PvP in FFXIV and it's Future

So before I start the thread, this is a cross post from my thread on the ffxivdiscussion subreddit the main point of said thread being an updated version of a topic I asked about prior in the same forum, and wanted to try gauging a wide array of opinions on this.

So the primary points of discussion I wanted to pose is this:

What is the main issues with FFXIV pvp? What improvements do you think could be made to better the gamemode as a whole? What are it's strengths so far? Do you think their is a way for the devs to better incentivize the playerbase to engage in PvP? Be it through rewards? Events? Titles? Etc. And lastly, do you think PvP should receive more or less dev attention in the coming expac(s) similar to the focus brought to Crafting and Gathering content in Shadowbringers? Would appreciate thoughts below!

To me it is pointless outside of itself. You get a couple mounts to show off and some furniture and a few orchestrion rolls.

There is very little involvement with the rest of the game and that leads to lack of motivation to care about it. Another issue is it is pretty blatantly mindless. You either join a premade group and roll with your homies and agree to obey call outs [similar to other pvp mmorpgs] or completely get decimated for just signing up for some xp. There are outlier cases where you queue randomly and win. But you cannot even remain loyal to your grand company you are now a freelancer 100% of the time. Again there is no reason behind it aside from the few random items you can get in wolf's den. Other pvp centric games do pvp way better and for the time investment involved there is just more enjoyment to be had.

There are a few things you can choose as far as pvp skills you can pick from but most of the time there is only 2 real options leading to an extreme cookie cutter mentality. You either have the 2 real skills or just get your butt kicked anyways.

Another thing I do not like is every mode except feast (which has all kinds of other issues) is pretty much flag a base or some non pvp objective. It doesn't matter how good you are at right clicking a flag or whatever else if you get hit by the tiniest little speck of damage you start all over again. That's not fun to me. I was over that the first time it happened. I queued recently again just to see how I felt about pvp and the same issues were right there all over again. The "balance" is not balance just like little ideas that just don't work smeared all over the place melee having increased defense so they can actually get close might seem appealing to a melee character but what is the point of a ranged character now? They get nothing to offset any disadvantage caused by this. Like think of how the longbow won wars for mucho long time. I realize this is a video game and balance must rule our digital lives and such but this is not balance.

I also think the the everyone is level 30 each build is the same with no kind of customization outside of what class you choose is stale.

I'm on my cell right now but I can really lay on pretty thick with xiv pvp. It is just boring and uninspired mostly. I have been fairly vocal and critical about it. The fix it ideas I propose are generally shot down in flames as I utter them so I'll just say scrap the whole pvp system and rebuild from the ground up. No jiggling potencies around and saying check it out now will spark interest in people that are not currently pvp'ing. It is a hot mess all the way around.

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Originally Posted by Sauteed

I also think the the everyone is level 30 each build is the same with no kind of customization outside of what class you choose is stale.

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Pretty much was more fun playing with classes when the cross class system was available, then botching that/your normal rotation, and giving you special actions that arent even used outside of pvp. The rewards are meh, the old status materia would have been okay, but they eliminated the pvp gear advantage to doing pvp for the pvp gear thing super super fast. It has no real conitinuity outside of itself, with only hardcore ranking etc, and no real reason outside of itself to do it unless you like being gang busted by groups of players. I find the one v one dueling in Wolfs Den to be the peak of fun and fair pvp, but this is coming from a pve mainly person. That being said, wolf marks are cool and all, but i can get tome gear from doing other stuff. Glams? alright you got me there. Thats about it though. You want the authentic prizes from leaderboards? Welllllll guess you can just give up on doing any activity outside of grinding it, cause they make you upkeep your rank, which i am certain is totally unpopular when raid season hits. Offering older prizes for wolf marks would be pretty dope for glam nuts, and mount collectors(a much bigger area of community) could help, but it would just piss off the real pvp'ers when they worked hard for the stuff, and rightfully so because they at least deserve it for the effort imo. This is all my opinion, though. Others with a better mind set will definitely have better arguments than me.

One of the biggest mistakes and issues imo, is that PvP during the early days (heavensward and before) of FFXIV, People complained all the time that PvP is far too complex and that even the hotbar couldnt handle all of the skills every Job had back then.

And the result of this? Predictable! Square Enix answered the crying of CASUAL players who couldn't get into PvP and simplified it to the System we still know today which shoo'd away 90% of the old PvP Community, and that is the gist of it.

What any PvP content in any MMO needs in order to work is a complex combat system so that every class (or Jobs in the case of FFXIV) can respond to every other existing class and still have a fair chance of winning, of course there will be cases where Class X will have advantages over Class Y but as long as it doesn't get completely out of hand, it shouldn't be too bad.

IF there is one thing i would wish for the most, is a Skillkit for every Job in the game to be "balanced out" in a way that it works for BOTH PvP and PvE content while still appealing to the idea i just mentioned above this.

Pvp only seems to be in the game just so they can say the game has pvp. They could remove it and nothing would change really.

I find it funny that people here complain about everyone being the same when in every other game people complain when everyone is not the same. They don't want anything they can't plan for ahead of time. People never seem to know what they want.

My views as someone who has done pvp in other games, and a bit in this one.

IMO I think that the games pvp should focus more on smaller scale pvp since it's easier to make groups for it, and try copying or borrowing popular gamemodes from other MMOs and working them to better fit with FFXIV's combat system

Every player who championed 'wanting more buttons' for the past two years are the reason why ShB PvP is worse than SB pvp.

I'd be happier with 8-10 and idk, maybe about 10 more macros set up. As long as the skills did something.

Right now we have a burst of 80-150k damage that is spread out over 14 or so skills.

I'd much rather jobs, have the ability to deploy fields with various effects, like slows, damage ups/downs, shield generations.

Channeled abilities, like lasers and heals that intensify.

Actions like BTE that require other factors to use them to their full extent.

You know, more than just a selection of skills with varying levels of damage associated with them.

And I want this awful medal system abandoned and never returned too. I, for one would be happier with a capture the hill style feast mode on a map slightly larger the lichenweed.

But idk, this community would rather whinge about rewards as if that has any bearing on player retainability other than past a week or two.

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Originally Posted by Kiurai

IMO I think that the games pvp should focus more on smaller scale pvp since it's easier to make groups for it, and try copying or borrowing popular gamemodes from other MMOs and working them to better fit with FFXIV's combat system

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It should have more PVP yes.

Every time an expansion is released, somehow that drawing from the early days of FFXIV comes up and people start talking about open-world PVP and world vs. world PVP when Feast can't even handle pings right. I'd rather the devs concentrate on making PVP fun and interesting again rather than trying to jump on all these tangents like MOBAs and such to try and wriggle the engine into a system it wasn't designed for

Here is a image from back then when they adressed the "main issues" of PvP back then, just before they turned it into what it is today.

https://i.imgur.com/204w6QF.png

When were these slides from 2017? This is the precursor to the Stormblood changes correct?

A big problem with XIV's PvP is there aren't enough desirable rewards- or even if there are, you can queue Frontlines non-stop all day or a few times daily and you'll likely have near everything you want from it by the weekend (Wolves Marks). They also have seemingly slowed-down adding new armor/extras to the vendors to twice an entire expansion cycle, making Wolves Marks largely worthless aside from buying dark matter or squadron rationing manuals. Probably doesn't help that Wolves Marks are handed out like candy as participation rewards just for queueing Frontlines with a pulse (for now). Therefore everything Wolves Marks-related has incredibly brief retention.

The achievement rewards from wins on their own sort of help retain players (and aren't simply handed-out, so it encourages you to actually try to win), but once you obtain those rewards I think many players stop queueing out of exasperation or at least take a long break from Frontlines. You can only herd cats for so long before you need to step away from it.

Feast has a bunch of accessibility issues, but I find Feast's biggest problem is the timing of their active ranking seasons. It's already a given that you have a brief window of activity for a few weeks once the season starts to reasonably queue and climb to a particular rank to keep seeing any activity; but what exacerbates the problem is when they release new seasons alongside other anticipated PvE content patches. As a result, by the time many players might decide to start participating in the Feast season after playing the new PvE content (and let's not kid ourselves, the vast majority of players are here for PvE content, not PvP), their queues are already usually ridiculously long to get a match (if you're not at gold, apparently) and it turns people off and away. When the devs release a new Feast season alongside a big PvE content patch, attention gets taken away from it and perpetuates its niche status. To be fair, this has always seemed like a problem with XIV's content cycle where several different newly released content compete with each other for participation (do you grind out the new Frontlines mode while it has insta-queue participation or do you level BLU to the new cap and find parties quickly for the new spells before they disappear from the PF two weeks later?). But alas, that's for another topic. Starting/ending Feast seasons between patches during lulls could probably go a long way to seeing better participation.

And as a side note, they haven't done or added anything new with Wolf Collars in the however-many seasons since it was implemented (except give GNB and DNC weapons, surprisingly), so there's also even less motivation for players to participate if they can't rank.

Frontline problems - once people starts getting their hands on the rewards, this gradually dies over time.

The Feast problems - rigged top 100 ladders with 50% of the spots taken by alts (both from the same data center and other data centers). I don't know what on earth square's thinking by allowing this (for 17 seasons no less).

Couple the above with everybody left out of top 100 getting wolf collars...which are FF7'S tissue's consolation prize, and you get where we are now.

The Feast's fatal blow is FFXIV having one of the most chill and laidback communities combined with the heart attack inducing nature of The Feast mode. These two don't get along well either.

What I would (personally) do or, rather, have done (because I'm afraid it's a little late being S17 and all):

Frontlines - Better rewards over time + keep updating them. Maybe even remove them somewhere later and add new ones so that people have a reason to keep queueing. Job EXP is the incentive that should be avoided like the plague here. Rewards should always be attached to doing positive active things like killing X people, taking X points or winning X matches, definitely no to things like "participate in X matches" for more than obvious reasons.

The Feast - If people want to play with alts, let them, but the same account should never take more than 1 spot in the Top 100.

Wolf collars. Personally, I would have cycled the rewards attainable with the wolf collars every 3-4 seasons, allowing for different things to be exchanged for them, and I would've locked them away later, so that these remain "fairly" exclusive too, albeit a lot less exclusive than the top 1-100 goodies. That would've been, in my book, a much better way to treat everybody who attempts the PVP mode and puts in a certain amount of effort.

Just my 2 cents, others may think differently.

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Originally Posted by Cidel

Feast has a bunch of accessibility issues, but I find Feast's biggest problem is the timing of their active ranking seasons. It's already a given that you have a brief window of activity for a few weeks once the season starts to reasonably queue and climb to a particular rank to keep seeing any activity

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We constantly have back to back seasons that last for months so I wouldnt call it a brief window. Feast only needs 8 players to have a match pop but there are barely over 100 players playing each season so that is why it dies out. Biggest problem of Feast is that nobody wants to play it. Frontlines get easily 72 players in a single match during prime time but Feast cannot even get 8 players into the queue within 3 ranking brackets at the same time 2 weeks into the season...

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Originally Posted by Nanne

We constantly have back to back seasons that last for months so I wouldnt call it a brief window. Feast only needs 8 players to have a match pop but there are barely over 100 players playing each season so that is why it dies out. Biggest problem of Feast is that nobody wants to play it. Frontlines get easily 72 players in a single match during prime time but Feast cannot even get 8 players into the queue within 3 ranking brackets at the same time 2 weeks into the season...

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And there's your brief window I was referring to. Two weeks at the start of the season. You ended up reiterating my point.

Id simply revert all changes made in Stormblood (including the removal of 8v8v8) and add seasonal Frontline rewards. Achieve 100 Wins within 3 Months to receive this or That Mount/Glamour. But yeah, i do not think rewards alone will help get more Players in the Gamemode. I tend to describe the current "PvP" as a pot of soup where the cook forgot Salt and Spices. I know a certain someone who legit managed to fall asleep in Shatter...... <.<

Right now, i don't want any new rewards added to Frontlines because if there is anything half decent, i have to suffer through hours of Boredom. (They tend to make new Rewards extremely expensive cause they know most long Term PvP Players have their Wolfmarks capped for weeks or even months.) I remember when they added the Chopperlike thingy, it was, and still is, 20k Wolfmarks, so i had to farm some more for the Other stuff after i spend the marks i had capped for i do not know how long.

So yeah, Rewards Alone will NOT fix the long Term problem: It is boring as hell, has no Agenda, no meaning anymore since it is forced mercenary (Kinda funny that you are FORCED to betray your Grand Company) and the outcome of the Games has no effect at all to the Gameworld.

The major turnoff for new players in the ranked Feast is always a bad mood and anxiety (wether they win or not, and new players mostly lose because get farmed by veterans). That's why there's always the same people in tops for many seasons, they just got used to it but still not having fun, and stop as soon as they secure a 'safe' spot. Rehashed rewards do not help the situation. Multiple alts from other datacenters taking spots of native datacenter characters do not help the situation. The most fun (imo), casual, and popular 8vs8 mode was taken out. Between seasons The Feast is dead so no practice or anything. This leads to a slow but sure decay.
Rival Wings never pops outside of community efforts (who have to advertise it in PF for the whole week to get 5 or less pops in Saturday) and Moogle Tomes events.
Frontline is just a mess with 72 players where no matter your best effort your contribution is not enough to achieve anything among so many disorganized people who mostly que for daily XP but hate PvP in general.

Solution: bring 8vs8 back for practice and FUN. Bring 8vs8vs8 Frontlines (forbid premade if you think it makes it unbalanced). Change The Feast matchmaking to win rates rather than rating because now it means nothing, just the amount of matches spam. Make 1 daily feast match where you can't lose a rating if you lose, it'll keep ques active for the whole season. Make leaderboards for every job like in Ishgard restoration, but that's too much to ask for at this point.

There are 2 things that I'm very concerned about.

The first is how pvp feels restricted. I disagree with some of the changes like not being able to choose a frontline map when you feel like it and not being able to play the old feast maps in training, but I ended up shrugging it off over time because of how important the changes was. It was SE just trying to help solve problems. After the recent update with some dungeons being able to be explored with no enemies around I can't stop to wonder why pvp doesn't have many options to control and manipulate at this point. That sort of update would help with creating tutorials and what not. I wouldn't mind if 24 man frontlines were locked behind having to set a few premades like they did with the old feast maps. SE doesn't have to touch that if they don't want to. Alas, it's just another small wish lumped with the many that's on the forums like a bunch of stars.

The more important issue is the lack of content that's currently presented. It's not that we don't have enough. Every time something new is added something else is taken away. We get a training mode for feast, while we lost the 8v8 mode with the maps being locked behind party finder. We get Hidden Gorge while Astragalos gets locked. The map has been locked since Hidden Gorge's release. We get an awesome frontline map that's very popular while 24 man gets taken away. The sad part is that out of what remains it's not a guaranteed that people will be playing depending on the type of game mode and the type of day, and that usually creates the false illusion that pvp is dead.

It's something that I have been slowly seeing over the 3 years that I've been playing. Despite the changes that was happening back then it didn't really hit me until 5.1. I preferred full party team fights on smaller maps which was why I was grinding every day just because, but after 5.1 I lost my satisfaction and my willingness to play all day. After forced freelancer being a thing I found it harder to create new friends and see an overall growth from myself. Trying to get new players to try out pvp has also become difficult. Things were lost, and even if I keep quiet about it some players will eventually figure out that something's not right. New player's experience with starting the feast journey is a great example of this.

I don't see myself quitting pvp anytime soon, but I do have to seriously worry about the future if this sort of trend continues. I don't want to lose anything else or be told when I can play a certain mode.