Feast (4v4 Ranked PvP) wasn't actually that bad, but it was set up to fail by SE

Now that the Feast is about to be deleted, I'd just like to say despite all the memes the dedicated PvP community makes about the state of PvP, I actually think that Feast wasn't actually that bad as a game mode. However, it was set up to fail by SE.

Ok I know a lot of you might think "PvP is the worst thing ever and kicked my dog", but hear me out.

For the limitations the game mode has in terms of severs and player size, we'll never get something like counterstrike or Smash Bros or Starcraft or something. With the current engine, the current state of Feast is actually a pretty ok competitive game by these following reasons:

1. There is a skill difference between players that is not gear or RNG based. If you are good at the game, while you may not win all your games you can still win a majority. And if you are new, you have the potential to become good through practice and study.

2. There is enough mechanical complexity. Yes we meme about 9 buttons or whatever, but I'm not talking about flicking headshots in counterstrike or needing 300 APM. There is enough room to grow in terms of keeping track of buffs/debuffs, positioning, learning the flow/momentum of the game, and even knowing certain people's playstyles. Even the 2 braincells you use on tracking medals can give you a huge advantage. At higher levels of play, every little bit adds up, which is really nice gameplay since every action you do has an impact on winning. It's really nice that even where you stand can differentiate a good player from a bad one, if a kill happens or not, or if you give away your team's strategy.

Also I know some feasters dream of the old 3.0 feast days where we had all our abilities plus like 10 more additional ones, but IMO it wasn't that much better. What is the difference in 10 buff buttons instead of 1 Feint? With the overload of abilities there was a lot of imbalance. Plus with so much abilities the state space of a game or action was huge. Pushes and pulls in these scenarios were just basically RNG, there were situations that you just couldn't defend against.

3. Aside from mechanical complexity, there is enough strategic complexity too that winning is possible even if behind, but not in a way that is overly unfair to someone more skilled. (ie: medal distribution, adrenaline boxes). If the more skilled team lost it's not always because of a catchup mechanic, it's because they made a mistake in safeguarding their advantage, something they could have done with a bit smarter play.

4. The current balance is not that bad. Yes there are some jobs that can use a bit of help, but overall it actually isn't super bad. Ast and Sch are either too OP or too UP, and DRK and RDM can use some work, but overall not too shabby.

Yes I know the feast is the worst game ever because that one time you popped a potion and it didn't register the tick before you died, but then again why didn't you pop that potion 100ms sooner? Why didn't you use the same tactic against your opponent and kill them before they could pop their potion? Jokes aside yes we aren't getting the tightest tuned fighting game, but with this engine it wasn't bad.

I know a lot of veteran PvPers have memed over the years about how Feast needs to die or how the game is the worst thing ever, but most have continued to play season after season. Some for hundreds of games, some thousands. And many continue to play even after getting “safe”, meaning they don’t need to even play anymore to get a reward.

In comparison, I personally only ever play a PvE dungeon a single time on release in a patch, then never again because it’s super boring. However Feast despite the frustrations is actually also pretty fun, and IMO if it doesn’t hurt on a loss then it isn’t worth it when you win.

TLDR: Feast wasn't that bad

Continued in next post: However it was set up to fail by SE.

That being said, the Feast never had a chance because SE never gave it a chance:

1. There was NO moderation for cheating at all. You can count the number of people actually punished from cheating in the feast for the last 20 seasons on one hand. This is the equivalent of launching a mmorpg but letting people dupe. I know certain ways of cheating are hard to distinguish from just playing bad, but I'm talking about people using legit speed hacks or using abilities while stunned/silenced that they should not be able to do and should be easily traceable by moderators. Yet the dev team offered no attempt throughout all 20 season at any form of moderation, it's all just canned responses like "we appreciate your report, please blacklist the player, etc". Right now on some data centers it's gotten to the point where you'll likely get shot by a literal feast gang if you walk around the Wolves Den at night.

2. There was NO attempt to help new players at all. There are tutorials for PvE, chocobo racing, triple triad, and even Verminion, tutorials that actually prevent you from even playing the game until you complete it, yet there is no tutorial for the Feast. You have new players joining a match, getting rofl-stomped and bm'd cause they are not performing their duty in a team based competitive mode, and never playing again. I know it would be hard to program, but a mode full of Trust NPCs where you can help practice PvP in would help a huge amount. Maybe training slots can be filled with these bots if there aren't enough people queueing for that mode?

3. There were no updates or communication at all from the devs. There are no new maps, very few balance changes that felt like they were decided based on coin flips, and when we got something new it felt like squeezing water out of a rock. Remember how they couldn't even get the PvP rewards delivered on time after a season, or even show what a reward looks like when a new season starts? Where is the dev communication for anything PvP related? Literally everything good about the Feast was made by the community.

Other Important Issues

1. Queue times. Because the community is small queue times are an issue. There can be multiple ways to fix this, like indicting what roles are missing in the queue, or giving bonus rewards to queueing up on the weekends (ie: 2x weapon XP bonus like in FPS games like CoD?), or even joining datacenters into one big group competing for top 300 or something. One contentious idea is setting up a PvP time of day, like in the afternoon, where you can only gain points at this time. That funnels all players into a certain time zone, which reduces the potential of certain types of cheating and increases player pool available, however this idea is contentious because some people might complain they can't play at a certain time. Nevertheless, other games do implement this strategy pretty often. Even the Chinese client of FFXIV does this for Feast.

2. Quick Chat. I personally think the Quick Chat idea is ok, and probably saved a lot of people from an untimely ban from a few too many gamer words. However do we really need stuff like "Hello" in PvP? We are not playing the game mode to RP to each other. Where are the actual PvP quick chats? For example, "My burst is ready", "Watch your positioning", "Do a light burst here". PvP players literally had to develop their own language using "Hellos" and flag semaphores. If anything, if you're going to give stuff like "Thank You", at least add in "Sorry". I'm pretty sure 90% of PvP drama could have been avoided if there was a "Sorry I messed up" chat option.

On this note, things that I think aren't really an issue:

1. Rank decay. A lot of PvE players say they will never touch PvP because of the lack of Rank Decay. When you say Feast needs rank decay, what is your reasoning? Do you think it will help with queues at lower levels? Or will it help with queues at top 100? How much decay will there be? How many games is needed to avoid the decay, or is it a constant amount? Can people circumvent the decay by just playing the last 2 weeks of the season? Right now it is true that queues slow down and even die completely at lower ranks later in the season, primarily because most people have ranked into gold-diamond leaving unranked queues dead. Ranked decay will not pull gold-diamond back down to unranked, making such a heavy decay is unreasonable and nobody would ever queue up until the last week if that is the case. For the top 100, yes people do sit on their ranks but the floor rising is just a different form of rank decay. If you sit, the top 100 floor will eventually rise above your rank. Also, anyone good enough to get to top 100 won't be bothered by playing one game every few days to keep the decay away, it won't solve your issues at unranked and it won't help you get into top 100.

2. Exclusive Rewards. This is probably a touchy subject since I'd assume if you can't get the rewards, you'll obviously want to have the rewards made available, and if you already have the rewards you'll be on the other side of the fence. I don't think exclusive rewards are an issue, it's what makes top 100 worth playing for. Perhaps a middle ground is allowing older top 100 rewards to be available, but you only get a token for a single reward for every top 100 you get. In this case the reward is no longer FOMO, yet still requires skill to obtain. That being said, it's still kind of unfair to the players that worked for that particular season. For example the season 1 coat is very prestigious while the random Magna Roader from some other season that no one played on is not.

3. Rotating old maps. Yes I know we all want Lichenweed back, but that map and some of the other older maps need some tweaks before returning into a rotation. They were built for a different time aka everyone had safeguard and there was less defenders advantage due to heavy medals. Right now, without heavy/light medals, the big wall in Lichenweed makes it such that once you get the first kill it's very hard for the losing team to make any play since your defensive position is so strong. They can probably tweak it by changing the big wall into one horizontal and vertical wall like in the crystal tower map.

TLDR Conclusion:

I think the Feast was pretty fun, more fun than a lot of the other content like dungeons in my personal opinion. It required some skill to play, it required some braincells for strategy, and it spawned quite a few communities.

However, SE decided to nuke the feast without ever really cultivating it. Without moderation, without giving newer players help, and without any dev communication the Feast never really had a chance. This was not a failure of the Feast gamemode, this is a failure from SE.

SE has unironically made a pretty good game mode by most objective measurements. I'm sad that instead of improving on the Feast, SE has just decided to wipe the slate clean and replace it. I don't want to be pessimistic, but while the recent live letter gave us more PvP information and communication than we've got in the past decade, it was still very lacking. It showed no gameplay footage, no information about the compressed roles, and very ambiguous information on the reward structure. The only reason it was ok at all was because we compare it to other LLs where we got NO information at all. We're literally salivating over scraps.

I worry that even the small things we take for granted in the Feast like counting medals, positioning, or even role differentiation will be gone in Crystal Conflict, where it'll just be a bunch of AFK bots standing on the crystal like in Frontlines.

I am scared about the new roles. I want to play a healer not a copy of a red mage :p

I have spammed Feast ranked and Feast customs since December of 2019, haven't even been doing the story or any pve at all since then. I really like the game mode but this post is very accurate on many issues related to the game mode. At the end of the day Feast has amazing potential, but SE doesn't care enough about it to nurture it.

Planning your seasons and rewards and announcing them ahead of time, listen to community feedback when making balance changes and most important of all, banning/punishing cheaters, would all be expected by any pvp community of any game, but sadly did not happen with Feast. These could all be issues for the new game mode as well.

I am still very sad to see the Feast go. Theorycrafting comps and strategies with your team, practicing them in scrims and then play the tournaments organized by the community (imagine if SE was the one organizing) was probably the best gaming experience I had, sadly cut short by the removal of Feast.

I am curious to see what the new pvp mode brings but:
- Adding another player to each team could end up making people feel like they have less carry potential;
- Game seems to be oriented towards objectives, this can be ok if killing is still important but if game encourages ignoring pvp for the sake of objectives then it sounds unappealing;
- Removing role restrictions could help queue timers but sounds like a hell of a balancing issue;
- Making everyone heal themselves more and not need a healer seems to go against the playstyle the existing community enjoys and wants. For me personally, the dedicated mandatory healer is a playstyle I greatly enjoy. There is indeed an issue with new healers not being able to handle the game mode and losing interest, but even so many new healer players have managed to adapt and improve to the point where they became very reliable, by seeking guides and help from the community.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by PotatoTree

2. Exclusive Rewards. This is probably a touchy subject since I'd assume if you can't get the rewards, you'll obviously want to have the rewards made available, and if you already have the rewards you'll be on the other side of the fence. I don't think exclusive rewards are an issue, it's what makes top 100 worth playing for. Perhaps a middle ground is allowing older top 100 rewards to be available, but you only get a token for a single reward for every top 100 you get. In this case the reward is no longer FOMO, yet still requires skill to obtain. That being said, it's still kind of unfair to the players that worked for that particular season. For example the season 1 coat is very prestigious while the random Magna Roader from some other season that no one played on is not.

---

The random magna roaders aren't prestigious because no one bothered to play for them for self evident reasons. If you made a token for any previous t100 reward, each season would be extremely competitive.

Agreed it wasn't as bad as others make it out to be. Medals added a mechanical layer to keep track of, and led to rotating targets based off medal count rather than just spamming the squishiest target like if it was more like TDM. Though I think I would have enjoyed it more if the buffs/debuffs medals gave stayed, if even at half potency, as I felt it led to more kills which was more engaging and helped negate tunneling as much.

Hot take, but I still think the button squish was a good thing for PVP. In PVE everything is pretty static, you're occasionally reactionary, and usually you can plan most things out enough that nothing really surprises you unless you're a healer and someone takes a hit they weren't supposed to. In PVP though, it's highly dynamic. You have to watch your screen at all times because even a single slip up can lead to a death. The tempo in PVP is also really fast in comparison to PVE. This leads to most people using macros to keep up with the pace. Target macro's, healing macro's, cc macros etc. This isn't even an issue of 'skill' it's just the optimal way to keep up with the speed of a match. Not to mention you have to communicate more in PVP, and because SE hasn't implemented Voice yet, you have to use almost half of the given Quick Chat buttons given to properly communicate. All this would be a nightmare with an entire PVE toolkit. Plus the squish makes some(some) job actions better. For example, like how Rough Divide on GNB in PVP gives a cartridge so you have to keep in mind not to overcap, while also being able to rely on this if you have no cartridge available before a burst, which is way more interesting than a simple gap closer. Combing 1-2-3's just gives me more hotbar room, so I still see it as a gain even if that's all that changed about them.

That said QC could have been way better, the level of responsibility and difficulty of the roles wasn't balanced with the players in mind(melee and healer are the hardest roles by far), and the zero moderation given even with slideshows and video evidence of the actions against ToS was huge WTF. The idea of a self healing action with pots wasn't a bad idea but why an "item" with a 2 second delay? Same map sucked especially when I have to zero out my brightness just to play without needing eye surgery later.

The biggest issue I had though was not enough ranks with the current system or just a lack of skill based matchmaking(that they say is coming but, :copium:), and that there was no incentive to play once you were "safe" in top 100. That's why most seasons sucked, was because people would freelo their way to Diamond, and not queue at all unless they were concerned for their spot. Their was no reason to play past the "safe" mark in unless you really wanted r1-10 or were achievement farming. Hell, even adding actual useful items for wolf marks would make me keep queueing. Or give me a currency for winning ranked games that I can spend on a golden fenrir pup that I can sell on the market board to give me any reason to keep playing. I fear this will continue into next expansion. Finish the series battle pass? Did enough for the Season reward? Why bother to keep queueing? Hopefully they will address it, but at least I shouldn't have to sit in hour long tank queues anymore *inhale*.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ixon

Hot take, but I still think the button squish was a good thing for PVP.

---

I think I kinda mentioned this but I probably should have elaborated more. I also completely agree with the button squish. I don't think using 5 buffs instead of one buff was any better for gameplay, so consolidating them was good. And I completely agree there is no extra skill in pressing 1-2-3 instead of one button 3 times. We meme on the 9 button thing but right now it's just right in terms of complexity vs speed for the current server infrastructure, plus all the extra buttons for macros.

Also with more buttons and more options, IMO it would make it less conductive for team play. If a single player can do everything why would I ever listen to the team? Also if there are a lot more abilities and options, the state space would just be huge. With the current pace of the game, it would be hard to mount an effective defense against an attack if the opponent has a million options.

More buttons would raise the skill ceiling, which is good but for our current amount of players and ranking system it wouldn't work well. We don't have enough players for a "grandmaster" mode. Right now the skill ceiling offered by the buttons feels just right for matches that are plat-diamond.

Basically TLDR I think the button squish was ok. Any more skills at the current pace will just make games RNG. We don't have enough players and ranks to justify raising the ceiling further with more skills.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ixon

Or give me a currency for winning ranked games that I can spend on a golden fenrir pup that I can sell on the market board to give me any reason to keep playing. I fear this will continue into next expansion. Finish the series battle pass? Did enough for the Season reward?

---

Yea feast would have been way more popular if it wasn't mostly just top 100 or bust in terms of rewards, like with the whole Garo thing. Some more extra rewards sprinkled along the way would have been nice, but right now it's just like 2 minions for kills and assists and 1 tiny mount among a few other meager rewards. The wolf collars don't even trade for much. Maybe Feast with the battle pass would have worked well, but we'll never know cause SE never really tried.

I've invested into either 10 or 11 seasons. I didn't see anything wrong. In fact, I didn't questioned anything until the beginning of the Shadowbringer's expansion. My 2 worse seasons was season 7 or 8 when people respawn right where they died and season 14 where no one was getting wolf collars.

When I first started feast 3 years ago I was hesitant simply because I couldn't chat. Quick chat wasn't enough to pass on whatever message you needed to say then. Then the 2018 tournament came, and I was bought in instantly. After the tournament is where SE simply dropped the ball in my opinion. Lack of updates and communication from there as OP mentions. Stormblood era was a fun experience. I can't say the same for this expansion.

Being a low rank player in Shadowbringers wasn't fun at all. I went from having longer queue times in in the previous expansion to being in dead queues halfway through the season. It didn't help that the time I lost waiting in a dead queue the top players were getting more games in. So I felt crappier knowing that I had to deal with being a diff the beginning of next season simply for lack of experience. I got the message then: "Learn fast, or get left behind." For a long time I simply blame myself and my lack of concentration. Now, I wonder why it was made easier in the first place to get to diamond. I can accept that I'm bad. Yet, I can't personally accept my results because of how inflated the rating is. Let me take a full penalty instead of a soft one, so that I know where I'm truly at.

I'm happy that certain problems are being solved. I just hate the fact that those fixes are being ported over to the new game mode. I'll give the new mode a try. I'm just not that excited about it. Shadowbringers basically killed majority of my motivation I once had for pvp. My only concern right now is how rating is going to be done. If it's made easier to climb the rank with this new mode I don't think majority of the problems are going away. That's just me though. I hope everyone's expectations is higher than mines.

This is my first season so me having an opinion on the exclusivity of the feast rewards is probably pretty yikes. That said, I believe that this is one of the bigger nails in "set up to fail" coffin. For a competitive game mode having exclusive rewards for reaching higher ranks is basically a given, which is probably why they went with it. However, I think this was a mistake... kind of. I think it's important to reward players who attain Top 100, Top 10, and Rank 1. But, I believe the reward model could've been done in a way that both respects the time put in by players achieving Top 100, and incentivizes new players to come in and play the Feast. This is what I think could've been done to improve the reward structure.

Season rewards would be exclusive to Top 100 winners for 2 to 3 seasons, after which they are placed into a shop and cost wolf collars.
Prices ranging from 10-20 wolf collars, requiring either a Top 10 placement or multiple season investment to achieve. Potentially have these versions be undyeable or recolors of the original Top 100 reward.
Wolf collars would only be awarded to players who hit at least Gold OR Plat. Silver and Bronze would not award wolf collars anymore. Possibly adjust rating distribution so that it is more difficult to get into Gold and Plat with lower winrates.
Rank 1 rewards would never be introduced into the shop.

I think these changes alone would be a great step in the right direction. Depending on the direction taken reward exclusivity could either be kept or reduced slightly. The added bonus of having recolors/undyeable versions in the Wolf Collar shop is that those that won the original versions can also snag a recolor variant if they so choose. But, this also incentivizes new people trying the Feast in order to get rewards. Right now when you come across someone with a past season reward and ask how to get it people will be told "It's from the feast, but it's unobtainable now." That doesn't exactly inspire me to go out and play the mode. But, if you put a version (Original or Recolor) the answer might be more like "It's from the feast, it'll be in the shop next season" or "It's from the feast, there's a recolor variant coming to the shop soon." Now I know it's at least obtainable and I might be more inclined to look up what the Feast is and how I can participate in order to get the reward. Even so it's important to respect the original Top 100 players time investment to get their reward, so if you're going to have it go into a shop it needs to be costly enough that it may take either a similar or longer time investment (Top 10) or require multiple seasons to get the wolf collars necessary to purchase the reward. However, getting Bronze 5 seasons in a row isn't exactly respecting that time investment, so removing wolf collar rewards from Bronze and Silver (Possibly Gold) requires people to put in some level of effort to get into mid to high ranks.

This would hopefully mean more players would be playing each season, which in turn could be incentive enough for the dev team to give Feast the time of day with balancing and map rotation, and hopefully mean proper moderation to prevent cheaters. Once I gave Feast a true try, I found it to be quite fun and I've met some really awesome people in this small community. It's a shame the mode is going away and I agree it was destined to fail with SE's approach. Great post Momoko!

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by PotatoTree

2. There was NO attempt to help new players at all. There are tutorials for PvE, chocobo racing, triple triad, and even Verminion, tutorials that actually prevent you from even playing the game until you complete it, yet there is no tutorial for the Feast. You have new players joining a match, getting rofl-stomped and bm'd cause they are not performing their duty in a team based competitive mode, and never playing again. I know it would be hard to program, but a mode full of Trust NPCs where you can help practice PvP in would help a huge amount. Maybe training slots can be filled with these bots if there aren't enough people queueing for that mode?

---

We often meme about JP getting the better treatment, often it is not the case, but sadly here you can see guides for jobs explained on their semiofficial japanese pvp specific stream, when you change the language of the website to JP.
https://i.imgur.com/1Wbno3M.png

This stuff is over 3 years old, but for english players they community had to help themselves, because it didn't get such resources. https://i.imgur.com/zgqsY5u.png

It is better if they make such knowledge and links available to all languages in the future, there were capable people who could have taken the job in that timeperiod of 2018/19 like Frosty/+One/Clem or other people of the community to create something similar for the english audience.

Every speedhacker I met didn't even make it in top100 I think, but it was still bad if SE really had no will or tools to go after them, a PvP mode can't flourish if nobody watches over the game rules.
Many of those cases ironically later got banned for chat related stuff like spamming, harassment or similar, it showed us a weird perspective of their priorities in the ban process. Ala 'Cheating OK - Harassment Not OK'.

While I agree that buffs and debuffs or skill chain skills don't need all multiple buttons like in the past. I really liked niche skills in the old PvP and I don't think a bit RNG dependence was bad like having crits or evasion,parry chance. Nowadays you know its impossible to still win last 20s, it wasn't back then.
I liked that all jobs had support and cc abilities and more defensive opportunities. That just offered way more variance and surprise. I also liked the trinity of tank/healer/dps that seems to be gone in the new mode.
Seeing a blm have more effective support (the last several seasons) than a tank was a sad image of its 'supposed to be' - role.

Regarding the new mode, I am not sure if there is enough incentive for PvP players in Ranked if you are unable to carry matches anymore. I dislike the trend to make modes so simple and uncommunicative that tactical play is impossible, it is just a hot mess then, where nobody can outperform others anymore. More like the current frontline experience, just without chat.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by PotatoTree

2. There was NO attempt to help new players at all. There are tutorials for PvE, chocobo racing, triple triad, and even Verminion, tutorials that actually prevent you from even playing the game until you complete it, yet there is no tutorial for the Feast. You have new players joining a match, getting rofl-stomped and bm'd cause they are not performing their duty in a team based competitive mode, and never playing again. I know it would be hard to program, but a mode full of Trust NPCs where you can help practice PvP in would help a huge amount. Maybe training slots can be filled with these bots if there aren't enough people queueing for that mode?

---

What is the point of that?
All the illustrations listed by you are nevertheless fighting against programmed AI and that is called PvE.
It does nothing when players are not programmed AI.

Also, I am amused that this community always blaming SE for not providing tutorial when none of the MMORPG is offering that, ex. Guild War 2, and even those fast food Korean MMOs.
That is not the issue of why Feast got nuked.
A lot of time players also brings up Adrenaline Rush TV as example to support their idea of SE cares of JP more than EN and ignore the fact of Japanese gaming culture never associate with player vs players.
Most of their MMO rarely have player vs player aspect.
The sole reason that program exist is to encourage Japanese players to participate in Player vs Player and once they see the population rise and stabilized, that program stopped (last updated is back to 2018, almost 5 years ago).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Divinemights

What is the point of that?
All the illustrations listed by you are nevertheless fighting against programmed AI and that is called PvE.
It does nothing when players are not programmed AI.

---

Fun fact, most tutorials are against AI, from fighting games to fps's, so this isn't anything new. Take the Hall of Novice, drop it into a Feast or Crystal Conflict arena, and boom, you have a player who now knows the basics and won't get roflstomped their first 50 games. Feast in general is fairly complex compared to the rest of FFXIV content, even compared to some end game raids, due to how unpredictable and dynamic the encounters in Feast can be. So asking for a single leg up to help users integrate into PVP isn't a large request when there are even tutorials in game for something as simple as Triple Triad or Chocobo Racing. Just because some other games don't do it, doesn't mean it can't be done here.

Despite the Adrenaline Rush last being updated 3years 7months* ago(which is accurate considering almost nothing with Feast has changed since then), the fact that it exists shows more involvement SE has with the JP PVP community for one reason or another. It's a running gag that nothing changes unless it appears on the JP forums because well, for the most part it's true. SE having a stronger connection with the PVP communities across all regions, assigning personal to be the leads of those communities, and having meaningful, constant, communications with those leads for them to feed that information back to SE headquarters would serve only to improve the game mode for the better. This isn't a huge thing to ask for, and the small steps here and there would help strengthen what is arguably the weakest part of FFXIV when looked at from the perspective of an MMO, lackluster PVP.

Feast had it's high point in Stormblood it was talk about being an Esports game and stuff back then they also had a Feast tournament back at the Fanfest in Paris. Sadly Feast got old and i dont know anyone who actually enjoy the mode for what it is anymore.

Hopefully the PVP revamp will bring some life back into PVP in this game.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ixon

Fun fact, most tutorials are against AI, from fighting games to fps's, so this isn't anything new. .

---

Fun fact, most of AI programmed is for PvE only, in which, it is not player vs player.
Programmed AI is not going to try to los when its HP is low isn't it?
Programmed AI will not able teach you anything about situation awareness isn't it?
Fun fact, the only way you learn about PvP is to let other players face-rolling you and yet you still have to will to learn how it happen and try to overcome it.
Anything other than that is just crybabies.
This is not your elementary school where you still get a medal for being last place.

People from first three seasons don't even have a PvP guide like the following and they are usually now the successful bunch.
How did they do it?
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...uide/pvpguide/
Please stop shifting blames on a scapegoat.

Yeah and people always assuming every other gaming culture is going to be like NA gaming culture, unfortunately it is not.
The sole reason why Adrenaline Rush TV is there is because SE need to encourage Player vs Player to Japanese players.
In Japanese online gaming culture, they don't call PvP as Player vs Player, they are calling it as Player Killer and often organize groups to hunt down these player killers.
It is different gaming culture and Adrenaline Rush TV is dead because it has serviced its purpose: JP PvP community stabilized.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Divinemights

Programmed AI is not going to try to los when its HP is low isn't it?
Programmed AI will not able teach you anything about situation awareness isn't it?

---

I think you misunderstand what a tutorial is for because the items you mentioned go a little past a basic tutorial. Tutorials are the basics, the 1,2,3's. Examples would be, "How do medals work? How do medal drops work? How to burst with the countdown quick chat? How to CC for a burst? How to use your pots and additionals?", all of these I could easily write a basic synopsis for equivalent to the Training Hall that would still be miles better than what we have now, which is nothing more than a website. Do you even know how to get there from in-game? It's a tiny button almost hidden away. The least they can do is make it a pop-up ad in your face everytime you enter The Wolves Den so there isn't any reason to NOT see it.

Yes, people from previous seasons didn't have guides, I don't see why it's a bad thing to want to have them now? This is some "back in my day" boomer thinking. There is absolutely nothing wrong with guiding the introduction and understanding of PVP for those completely new to it. I'd rather SE take a week to scramble up a basic tutorial to make unranked a little bit more tolerable than them do nothing at all. Not having a guide or tutorial doesn't automatically make you a better player.

That's great that it's a cultural thing, still better than what they did for the other regions. Do we really have to hunt "Player Killers" in NA and EU to get the same amount of attention?

The first signs of SE giving up on expanding the playerbase for Feast were;

1. They made it so you won't be reset back to zero at the beginning of a new season. You were just downgraded two tiers.
2. Only your highest recorded rating matters, not your current one.
3. Never adding rank decay.

This, to me, was the developers going "all right, let's cater to the small dedicated playerbase that exist and eventually develop a new mode where healer stress doesn't exist".

As for the seasonal rewards, I think they should have been percentage based rather than a fixed amount. Instead of top 100 only getting the rewards, it should've been top 20% of all players. More people playing, more people having a better shot at getting the reward. 100 players would have been the minimum but if the percentage exceeded 100, more people would get it. Unranked players would be ignored for determining the top percentage of players.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by OskarXCI

1. They made it so you won't be reset back to zero at the beginning of a new season. You were just downgraded two tiers.
2. Only your highest recorded rating matters, not your current one.
3. Never adding rank decay.

---

1. Without skill based matchmaking, this was the best move they could make to limit how many previous Diamond level player would be teamed up against brand new players in the next season. Imagine people queueing up for the first time and getting demolished their first 100 games because they have to go against previous top100's. Was it perfect? Not a chance. Hopefully the "skill based matchmaking" they mentioned will help fix this.
2. Agree and disagree. It being the highest helps promote people to queue even if they are on a loss streak, which makes queues pop more. This can be both a good or bad thing imo.
3. This wouldn't fix anything. The players who stop queueing because they are "safe" would still only queue the bare minimum amount, and that would not affect the board as much as people think it would.

Top 20% sounds exploitable. Just have your FC queue for one ranked game so the margin for the top 20% gets wider and wider till you only need gold to make it, but I do think it should be updated. I am still of the mindset that they are getting rid of the "top" thing and just making it achievement based per season, but we will have to wait and see.

I got a few more.

4. Them removing pre-season periods. As soon as one season end, the next one begin. This, combined with Feast's reputation of "if you aren't ready to no-life it at the start of the season, don't bother", made it so people would just choose to do the new PvE content that just came out instead of doing the new season. They really need to implement a system so they can start and end seasons without having to update the client. And then have the seasons begin 1-2 weeks apart from each other. Triple Triad tournaments is not depending in client updates. PvP shouldn't either.
5. Never adding more stuff to the wolf collar vendor.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ixon

1. Without skill based matchmaking, this was the best move they could make to limit how many previous Diamond level player would be teamed up against brand new players in the next season. Imagine people queueing up for the first time and getting demolished their first 100 games because they have to go against previous top100's. Was it perfect? Not a chance. Hopefully the "skill based matchmaking" they mentioned will help fix this.
2. Agree and disagree. It being the highest helps promote people to queue even if they are on a loss streak, which makes queues pop more. This can be both a good or bad thing imo.
3. This wouldn't fix anything. The players who stop queueing because they are "safe" would still only queue the bare minimum amount, and that would not affect the board as much as people think it would.

Top 20% sounds exploitable. Just have your FC queue for one ranked game so the margin for the top 20% gets wider and wider till you only need gold to make it, but I do think it should be updated. I am still of the mindset that they are getting rid of the "top" thing and just making it achievement based per season, but we will have to wait and see.

---

1. Yeah, matches will be more even at lower tiers but it also causes the queues for lower tiers to die sooner. This would work better if there was something to incentivize people to populate the lower tiers.
3. It depends on how strict you make it and what the minimum amount actually is. It can be more punishing at higher tiers.

- Unranked players would ignored. But it doesn't have to be 20% of players in bronze tier or better. Make it 15% of silver tier players or better.

FF14's PvP will never be successful so long as it runs on this engine. Why play something with excessive built in lag when you can just go play a better game? I played some at the start of ShB, it was quite dead but at least I got a few matches in. I normally thrive off success and that combined with setting my own goals allows me to often ignore unfavorable game mechanics. However, I got a 80% winrate with ease and yet it still felt rubbish to play, so I just returned to WoW for my MMORPG PvP fix. WoW's got horrible balancing but at least the engine doesn't make me feel like I have 600 ms at all times.

Lag is and will always be the worst hype killer in a PvP game and thus no actual skilled player is going to PvP in a game that's literally built around it.

As for the design of the game mode, I greatly dislike the Limit Break system in PvP. If I am a good healer, I want the enemy team to be punished for it. I want them to feel miserable about their inability to stop me from keeping my team alive. Thus I generally prefer a last man standing style. I recall complaining about melee LB close to oneshotting the ranged dps and I stand firm that this is still horrible design, but it's something that can be shrugged off and isn't of import for 99% of the playerbase as they don't aim to be 'the best' anyway. Lag, on the other hand is a universal buzzkill and it shows.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Ixon

I think you misunderstand what a tutorial is for because the items you mentioned go a little past a basic tutorial.

---

Yea, we are definitely not on the same page because my response is to OP's statement, especially section bold by him

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by PotatoTree

2. There was NO attempt to help new players at all. There are tutorials for PvE, chocobo racing, triple triad, and even Verminion, tutorials that actually prevent you from even playing the game until you complete it, yet there is no tutorial for the Feast. You have new players joining a match, getting rofl-stomped and bm'd cause they are not performing their duty in a team based competitive mode, and never playing again. I know it would be hard to program, but a mode full of Trust NPCs where you can help practice PvP in would help a huge amount. Maybe training slots can be filled with these bots if there aren't enough people queueing for that mode?

---

Also, SE already provide official guides after Heavensward and by the Stormblood their PvP guide is already as detailed as following
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...uide/pvpguide/
These are probably most detailed offical PvP guides offered in MMORPG genre, yes, even better than Blizzard. (WoW players using IcyVein or WoW head for PvP guides nowadays)
I don't see how SE can do any better job when new players don't even bother to use this information to begin with.
Each PvP action is also comes with detailed explanation and it is new players choose not to pay attention.

Tutorial guide is definitely not an issue of why Feast failed, it is the rate matching system.
Feast was more active and more populated before the rate matching system.
No one willing to wait for 20 to 30 mins for a match.
Enforced a rate match system before PvP population stabilized and lack of rank decay is what toxoided Feast and caused its own downfall