New Series pass...

and now population for ranked skyrocketed, isn't that interesting?
maybe a more frequent series pass may be needed to keep CC afloat?

I think it helps that there's three decent rewards this time too, rather than just two.

They need to do something about the trophy crystals, though.

agreed 100% crystal shop needs much more.

All the new Crystal rewards are just recolors from 2.0. Thats how little pvp matters.

If they put anything rewarding for Ranked beyond what they have now, people would complain the rewards they want require effort than passively gaining EXP.

as i said long ago in a post about this whole thing: By taking away a need to do Ranked they eliminated true "fomo" of PVP but also doomed it to being not desirable to be ran at a competitive level. That and they also eliminated Win trading by removing the ability to make a team of people you can properly coordinate with on CDs and abilities.

Face it: PVP since it's inception in 14 has and always will be an afterthought compared to RPers and PVE players.

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Originally Posted by Towa-Musa

and now population for ranked skyrocketed, isn't that interesting?
maybe a more frequent series pass may be needed to keep CC afloat?

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I somewhat disagree. I haven't seen a single difference with other seasons, or at least the last ones. It's just the beginning. I'm pretty sure it'll go back to dormant once most of the top players have reached crystal.

The crystal series rewards have nothing to do with ranked, since one doesnt need to queue ranked to get them.

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Originally Posted by Parthmakeo

Face it: PVP since it's inception in 14 has and always will be an afterthought compared to RPers and PVE players.

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I don't think it's an afterthought anymore considering the resources that have been poured into that whole rework. And it's even extremely successful on the casual mode, something that people constantly conveniently forget. That mode is the real winner.

Maybe they should just merge ranked into casual with hidden elo behind, so that you still get paired with people of similar skill, without turning into a massive competition with leagues and ladders that would turn off the casual players that make the mode. Then you only display the top 100 if you want to keep the top 100 titles and frames going and the competition at the top level.

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Originally Posted by Valence

I somewhat disagree. I haven't seen a single difference with other seasons, or at least the last ones. It's just the beginning. I'm pretty sure it'll go back to dormant once most of the top players have reached crystal.

The crystal series rewards have nothing to do with ranked, since one doesnt need to queue ranked to get them.

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i have been getting matches nonstop on my alt, was using CC to grind out the new armor XD

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Originally Posted by Araxes

All the new Crystal rewards are just recolors from 2.0. Thats how little pvp matters.

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i did not know that.

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Originally Posted by Araxes

All the new Crystal rewards are just recolors from 2.0. Thats how little pvp matters.

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don't mind the recolors they all look nice
its t9 gear with updated textures and different dye tables and LotA gear which has never had a dyable option till now

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Originally Posted by Parthmakeo

If they put anything rewarding for Ranked beyond what they have now, people would complain the rewards they want require effort than passively gaining EXP.

as i said long ago in a post about this whole thing: By taking away a need to do Ranked they eliminated true "fomo" of PVP but also doomed it to being not desirable to be ran at a competitive level. That and they also eliminated Win trading by removing the ability to make a team of people you can properly coordinate with on CDs and abilities.

Face it: PVP since it's inception in 14 has and always will be an afterthought compared to RPers and PVE players.

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They've just put something that people might deem less desirable as a reward now, namely a frame.

And no, PvP is clearly not an afterthought when they've literally implemented so many changes people have been wanting in PvE forever (especially healers) in PvP, in the exact form that people want it. It feels more like there is a disconnect between players and devs on so many things at times.

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Originally Posted by Towa-Musa

and now population for ranked skyrocketed, isn't that interesting?
maybe a more frequent series pass may be needed to keep CC afloat?

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Correlation isn't causation and an early rise of player count does nothing about mid- to late season queues. Nothing is at stake, therefore high-end PvPers also have no reason to seriously hone their craft either.

An initial rush of players happened every single season even before Crystalline Conflict - it is retaining a healthy player count beyond this that both Feast and CC ranked fail to do, for almost completely separate reasons.

The Series Pass just happens to exist and has no actual bearing on Ranked.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Correlation isn't causation and an early rise of player count does nothing about mid- to late season queues. Nothing is at stake, therefore high-end PvPers also have no reason to seriously hone their craft either.

An initial rush of players happened every single season even before Crystalline Conflict - it is retaining a healthy player count beyond this that both Feast and CC ranked fail to do, for almost completely separate reasons.

The Series Pass just happens to exist and has no actual bearing on Ranked.

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pretty sure correlation is causation buddy, i have been getting instant ques for the last couple of days and the fact that it comes right after the new series pass proves that. Ranked players wanted a solution to the population issue and this would fix it.

They should at the very least make titles for multi-top 100 finishes if they want to be lazy about the rewards.

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Originally Posted by Towa-Musa

pretty sure correlation is causation buddy, i have been getting instant ques for the last couple of days and the fact that it comes right after the new series pass proves that. Ranked players wanted a solution to the population issue and this would fix it.

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1.) There are two seasons per series cycle. If correlation is causation according to you (also please don't call me "buddy") explain to me the initial surge of players on a fresh season drop when people start with reduced rank and climb back up only to park it later down the line again at Plat/Diamond/Crystal and then proceed to not play until next season, even without a new series pass.

2.) The initial surge of players is great, however once again: the problem is player retention AFTER the initial player surge, which has dropped sharply past CC season 1.

3.) You completely fail to address the "nothing is at stake, therefore high-end pvpers also have no reason to seriously hone their craft" a.k.a. lessened quality of games in the highest brackets, which we are supposed to magically enjoy somehow.

And I know I have been talking about it Ad Nauseam, but seriously - if my goal is to farm the battle pass, why would I play Ranked if I can just go into casual for easier games and none of the stress? Some small extra amount of Trophy Crystals and a for the 4th time now re-used Tier portrait is not an actual reason to play Ranked. Quality games would be one, but where are the people putting in effort for quality games?

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Originally Posted by Towa-Musa

pretty sure correlation is causation buddy, i have been getting instant ques for the last couple of days and the fact that it comes right after the new series pass proves that. Ranked players wanted a solution to the population issue and this would fix it.

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Are you forgetting that this is the start of a new ranked season, coinciding with the release of a major patch?

New ranked seasons always have a surge of activity at the start. Combine this with the large influx of players coming back for the new patch, and the likelihood of more players queueing up for ranked increases. Obviously a new Series helps as well, but it's hardly the sole reason why you're getting instant queues right now.

You also have to keep in mind that even if they were to do new Series more often (for example, one per season), they wouldn't suddenly double the amount of resources spent on rewards. You'd just see more Series with overall "meh" rewards like the Series 2 dragon mount.

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Originally Posted by Nezerius

Are you forgetting that this is the start of a new ranked season, coinciding with the release of a major patch?

New ranked seasons always have a surge of activity at the start. Combine this with the large influx of players coming back for the new patch, and the likelihood of more players queueing up for ranked increases. Obviously a new Series helps as well, but it's hardly the sole reason why you're getting instant queues right now.

You also have to keep in mind that even if they were to do new Series more often (for example, one per season), they wouldn't suddenly double the amount of resources spent on rewards. You'd just see more Series with overall "meh" rewards like the Series 2 dragon mount.

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You.... literally did nothing to disprove my point...

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

1.) There are two seasons per series cycle. If correlation is causation according to you (also please don't call me "buddy") explain to me the initial surge of players on a fresh season drop when people start with reduced rank and climb back up only to park it later down the line again at Plat/Diamond/Crystal and then proceed to not play until next season, even without a new series pass.

2.) The initial surge of players is great, however once again: the problem is player retention AFTER the initial player surge, which has dropped sharply past CC season 1.

3.) You completely fail to address the "nothing is at stake, therefore high-end pvpers also have no reason to seriously hone their craft" a.k.a. lessened quality of games in the highest brackets, which we are supposed to magically enjoy somehow.

And I know I have been talking about it Ad Nauseam, but seriously - if my goal is to farm the battle pass, why would I play Ranked if I can just go into casual for easier games and none of the stress? Some small extra amount of Trophy Crystals and a for the 4th time now re-used Tier portrait is not an actual reason to play Ranked. Quality games would be one, but where are the people putting in effort for quality games?

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So? you still got the player population, the rest is mostly a community problem.

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Originally Posted by Towa-Musa

So? you still got the player population, the rest is mostly a community problem.

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...for a Season to be more than an initial farce it needs player retention to be successful. Having the player population for 2-3 weeks out of maybe 8-9 is not a good thing.

This is done by incentivising players of all skill levels to continue either by improving the rewards of individual skill tiers (bronze, silver, gold, plat, etc) with a reward that is unique to Ranked (i.e. a currency that isn't trophy crystals), which enables many skill tiers to continue playing rather than dying off due to lack of incentivisation.

Like come on Towa, you can't be "this" ignorant about what the mode needs from the developer's side to stay successful? You are saying it is a community problem - we are literally organising times for everyone to queue up and have hosted events in the past to encourage queue pops.

Its fine they just have to have a new mount and armor every 2 weeks and this activity keeps up :p

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

...for a Season to be more than an initial farce it needs player retention to be successful. Having the player population for 2-3 weeks out of maybe 8-9 is not a good thing.

This is done by incentivising players of all skill levels to continue either by improving the rewards of individual skill tiers (bronze, silver, gold, plat, etc) with a reward that is unique to Ranked (i.e. a currency that isn't trophy crystals), which enables many skill tiers to continue playing rather than dying off due to lack of incentivisation.

Like come on Towa, you can't be "this" ignorant about what the mode needs from the developer's side to stay successful? You are saying it is a community problem - we are literally organising times for everyone to queue up and have hosted events in the past to encourage queue pops.

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Dude if it aint fun nobody will play it, if a new series pass every 2 months instead of 4 is not enough then maybe its the community just not being interested.

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Originally Posted by Towa-Musa

Dude if it aint fun nobody will play it, if a new series pass every 2 months instead of 4 is not enough then maybe its the community just not being interested.

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Dude how high on glue are you?

The mode is objectively speaking fun, the frequency of Casual queue is a massive testament to this. If it isn't fun for you, tough I guess but the speed of queues speak for themselves.

Ranked is literally Casual but supposedly with better rewards for the effort you put in, if information like this doesn't reach you when served on a silver platter then nothing will.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Dude how high on glue are you?

The mode is objectively speaking fun, the frequency of Casual queue is a massive testament to this. If it isn't fun for you, tough I guess but the speed of queues speak for themselves.

Ranked is literally Casual but supposedly with better rewards for the effort you put in, if information like this doesn't reach you when served on a silver platter then nothing will.

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How high on glue are YOU?!

1. Fun is subjective and not everybody will enjoy ranked like you do.

2. If nobody wants to bother with ranked without there being incentive then its just not worth playing

3. they still have yet to bring rival wings to roulettes so we will continue to suffer.

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Originally Posted by Towa-Musa

How high on glue are YOU?!

1. Fun is subjective and not everybody will enjoy ranked like you do.

2. If nobody wants to bother with ranked without there being incentive then its just not worth playing

3. they still have yet to bring rival wings to roulettes so we will continue to suffer.

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1.) specifically BECAUSE fun is subjective and casual queue being highly frequented even during off hours it gains to say that Crystalline Conflict is not a mode that suffers from how it is played, it is Ranked that has completely meaningless incentive and therefore struggles to justify the existence past the initial rush, like why even have seasons at this point if you get nothing meaningful out of it?

2.) "If nobody wants to do and invest time in X because there is nothing to gain from it people won't do it because it is not worth their time" - holy shoot, you finally got it! It's almost like the identical mode with less restrictions and same relevant rewards (Trophy Crystals via Battle Pass) outshines the mode with increased restrictions, same boring currency and mediocre-to-terrible Framer Kits is not enough for people to do ranked!

3.) Off-topic, but 100% agree, Rival Wings Daily Challenge is massively needed.

I know the elitist gatekeeping PvPers will hate it but the punishment for losing ranked matches needs to be removed if you want to stay popular past the first week.

It's the only content in the game where losing punishes you by actively pushing back potentially hours of progress, making you feel like you're wasting your time. The only thing that comes close is dying in Eureka/Bozja and we all know how popular that was.

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Originally Posted by Towa-Musa

You.... literally did nothing to disprove my point...

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Your point being the implication that the surge in activity is solely due to the start of a new Series. My point being that this surge of activity exists with the start of every PvP season, regardless of a new Series being released.

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Originally Posted by Towa-Musa

Dude if it aint fun nobody will play it, if a new series pass every 2 months instead of 4 is not enough then maybe its the community just not being interested.

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Once more, I'd like to point out that doubling the amount of Series doesn't mean SE will double the amount of resources spent on designing rewards. You would just end up with more Series that have simple recolours, or very basic mounts.

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Originally Posted by NellMoshroca

I know the elitist gatekeeping PvPers will hate it but the punishment for losing ranked matches needs to be removed if you want to stay popular past the first week.

It's the only content in the game where losing punishes you by actively pushing back potentially hours of progress, making you feel like you're wasting your time. The only thing that comes close is dying in Eureka/Bozja and we all know how popular that was.

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To be fair - the previous Rating system we had was a bit like this.

It still let you derank if you played "exceptionally" bad or had exceptionally bad luck with your team, but generally speaking:

Win was on average +25 rating.
Loss in Bronze was -5.
Loss in Silver was -10.
Loss in Gold was -15.
Loss in Plat was -20.
Loss in Diamond was -25.

So you had to have like a sub 17% winrate to stay hardstuck in Bronze. It still let you de-rank, but it wasn't as brutal and linear as the Riser + star system and scaled with your current tier. It also was significantly better at matching players together.

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Originally Posted by NellMoshroca

I know the elitist gatekeeping PvPers will hate it but the punishment for losing ranked matches needs to be removed if you want to stay popular past the first week.

It's the only content in the game where losing punishes you by actively pushing back potentially hours of progress, making you feel like you're wasting your time. The only thing that comes close is dying in Eureka/Bozja and we all know how popular that was.

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If there's absolutely no penalty for losses, then the top competition simply becomes who can play the most while retaining somewhat reasonable winrate (It already is a bit like that until the highest skill tier or two). I do agree that the current system below the top 100 contesting would greatly benefit from major overhaul on top of adding worthwhile rewards. I don't mind people getting Crystal if they put in the hours, even if they aren't the strongest players, we had some of that in the first Season or two.

There's so many things they could do with PvP and there's been plenty of good suggestions from potential item rewards based on existing stuff (glowy Hellhound weapons as simple example) among other things, but I'm not sure if any of the feedback gets recieved from here.

As for progress lost, pushing Deep Dungeons Solo is probably even more time and soul draining than PvP as you have to go through massive amount of tedium before you even get to the meaty part. Still the current system could be a lot better.

To address once more the same elephant in the room, why does ranked need incentives to push players to play it? If fun and competition to similar skill levels is not enough of a factor, where are we going with this?

Food for thought.

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Originally Posted by Valence

To address once more the same elephant in the room, why does ranked need incentives to push players to play it? If fun and competition to similar skill levels is not enough of a factor, where are we going with this?

Food for thought.

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Valence, we've been over this a dozen times and the answers have been the same every time.

1.) The quality of games and the frequency of the queue in Ranked drastically drops beyond initial rushes.
2.) If nothing is at stake, nobody has reason to compete and try their best at higher levels, which is not what Ranked / Competitive should be like.
3.) Casual exists without any of the restrictions and basically the exact same rewards minus frame kits. The Tier rewards are hot garbage (crystal tier, diamond tier, etc.) and give no incentive over any other PvP mode.
4.) We are playing FFXIV, the game where people will sooner break their necks and have hissy fits than do content without rewards worth their time investment. Ranked time investment needs to be incentivised like anything else in the game.
5.) Everything else in the game is somehow allowed to have rewards unique to their respective content and whenever rewards are insufficient, the community is allowed to have an outbreak (example: Criterion rewards), except PvP Ranked somehow.

Note that I am not even talking about Top X Rank or Top X % rewards at this point, but rather the reward structure in general being paltry. Despite the rhetoric recited Ad Nauseam that FFXIV "is not a pvp-focused game", People invested into getting good at PvP should be rewarded for being good and investing their time into it. Right now, it doesn't do that.

That was ironic.

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Originally Posted by Nezerius

Your point being the implication that the surge in activity is solely due to the start of a new Series. My point being that this surge of activity exists with the start of every PvP season, regardless of a new Series being released.


Once more, I'd like to point out that doubling the amount of Series doesn't mean SE will double the amount of resources spent on designing rewards. You would just end up with more Series that have simple recolours, or very basic mounts.

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Alright, if you're so certain this won't work and im wrong. i wanna hear what your idea is... certainly it must be better then mine.

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Originally Posted by Valence

To address once more the same elephant in the room, why does ranked need incentives to push players to play it? If fun and competition to similar skill levels is not enough of a factor, where are we going with this?

Food for thought.

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another point i was trying to make.

I really wish they would make a glowy version of the Wolf collar weapons. They already look great, so glows with with a blood/darkness theme swirling around them would make them stand out. I mean, have you seen that dragoon spear?

they remade the grayhound armor and gave it to us so... i mean the possibility is not 0
@petite

This might be different with the people everyone else plays with, but I find about a good 80%-90% of the play population will only step foot in any kind of PvP content because of good series rewards. (Myself included). The mode is absolutely an afterthought, its horribly unbalanced in just about every way in all aspects of PvP (CC's, health, damage modifiers, defense modifiers, ability damage) The maps to play are all either just made long ago and the design was an afterthought, or they're new like Crystaline and suck anyway for a push the cart type map. Bugs and glitches that get reported for PvP take months to fix, and there's still literally no matchmaking system. You can't go in with a party, so yes, of course it's an afterthought.

If there weren't some fancy rewards at the "very end" of the series, I wouldn't be surprised if only about less than 10% of the entire population stuck around to "continuously play" PvP.

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Originally Posted by Hopebot

If there weren't some fancy rewards at the "very end" of the series, I wouldn't be surprised if only about less than 10% of the entire population stuck around to "continuously play" PvP.

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That's not really a valid argument because that fact goes for pretty much all FFXIV contents if there were no rewards. The only content that would remain would be night clubs /s.

In my honest opinion, PvP just doesn't have enough rewards and the ones we have are too easy/quick to get, hence why there's a big drop-off after 2 weeks.

Compare PvP to Savage where it takes the average PF raider around 16 weeks to get BiS and it's easy to see why Savage retains more players by default.

Personally, I wish we had:
-a new season-spanning currency (like the old Wolf Collars. 3 Collars if you end the season in Bronze all the way up to 8 for Crystal with Collar gear costing 12 Collars each);
-doubled Crystal Trophy token prices (so people don't get glamour gear so insanely quick)
-a new set of HD remastered glamour gear per 2 seasons (instead of every 4 seasons like currently);
-glowing weapons and chestpieces (The only glowing PvP weapons we've ever had date all the way back to ARR)
-more portrait kits (frames, badges, portrait poses, backgrounds);
-access to unique crafting reagents (so we can make gil in pvp in other ways than just desynthesizing pvp gear and buying orchestrion rolls);
-pvp-themed housing furnishings and chocobo bardings.

Rewards are what keep most people playing. I have barely ran any roulettes since I maxed my levels and only do so if my friends happen to ask me to join them.

I don't find stuff like solo PotD worth the time investment in reclearing the lower levels, so I don't do it. I don't really care about triple triad or fishing as they are a chore and the rewards are lacking, so I don't do them.

I occasionally play PvP even when I don't have anything to gain from it because despite its clunkiness I find it often fun. I would play a lot more if there was something interesting to gain.

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Originally Posted by Towa-Musa

Alright, if you're so certain this won't work and im wrong. i wanna hear what your idea is... certainly it must be better then mine.

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Not really sure what you're getting at here. I think you're completely missing the point that doubling the amount of Series doesn't double the amount of resources they'll use to design rewards.
What part of that "won't work", and why would I need to bring up an idea just because I'm pointing something out regarding yours?

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Originally Posted by Towa-Musa

they remade the grayhound armor and gave it to us so... i mean the possibility is not 0
@petite

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Are you talking about the recoloured version of the Hellhound Attire (top 100 reward from Feast season 5) that they used for the top 100 reward for Feast season 6?
If yes, you should know that's how they've handled the majority of the 20 Feast seasons. Only season 13 and 20 had absolutely unique rewards.

People don't play for fun, they play for rewards :'D