they just dont care if divided europe could even play pvp.

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NA (Primal) can't really play PvP either unless it's primetime.

I think I enjoy the 72s a lot more than I ever did 24s actually. More bodies randomly derping around fighting over empty space while objectives are popping up on the opposite side of the map and diminished influence of premades on the outcome of matches means that Frontlines are now completely unpredictable free-for-all where anyone might win any given match based mostly on luck. That means people like me, who have zero idea what they're doing unless someone actively posts flags in chat, are able to accumulate more Seal Rock achievement progress per century, even if it means participating in fewer matches per hour.

This is actually the first time in a long while I've made some progress on those Field Commander glam achievements so... from an unabashedly selfish and cynical perspective, I like the new state of affairs.

Once/if things change and this Frontlines model no longer serves my agenda, I'll happily embrace a different viewpoint and campaign really hard for whatever change gets me my glam faster and with less effort.

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Originally Posted by Bonbori

[snip]
This is actually the first time in a long while I've made some progress on those Field Commander glam achievements so... from an unabashedly selfish and cynical perspective, I like the new state of affairs.

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I'm kinda in the middle here. I prefer the 72 man matches because they mean you can handle a few afkers, throwers, or otherwise non-contributers and still have a shot at winning. In the 24 man's I've had so many games where we had one or two people off doing their own thing the whole time, leaving us in a disadvantage in *every single fight.* No, we *don't* need a healer and a tank spending the entire freaking game feeding the adders at their base while the flames slaughter us at *ours.* We don't need you running off poking the last place team on the opposite side of the map while we lose the fight at this A rank tomelith. Help the team or leave, please and thank you. (Not at you, I've just seen similar things happen more than once).

But on the other hand, most of the time I got queues at all ever outside of primetime... it was a 24 man after like 30-40 minutes of waiting and forgetting I was even in the queue at all.

If they're gonna keep 24 mans out, they need way better incentives to get people actually playing pvp. Or improvements in general - idk what, but the way it is now just isn't doing it.

Oh yes, absolutely, it would be ideal if the game had a PvP experience both rewarding and fun buuuut I have sadly given up on that. It's very clear that they intend that aspect of the game to be a long mind-numbing grind that people who just want shiny rewards are meant to put themselves through over months and months just to make queues pop during primetime.

There is no intrinsic reward offered by Frontlines - little potential for personal improvement, little impact of individual contribution on the outcome of a match, little entertainment value in the repetitive drudgery. The only thing it has to offer are extrinsic rewards from achievements and vendors. So that's how I'm choosing to approach it now - it's not meant to be enjoyed, just done - so I let my muscle memory take over while occupying my brain with something else. Ironically, this shift in my philosophy has allowed me to find a measure of fun in it after all, despite all of the above. It's a mindless kind of fun but... that's still the most praise I have ever had for FF14's PvP.

So ultimately, I think longer queues are a fair price to pay for my somewhat, in a weird roundabout way, improved experience.

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Originally Posted by Bonbori

So ultimately, I think longer queues are a fair price to pay for my somewhat, in a weird roundabout way, improved experience.

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They aren't. 8v8v8 sucks, 24v24v24 sucks, all the PvP sucks. The problem is. There. Are. No. Queues. People can't even play frontline, literally. Whether you liked the 24 man pvp less than what we have left now, isn't worth players across datacenters having zero access to PvP for much of the day or their actual playtime - meaning those players ( including me) can't farm for those "shiny rewards" at all.

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Originally Posted by SturmChurro

They aren't. 8v8v8 sucks, 24v24v24 sucks, all the PvP sucks. The problem is. There. Are. No. Queues. People can't even play frontline, literally. Whether you liked the 24 man pvp less than what we have left now, isn't worth players across datacenters having zero access to PvP for much of the day or their actual playtime - meaning those players ( including me) can't farm for those "shiny rewards" at all.

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I'm afraid I cannot relate to your experience. Like 2 days ago I did enough matches, back-to-back, to get one my challenge logs completed. And a week before I queued into Frontlines just to get a WT sticker but got an insta-pop and then ended up riding the wave until I got bored. Both times was around the same time, late in the evening, but that just indicates to me there's a certain PvP primetime. It's not impossible to get queues, you just have to find the right time to queue.

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Originally Posted by Bonbori

I'm afraid I cannot relate to your experience. Like 2 days ago I did enough matches, back-to-back, to get one my challenge logs completed. And a week before I queued into Frontlines just to get a WT sticker but got an insta-pop and then ended up riding the wave until I got bored. Both times was around the same time, late in the evening, but that just indicates to me there's a certain PvP primetime. It's not impossible to get queues, you just have to find the right time to queue.

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And what if you can't play at that time? To put it plainly, having content that's only accessible for a small window every day sucks. It even sucked when there were 24 man's because it still took ages to get a match sometimes if it wasn't late at night. SE in the past has seemed to at least be aware that long queue times suck - else why would there be any incentive to go back and do low level dungeons and whatnot? Why did they add add alliance roulette? It's so that people in general, including people who are new to the content, can get queues to do it in a relatively reasonable amount of time. I mean, I literally spent upwards of two hours in a LOTA queue once. *Two freaking hours* - heck, 40m to an hour was average in my experience, before it got added to a roulette. SE saw the problem and they fixed it. Why can't they do the same for PvP? Why'd they do the opposite??

I mean, I'm glad your experience has improved, but as someone who actually enjoys PvP for PvP despite it's flaws, I'd like to be actually pvping instead of sitting in an ages long queue.

They really need to make PvP more fun and rewarding - or at least one or the two. Why bother updating it and adding a whole new map if they aren't going to make it worthwhile to play? You'd think they'd want more people to *want* to do the content they're spending resources to build... and to make sure they can do it at all, for that matter.

One of the points of 8v8v8 was to allow some sort of pvp if 72 people weren't online, active, and queuing for it.

SE simply throwing that out for "reasons" was extremely short sighted.

Who ask for 72 man frontlines only I sure didn't and I sure didn't complained about 24 man frontlines sucking. They need to change it back and allow 24 man frontlines when there's not enough on to fill 72 man.

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Originally Posted by hynaku

Who ask for 72 man frontlines only I sure didn't and I sure didn't complained about 24 man frontlines sucking. They need to change it back and allow 24 man frontlines when there's not enough on to fill 72 man.

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A lot of people complained about premades and how the 24 mans just weren't as fun, the latter of which I can accept as valid especially for Secure as the maps simply weren't designed for it. With that said however instead of nixing the entire mode, especially with two entire carrots to get people into the mode leaving, they should have revamped how the game handles the smaller queue pops. Maybe even design a smaller map that can work interchangeably between the three modes that people get sent to when the queue doesn't have enough people to fill it.

There's no question they went for the laziest solution to the 'problem' however.

This morning's wait time: 133 minutes and 39 seconds before I withdrew for obvious reasons. Bring back 24's for early mornings please. At least then its only a half hour and not a statistical impossibility.

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Originally Posted by GetFoesReqd

This morning's wait time: 133 minutes and 39 seconds before I withdrew for obvious reasons. Bring back 24's for early mornings please. At least then its only a half hour and not a statistical impossibility.

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Not to say that this is the better alternative, but have you tried to queue for The Feast in that same time frame?

I want smaller matches to return as well, but just curious on that.

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Originally Posted by GetFoesReqd

This morning's wait time: 133 minutes and 39 seconds before I withdrew for obvious reasons. Bring back 24's for early mornings please. At least then its only a half hour and not a statistical impossibility.

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that is normal for pvp when there are no special events going on.

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Originally Posted by RyuSaarva

that is normal for pvp when there are no special events going on.

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That's a pretty big indictment that PVP is broken and something needs to be fixed however, if that's how long a 'normal' match takes on your data center. Also that's really not normal for Crystal at all or at least it wasn't before. When no special events are going on here the worst wait was around 40 minutes before the roll back to 24x24x24 being the only way to experience Frontlines. I haven't seen two hour plus queues since the 8v8v8 change was implemented way back when. Not even off peak hours.

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Originally Posted by RyuSaarva

that is normal for pvp when there are no special events going on.

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Except it isn't? There were plenty of 24m pops during early/late hours prior to any events. Was my favorite time to queue precisely because 24m was more enjoyable than 72m, and it also didn't line up with any PvE schedules. Ever since they sorted out the queue issues with Freelancer and rotating the maps daily, Frontlines didn't really have any queue issues, unless you were queuing at some absurd hour like 3am. Any reasonable early/late hour it was still popping. Prime time during new content releases (so majority off doing new Trial/Raid/etc) or Tuesday reset 24m could also pop.

Now what do we have? Absolutely no pops until prime time, and if there is anything else going on (Rival Wings community day being another thing that takes a large sum of PvPers away from Frontlines) then the queue dies even in prime time. Even if it's active, say 96 people are in queue? 24 of them are now waiting for a match to end so they can get into the next 72m pop, rather than just having a 24m pop alongside the existing pop.

Removing 24m did absolutely nothing good for Frontlines. All it did was make matters worse, and saying "We'll that's just how it usually is" is a complete lie. Even if it wasn't, and queues were terrible outside events... Why remove 24m then? All it does it make things worse. There was no good reason for removing 24m. "It's hard to get pops outside events, so lets make it harder!", it's an absolutely absurd route for SE to have taken.

Removal of 24man frontlines killed pvp for me. Only 2 days a week now can queue in primetime for pvp because of my work times. There was no reason at all for them to remove 24 man. So they listen to a few players and not think of the other players that its going to hurt if they remove. Last time I tried to queue waited over 2 hours and never popped.

It shows the utter lack of concern for PvP players in this game, from SEs part. Me and others warned this would happen when it was announced, but of course nobody cared, and a few PvE carebears claimed it would be all good. Turns out we were right all along, and SE and the carebears were not.

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Originally Posted by Nalien

Except it isn't? . . .
Removing 24m did absolutely nothing good for Frontlines. All it did was make matters worse, and saying "We'll that's just how it usually is" is a complete lie. Even if it wasn't, and queues were terrible outside events... Why remove 24m then? All it does it make things worse. There was no good reason for removing 24m. "It's hard to get pops outside events, so lets make it harder!", it's an absolutely absurd route for SE to have taken.

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This is 100% my stance on the issue. Removing 24 man did NOTHING to improve the game, it only hurt it and SE is too prideful to admit they messed up.

Which is sad seeing as how this is a company who had to swallow their pride before.

Have they ever even acknowledged the issues since the removal?

Did they simply remove 8v8v8 because they dislike premade groups? I cam see no other reason and even that one is a stretch.

Unorthodox opinion - 8v8v8 was superior because your contribution mattered while 72man is a zergfest where engaging with less than 80% of your group was borderline feeding.

Both fine, but removing 24man was just a plain mistake imo. Just makes off-peak hours unnecessarily painful to queue for.

Request: If the forum mod who ends up seeing this thread could not move this one to the PvP section, that'd be great. There are enough "Bring back 24m" threads in that section already, and I think everyone would rather have more visibility of the issue from leaving this in the General section.

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Originally Posted by Awha

Did they simply remove 8v8v8 because they dislike premade groups? I cam see no other reason and even that one is a stretch.

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From what I've gathered, JP players disliked 24m, so SE removed it for them. Apparently no pops is better than 24m? Not that JP has an issue with pops anyway, they're far more active in PvP than NA/EU so 24m was a rarity for them, while somewhat of a necessity for us. Really doesn't justify the removal of it though... If 24m pops, then 72m wasn't going to. Arguably 24m popping could prevent 72m from forming up, but that is A: An issue with the matchmaking algorithm, and B: Still not entirely true. The entire reason 24m (and 48m, may it rest in peace) were even a thing to begin with was to help get 72m active. People queue up and see a long queue time with no pops? They drop out of queue and don't bother. You get a 24m pop? You stay in queue and keep playing. More people join, eventually 72 or more people are in queue.

The entire point of 24m existing was that it was better than nothing (and I'd actually mirror others opinions that it was better than 72m) and it allowed queues to snowball up towards 72m. It was a perfectly good positive feedback system and it was working perfectly fine, now we're left with a negative feedback loop; Long queues drive people away, queue becomes longer, longer queues drives more away, etc. It really is shocking that they apparently don't even remember why they included 24m to begin with...

Premades is another issue, but I'd say they "fixed" that by limiting players to parties of four. Not that I'd really call that a fix... Premades should be encouraged, not discouraged... This is an MMO, and something like Frontlines is based on working together as a team... Anyone who goes into Frontlines YOLO style and expects to win really is rather delusional... It's large scale team based PvP... Why are SE catering to people who apparently don't get that? Those aren't the players that are going to help PvP in this game grow, they're their for Mog Tomes and Cyborg glamours, and once they've got that they quit PvP until the next new item is added to force them into it again... I'm not even saying people need to form their own premades to fight other premades (although it would be great if people socialized in an MMO, but I don't think I've ever seen anyone ask mid-match if anyone wants to group up as a premade, mostly it's senseless bickering, it's almost like such people don't actually care about trying to win but rather just want to complain ad nauseum), but at least try and coordinate with people and not run off alone like a headless chicken to slaughter, or worse, sit in the corner doing nothing for 10 minutes for 5 free Mog Tomes... Again... Why cater to these kinds of players? Cater to the people who form premades, make Cross-World Linkshells, build a PvP community... Why discourage people from working together in PvP like this? It's utter lunacy...

Not that premades didn't have some issues. Mostly matchmaking though IMO, because there just isn't any in this game. You'd think if 3 premades are queued at the same time, there'd be some kind of matchmaking system to split them up... Nope, XIV doesn't have time for that kind of common sense. It's just as likely to slap them all in the same team as it is to split them up... Of course, at this point anyone who wants to play on the same team just turns Freelancer off (which damages queue times btw) and all join the same Grand Company. Bam. Everyone is on the same team in Maelstrom or whatever. We used to be limited to 8 player teams, now SE tried to limit us to 4 player teams. Now people game the Grand Company aspect of Frontlines to make 24 player premades. Nice fix.

I play on Mana DC during the weekend until reset on EU. I play with 250 ms ping and it's laggy as hell but at least I get to PvP. Legit no reason to queue on Light DC until reset because I know it's dead. Thanks SE.

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Originally Posted by Nalien

Except it isn't? There were plenty of 24m pops during early/late hours prior to any events. Was my favorite time to queue precisely because 24m was more enjoyable than 72m, and it also didn't line up with any PvE schedules. Ever since they sorted out the queue issues with Freelancer and rotating the maps daily, Frontlines didn't really have any queue issues, unless you were queuing at some absurd hour like 3am. Any reasonable early/late hour it was still popping. Prime time during new content releases (so majority off doing new Trial/Raid/etc) or Tuesday reset 24m could also pop.

Now what do we have? Absolutely no pops until prime time, and if there is anything else going on (Rival Wings community day being another thing that takes a large sum of PvPers away from Frontlines) then the queue dies even in prime time. Even if it's active, say 96 people are in queue? 24 of them are now waiting for a match to end so they can get into the next 72m pop, rather than just having a 24m pop alongside the existing pop.

Removing 24m did absolutely nothing good for Frontlines. All it did was make matters worse, and saying "We'll that's just how it usually is" is a complete lie. Even if it wasn't, and queues were terrible outside events... Why remove 24m then? All it does it make things worse. There was no good reason for removing 24m. "It's hard to get pops outside events, so lets make it harder!", it's an absolutely absurd route for SE to have taken.

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depends if you play on the correct server for your timezone, europeans are sleeping late night and early morning so you cannot get frontline pops unless you wait a very long time.

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Originally Posted by RyuSaarva

depends if you play on the correct server for your timezone, europeans are sleeping late night and early morning so you cannot get frontline pops unless you wait a very long time.

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Yeah which is a bad design, people having to wait until a certain time to pvp. I haven't had the chance to pvp for almost 2 weeks now because I hardly play during prime time cause reasons, and I will only wait 25 minutes to get into a match; after that I just stop queuing for the day because I don't want to possibly waste my time like others already have with 100+ minute queues.

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Originally Posted by SturmChurro

Have they ever even acknowledged the issues since the removal?

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Not even a single post anywhere, literally nowhere.

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Originally Posted by RyuSaarva

depends if you play on the correct server for your timezone, europeans are sleeping late night and early morning so you cannot get frontline pops unless you wait a very long time.

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Before these changes it wasn't uncommon to get 15 min queues during morning/midday on Chaos DC in EU times.

The only reason they haven't responded is because there hasn't been new content focused on Frontlines. Only changes leading into that new content.

They're going to wait for when Onsal launches and judge it off a two week period. Then they'll make an annoucement and it should be fine. Just make sure you're vocal and upvote a specific thread so it gets posted to the front.

They had the exact same problem back in 4.3 when Lighthouse came out and they switched the loot system to greed only. Everyone got extremely pissed and posted on the forum (I believe in one big thread) and after two weeks they changed it back due to the backlash.

I'm sorry to say the only time to make your point across is when they've just launched the content as that's when they're maintaining the newest amusement park ride. Granted we need to rely on JP's forum posts too but I think at least fixing 24 man frontline matches will be more reasonable to them then bringing back the 8 man premades.

It will be a bold request, but why just don't launch an instance immediately with first queue request, and fill parties while in progress? It will be a guaranteed entry at duty register for everyone. And yes, it may happen 8v4v2 but better than 72min queue, and a decent marks farming even for the underdog, isn't it?

If too bold, make the queue pop after a maxed wait of... 10min? 15?

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Originally Posted by RyuSaarva

depends if you play on the correct server for your timezone, europeans are sleeping late night and early morning so you cannot get frontline pops unless you wait a very long time.

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Why do i need to be at correct time zone when it is 15 mins a match before the change?

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Originally Posted by LalaRu

It will be a bold request, but why just don't launch an instance immediately with first queue request, and fill parties while in progress? It will be a guaranteed entry at duty register for everyone. And yes, it may happen 8v4v2 but better than 72min queue, and a decent marks farming even for the underdog, isn't it?

If too bold, make the queue pop after a maxed wait of... 10min? 15?

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I've seen plenty of people request something similar to Overwatches Skirmish mode for PvP queues. Essentially, you queue up and are put in a "dummy" instance with everyone else in queue if it's not popping near-instantly. You can run around, adjust your HUD, practice bursts, etc. and then when enough people are in queue you're all put into a proper match.

Would be a nice way to actually gauge how many people are in queue, since you'd be able to mess around with them all in Skirmish while you wait. Of course, they could also just give us an indication of how many people are in queue off the duty finder like almost all PvE queues do (I queue for a Leveling Roulette right now, for example, it shows 1/1 tank, 0/1 healer, 2/2 dps). Why we've never had at least that for PvP is beyond me... Queuing for PvP always feels like you're the only one there because of the lack of that, you see a long wait time and have no way of knowing how close to filling the instance is, so people just leave... If we could see that it was say 67/72, well maybe then people would stick around since it's "close to filling".

Still bad. What are the chances they discuss this in the special broadcast?



To the people a little confused. It popped before the moogle event in 24s the 72s were a side effect of moogle tomes. Garo event was stale till the end and people weren't rushing for items till the end. The end of the Garo could contribute to the 72s popping not the 24s back in 4.X. They can't be that out of touch about why 72s popped, this is the vaunted FF14 dev team. They communicate and take feed back to build a better game.


Questions I would like to be discussed if they actually talk about this.



Why have you been silent on this issue for weeks?



Some people claim that this was to appease JP since they prefer 72s, is that true?



Are you tracking the amount of pops? How much has it decreased from Pre Garo ending announcement?

Do you hope that the new map will carry pops for three to six months?



What are your plans to help with que problems?



Is it possible to have 24 mans as its own separate instance from 72s?

https://i.imgur.com/6TuDxJx.jpg

I gave up after 90 minutes. This is why people think that PvP in this game is a joke.