Feast needs a greater variety of rewards to encourage participation

Taken from an old suggestion but still a good one about the PvP rank icon which I hope is revisited.

http://i.imgur.com/zot9AxC.png?1
http://i.imgur.com/KjXkUj4.png?1

It would be a great motivator for PvPers to continue to play and rank up if they had a way to display their rank.

Another more subtle way for players to show off their PvP achievements would be to show their PvP history. To respect player privacy the option to show this profile could be toggled on and off.

http://i.imgur.com/pfCW59u.jpg?1

The Feast could use a greater range of rewards to incentivize people to play. The current wolf collars rewards feel insufficient, and people who don't want to aim for top 100 don't have much reason to play. I'd suggest adding more items to the wolf collar shop that are easier to implement and won't take as much developer time, like accessories or headpieces that are available at different costs. EX: ring 3 wolf collars, necklace/earring/bracelet 5, headpiece 7.

Looks much better than burger king crown,but we should have bronze one too

Doesn't just need a variety of rewards, it needs better in season rewards. Half the time I see someone suggest something it's something for playing after the season has ended, to me personally; it wouldn't be enough to continue queueing once I've "had enough". Even if it's just dumb things like little sparkly boots or an ugly pet; just like fun rewards that change from season to season I'd be happy with; just something I can actually have DURING the season. Even the concept of getting the titles end of season now I just find stupid and getting them when you reach the tier also removes the hole where if you consistently finish plat/dia, you will never see the lower tier titles. I don't even care whether I get to keep it; if it's a reward you can gain during the season, but at the end of the next season it's gone and rotated into something else that's cool with me too.

But one common factor to all of these ideas that'll ensure they don't happen - they require dev resources, and we get so few of those as it is can't imagine them making seasonal fun rewards lol.

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Originally Posted by BloodRubyXII

But one common factor to all of these ideas that'll ensure they don't happen - they require dev resources, and we get so few of those as it is can't imagine them making seasonal fun rewards lol.

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PVP gets shockingly high investments from the devs, and rather consistently too.

Imagine if like, LoV got as much new content and adjustments as pvp did.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

PVP gets shockingly high investments from the devs, and rather consistently too.

Imagine if like, LoV got as much new content and adjustments as pvp did.

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idk what lov is

we waited 7 months for a season, we had a few balancing patches with barely any feedback from devs on issues that were reported by experienced ranked feast players that carried on into the season, they then decided to tell us that they were planning balancing again on the day they dropped s14 and that's why it took so long, when anyone who did scrims in pre-season could have told them that we'd have probs just waited the extra 2 months if we knew what was coming. don't oversell what resources they give us when we don't even have a pvp CM which in most games, is like the bare minimum and the CMs we do have arent given information to be funnelled down to us, which is a shame because they're extremely active on unofficial channels lol. i think calling it "shockingly high" is especially quite audacious.

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Originally Posted by BloodRubyXII

i think calling it "shockingly high" is especially quite audacious.

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I don't particularly think it is. Let's run through it:
- New gear every odd patch, for every role and occasionally for every job.
* And crossovers like Garo...
- One off top-100 rewards that will only ever be obtained by a tiny amount of the playerbase - far more exclusive than any raiding reward.
* I wouldn't be surprised if the above has the worst dev time:player disbursement ratio of anything in the game. There's literally nothing else that's so limited.
- Overhauls of every job every expac, or in the case of shadowbringers, somewhat including 5.1 and, reportedly, soon to be 5.2 too.
- While a touch less predictable, new maps at least once every few patches.
- Overhauls to how medals work, and so forth.
- There's been a number of one-off additions too, such as 1v1 or spectator mode. The latter in particular is not trivial, a number of dedicated pvp games never get to it.
- fanfest tournaments and all the organizational work it entails - not to mention prizes like gaming computers.

Honestly it puzzles me that they pour so much resources into pvp. Though I wouldn't particularly mind if the gameplay was better...

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As for dev feedback, at least the pvp forums actually do get dev posts sometimes. Many other forums haven't had a single dev post in 5+ years. In fact I'm not sure a dev has posted in them since the game's launch. Towards the end of Stormblood, at least, I've never seen the devs post as actively as they did here in the pvp forums.

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And all this for a niche game mode. Yes, I call it "shockingly high." I don't dislike pvp for being pvp so I wouldn't mind if it seemed to pay off, but we certainly can't say the resources aren't there: the pvp team definitely gets a disproportionately high allocation compared to player interest levels, and the pvp community gets a disproportionately high amount of developer communication/attention.

We don't get new gear every patch, we had 2 gearsets in the entire of Stormblood, which was like 8 seasons of play. Obviously not including our armor seasons which were top 100 rewards. And those seasons are not popular.
We've had one crossover (Garo as mentioned), so I don't see how it's plural.
The Feast playerbase is tiny as it is, there isn't as much competition for spots as people think there is and anyone who plays Feast actively would know this, compared to the swaths of people that raid savage and ultimate. There aren't exactly that many people that see those Ultimate rewards either, though compared to how many people PvE in this game.
Overhaul is a stretch, mechanically the mode is overhauled because of changes to abilities. Summoner has had some ability changes, but mechanically plays the same as it did in Stormblood. The same goes for a lot of other jobs. The only real big changes went to Monk and Machinist, the latter being a necessity due to changes in PvP CC as well as how Machinist actually works now in PvE. Most of the "overhaul" you think we have, is really just more PvE abilities being made accessible in PvP, with a few minor changes, like Painflare stun and fist effects simply being consolidated into their riddle counterparts. The vast majority of jobs play the same as they did last expansion as mentioned at the start of this point, we just simply got access to more of the PvE abilities. the only reason we're getting 5.2 changes is because PvP in this game, like most other MMOs, the devs are struggling to get it right and this patch is an absolute trainwreck and there isn't a single good Feast player that would disagree with me; I can say this with absolute confidence; because you only have to look at the state of the queues already to realise this.
"New maps at least once every few patches" - we've had 3 in more than 2 years, and many maps aren't even accessible at certain times of the week, even if you wanted to play them, in fact the only map you can play outside of the Rival Wings rotation this patch is Onsal.
"Overhauls to how medals work and so forth" - in Stormblood we had light/heavy medals, which proved to be an awful mechanic that would punish you for being ahead early, which lead to some teams actively avoiding picking medals in FRC so they wouldn't have to play defensively as much. SE realised this was a terrible mechanic and removed it. In fact the medal mechanic period is just incredibly stupid; why should a team be punished for being better? Being ahead in ranked 4v4 in this game is the most unenjoyable experience I have ever had in PvP in an MMO.
The ability to 1v1 is popular in MMORPGs that have PvP and more accessible than it is in FFXIV, I don't know how you see this is like some kind of big resource allocation. Spectator modes exist in pretty much every competitive game, the only difference here is that SE gave the players access to it; but it's only usable in a custom game.
We've had one fanfest tournament, and there's no guarantee we'll get another. Also, again, calling this additional resources is a stretch, people volenteered to help with this, the CMs don't actually have PvP as part of their job role, it's something they put themselves up for. I already asked Clem about this at Fangathering and Rinny was in the exact same situation as he was.
We lack Dev posts, what we actually get are CM posts. I don't need to tell you the two roles are very different. It's just funnelled down information. The reason why the other sections don't see as much of it is because information on other aspects of the game are communicated to you in great detail through those lil patch websites they make and the Live Letter. What we get in Live Letters are very, very vague and sometimes, like now being an example, we won't know what we're getting until the patch drops in any way shape or form, and it often happens that when we get to actually try the changes out, the season drops on the same day and we are left in the absolute lurch.

The resources definitely aren't there, this is us being thrown a bone every once in a while, it's just being thrown a particularly big one on this occasion compared to basically the entire of Stormblood (how many seasons did WHM go untouched for? Scholar was also practically unusable at high tier play for the entire expansion, it was viable up until they changed Broil and that was the end of it; literally the job was only good because of one spell and they took what made that spell good away faster than I've ever seen anything get fixed in this game, except for maybe 5.0 Dancer) because even the top JP players are metaphorically on suicide watch. Fellowships got a bigger LL segment than any PvP overhaul has ever had, if you ever wanna see a waste of resources, look no further than Fellowships.

Of course PvP is a niche mode in this game, because unlike other MMORPGs with PvP it doesn't get the same care and attention. They're trying now more than ever, which is something I fully support obviously and hope for better things to come; but it's going to stay a niche mode when you said it yourself, the gameplay is bad (before we even add the netcode into the equation) and isn't attractive. When I have 19 ping and a tetra lands on someone 2 seconds after they take damage, it's a bit of a pisstake. Good knowledge of the game becomes entirely irrelevant when you're at the mercy of this game's server ticks. As a European living in Cyprus I could land positionals on WoW back when they had them on US servers all day long with 185 ping, on here playing melee on NA is a nightmare.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

Imagine if like, LoV got as much new content and adjustments as pvp did.

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Lords of Verminion was practically dead on arrival, it was even less popular than PvP by such a huge margin... Hell, the game it was based on isn't even remotely popular anymore... While many wouldn't call PvP in this game popular, it does have a fairly consistent and dedicated playerbase to work with, ranging from casual Frontlines players to "eSports" events, Lords of Verminion has nothing remotely close to that.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

PVP gets shockingly high investments from the devs, and rather consistently too.

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The problem is how those development resources are spent. Terribly, would be my summary.

5.1 certainly did a lot for PvP. Sadly it did a lot for PvP in the same way swinging a bat at someones knees does a lot for them. They could have built off what we had in 5.0 and actually produced something close to good. Instead they decide to uproot everything and just start again from 0; Adding new buttons in perhaps the worst way possible. Crippling Frontlines for many players. Generally just making an absolute mess of everything.

It's nice that they tried though, I guess.

This would be the best

Weekly routine to bump

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Originally Posted by BloodRubyXII

We don't get new gear every patch

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Never did I say this.

Also, CMs are devs. Not every dev writes code.

As to the rest, I don't particularly have anything more to say. I get that you're not happy with how things have been handled, but that was never my point.

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Originally Posted by Nalien

The problem is how those development resources are spent. Terribly, would be my summary.

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And now we circle back to the original point.

Threads like this aren't pointless. You can suggest that the resources be spent differently. You can definitely disagree with how they've been used. But there's no reason to shoot down suggestions because "there aren't enough resources to do anything" when clearly there are - provided you can convince SE to change how they are allocated.

Great suggestion OP.

Shame about the rest of the thread.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

<something something lord of whatever>

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Thats kinda like saying "Hall of Novice does not get any resources to be upgraded".

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

Never did I say this.
Also, CMs are devs. Not every dev writes code.

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CMs are not Developers, you forget, not only have I met one of our's (EU), but he's active in PvPaissa and SE's offices (where he's based) are a stones throw from me in London lol - why don't you ask him what his role entails (or rather his old role since he's been promoted) - he'll be more than happy to talk to you because he's like that. That is why their title is Community Manager and not Developer/Game Developer; because the clue is literally in their name. I never said every Dev writes code either, Developer falls under a number of positions, CM ain't one of them. You said "every odd patch" - every odd means alternate - but we don't have them at that frequency either, so you're still wrong and the reason you don't have anything more to say is because every other point you made was pretty much wrong too; stop arguing for the sake of arguing and accept it.

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Originally Posted by FirstnameLastname

Thats kinda like saying "Hall of Novice does not get any resources to be upgraded".

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Hey hey, lord of verminion is to feast, as ultimate is to savage. If anything, feast is the 'hall of the novice' that prepares you for something more competitive.

At the end of the day, development time will tend to be doled out in proportion to how popular the content is. If you enjoy niche content in a mainstream game you were sadly never the primary audience. So if you can point to LoVM being unpopular as justification for being abandoned, well now you understand why PvP gets the amount of attention it does.

Even saying all that though, them removing wolf collars this season is one of the most mind bogglingly unwise decisions I've ever seen. Are they worried about wolf collar inflation or something? Do they want the queues to die even faster than normal? For every feast lifer that has all the weapons and a stack of 99 collars in their inventory, there are probably 20 casuals who wouldn't have minded playing a little bit, if it meant they'll get to gold and get to buy a weapon after a few seasons or something. There are probably people who have like 7 collars right now and would've aimed to get the remaining 3 this season.

You already have a mode that's populated by nothing but diehard veterans, taking away the only incentive for casual players to participate is baffling. With a lot of PvP decisions you can kinda point to development resources and stuff and handwave it away, but this just makes zero sense.

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Originally Posted by Myon88

SNIP

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They removed collars for this season, but there's something else coming in it's place, which might be better for everyone. We (Vets or w.e you wanna call us) absolutely want more "general" rewards for casuals because we absolutely want more people to not only play, but have a reason to continue playing also to improve to aspire to obtain something better than what they get. Top 100 is perfectly attainable by spamming games even if you're not very good, but that's still not an attractive concept to a new feast player; because the very mention of "top 100" would make it sound difficult and whether we know better or not, that is the impression given, so there needs to be some other reason for them to play, improve and get a sense of progression that makes them want more. I'll always advocate for not only more rewards, but for more of them be accessible during a season, I absolutely don't want more end of season rewards because whilst I love ranked rewards being exclusive and rewarded to top x, like you should have on a ranked ladder in an MMORPG; not getting anything during the season I absolutely hate. But then again I played WoW, and when I started playing PvP in WoW you were rewarded with access to certain gear immediately upon hitting certain rating milestones and a tabard for the season, then later on they also started offering mounts once you got to x amount of wins (vicious saddle), enchants and elite gear (after they removed the rating only gear). Then they changed Elite Gear so in order to get it, you had to play for a chance to get it at the end of a match; which was a concept I liked, because even in Seasons I didn't care it kept me playing long enough to try and finish the set.

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Originally Posted by BloodRubyXII

CMs are not Developers

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CMs are involved with the development of the game, specifically by facilitating communication between players and designers. Therefor, they are developers.

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Originally Posted by BloodRubyXII

but we don't have them at that frequency either, so you're still wrong and the reason you don't have anything more to say is because every other point you made was pretty much wrong too; stop arguing for the sake of arguing and accept it.

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Alright, so Heavensward only had 2 gearsets, that's fair. The rest is true enough, but you don't seem to be willing to accept that and go on irrelevant tangents, which is why I don't have much more to say.

But I would suggest calming down a little?

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

CMs are involved with the development of the game, specifically by facilitating communication between players and designers. Therefor, they are developers.

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Janitors are involved with the development of the game, specifically by facilitating communication between players and designers, by making sure there's a place clean enough to work. Therefor, they are developers.

The Bus drivers that takes yoshi-p to work is involved with the development of the game, specifically by facilitating communication between players and designers, by allowing him to get to work. Therefor, they are developers.

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Originally Posted by BloodRubyXII

Top 100 is perfectly attainable by spamming games even if you're not very good, but that's still not an attractive concept to a new feast player

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Well, people always say this, but that's only true in relation to the current state of feast isn't it. When there are only like ~60 people (and their 10 alts) per datacenter that care about pvp, then yeah anyone that puts in the effort to grind out games can take the remaining spots in the top 100. In some hypothetical future where they stopped making questionable PvP decisions and feast became popular, it's not gonna be so easy. 100 is 100, if 1000 people were seriously aiming for top 100, 900 of them are going home with nothing.

And yeah I remember WoW, I played my fair share of it, unlocking 1800 or 2100 rating gear was a big morale boost. I don't know how they can replicate that here but removing wolf collars with no context certainly doesn't help.

We've had no warning this was going to happen, no official communication regarding what system is replacing it, or why there has to be a gap this season. It's a good thing I already bought all the weapons I want, because it's been so long since the last season that I've lost count of the months, and for all we know it could be another half a year to the next season after this. If I were coming into this patch with 7 collars and expecting to be able to grind out the last 3 I need, and then being told out of nowhere I'm going to have to wait another year for an unknown reward, I know I'd be disappointed as hell.

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Originally Posted by Myon88

Well, people always say this, but that's only true in relation to the current state of feast isn't it. When there are only like ~60 people (and their 10 alts) per datacenter that care about pvp, then yeah anyone that puts in the effort to grind out games can take the remaining spots in the top 100. In some hypothetical future where they stopped making questionable PvP decisions and feast became popular, it's not gonna be so easy. 100 is 100, if 1000 people were seriously aiming for top 100, 900 of them are going home with nothing.

And yeah I remember WoW, I played my fair share of it, unlocking 1800 or 2100 rating gear was a big morale boost. I don't know how they can replicate that here but removing wolf collars with no context certainly doesn't help.

We've had no warning this was going to happen, no official communication regarding what system is replacing it, or why there has to be a gap this season. It's a good thing I already bought all the weapons I want, because it's been so long since the last season that I've lost count of the months, and for all we know it could be another half a year to the next season after this. If I were coming into this patch with 7 collars and expecting to be able to grind out the last 3 I need, and then being told out of nowhere I'm going to have to wait another year for an unknown reward, I know I'd be disappointed as hell.

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Yeah nothing more to add to this, think this post is spot on mate.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

But I would suggest calming down a little?

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I'm calm, it doesn't change the fact ya talking shite bruv. All I did was counter and address the points that you made.

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Originally Posted by Risvertasashi

PVP gets shockingly high investments from the devs, and rather consistently too.

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https://media.giphy.com/media/DTHnOV01UfvcQ/giphy.gif

Or it just needs to be made fun to play. And some map variety couldn't hurt. I don't know why it's been years since they removed the old Feast Maps, and they still haven't repurposed them. Playing on the same map over and over again is boring as heck.

TBH, I liked the old, old feast, or whatever it was called, back when it was just a deathmatch. That felt more like PvP to me than this newer Feast ever did. I wish they would revive that as a mode as well.

I'd attribute the lack of map variety as a consequence of the push for absolute balance in terms of terrain design.

As for rewards, I'm very much on board with the idea of more incentives. It'd help immensely with queue times.

I love new things. I remember when 5.0 came out and it was probs the most fun I'd had in Feast since like S4, and a lot of people still argue apart from the 12500 range hp meaning that getting LBed basically meant you died and other minor weaknesses (2 potions vs 3 for example), it was probably as good as we'd had it and I'd have rather had a season of that than this and they were better off smoothing that out, than giving us what we actually got. SMN was just missing CC, which it got, but because of what everyone else got made it a nightmare to play in Diamond games especially since Range taking early medals is meta.

Today I tried Rival Wings for the first time and it was more fun than I'd had than the entirity of this Feast season. Ok you get memetomes from playing it, but it's not why I spent all day playing it, I did it cos it was fun lol, whereas this entire Feast season has been slowly leaning more towards something I played more for rating, than something I did for fun. Like first it was Diamond so I didn't have to climb from 0 again next season, then I ended up getting too close to r1 so I thought id keep going and now that queues are dead and it's reasonably out of reach based on ladder activity, I don't go near it cos it's not worth it.

Like I said, I'd love to see some map variety (especially seeing as the map is not befitting of the current game balance), and more in-season rewards, but the priority for me is to make this mode first of all fun again, no-one can @ me and genuinely believe that "this season was fun what are you talking about" when it's dead in less than a month and outside of JP these are some of the lowest cutoffs I've ever seen for a non-recolor mount season to the point even my barely played alts are probably going to get it. There's a community tournament next month and despite the fact people have known about it since like early December and the rewards keep getting increased, 2 teams are signed up, even after it got opened to NA and JP when originally it was exclusively for EU players. A lot of the EU teams are still active, it's just people don't wanna play, or they'd rather keep doing TEA. S14 has literally scarred them so much that they can't even justify competing for fun when it's not fun; and yeah they're right - no1 wants to play DRK/WHM/MNK/DNC mirrors for two days straight. It's scary to read that people would rather have Stormblood PvP back.

I miss the old 8v8 Feast. And I know they made that crystal tower-looking Moogle map for the Fanfest PVP thing, but it is so NOT a Feast aesthetic. Especially when the Quartermaster's all "ye useless whelping pups, git out there and tear your enemies limb from limb!"

Have they ever said why 8v8 isn't returning anytime soon?