Problems I'd like to see addressed in PvP

To preface this post, I don't really come to the main forums often - or any FFXIV social for that matter. But I just wanted to put some things to writing. You all are welcome to disregard and have this topic buried into obscurity :) Especially if the things I discuss have been talked to death already.

Been spending the last several months farming Frontlines for win achievements, and I've narrowed down exactly what makes the PvP in this game... not fun? At least for me anyway.

1) The elephant in the room - the server validation is pretty awful. While I don't think this is new for FFXIV, the snappy, fast paced combat of this EW revamp really highlights how bad things can be. Hitting purify and then either a) having your crowd control be cleansed, but you're immediately hit with a new crowd control before your 5 second immunity goes into effect, or b) hitting cleanse on a crowd control that the server determined had already fallen off, so now you don't get immunity even though you were clearly still affected on your end.
2) To piggyback off the first issue - the validation for when effects/damage take place is all over the place. I will often see a DRG land on my character, hear the sound effect from the attack, and my first response will be to hit my self heal to deal with the damage. Only... for the heal to go off BEFORE the DRG's damage applies to my character. The DRK Eventide is equally awful, hitting me a full 3 seconds after Guard has been applied.
3) And the final, and most bothersome of them all: The Animation Lock. The entire reason the DRK meta exists right now is a result of this one issue. When you're being 'pulled' or 'pushed' with an effect, there's a short (0.5-1.5s) animation lock that occurs to relocate your character to where the game thinks you should be. The only problem is that you're not immune to damage or crowd control during this effect. And you can be pulled/pushed again during this lock. Which just makes it an un-counterable crowd control effect. Not all that problematic in crystal conflict, but a death sentence in Frontlines.

There's a lot of things I'd like to see them change: Diminishing returns on crowd control effects, bumping down the melee FL damage resist, a complete overhaul of battlehigh, limits to number of targets affected by aoe abilities, ect. ect. But I think the one thing that would help most of all - simply let us continue to move while being pushed/pulled.

Will any of this happen in 6.4? I doubt it. But a couple -1000 potency nerfs sure ain't going to fix the fundamental problems.

The animation locks on limit breaks are super frustrating. I wish SE valued gameplay over graphics.

General moves for Monk fall under the same category, have lost count of how many times a move has just not consented to being used because of reasons beyond comprehension. Overall, yeah, compared to many of its counterparts, FF14 suffers severely from trying to be fancy with animation without actually applying an appreciable difference in gameplay effect, in PvE environments it's something you can work around, but the more on point PvP is requiring players to be, the more noticeable the difference will be.

In all honesty, it's here more than anywhere where the frustration comes in. Not the damage potency, not the duration of cooldowns, not imbalanced classes (though the way some interact with the game's systems is definitely not evenly scaled), not even the map design. It's the general lack of consistent reactivity, even with good connections. A fancy animation ultimately achieves nothing versus actual gameplay impact, it might seem minor in the design board or even just from watching things, but in the heat of gameplay, it is a major oft overlooked component, especially since actions that are attempting to be weaved in often get lost in the process with some of them.

Glad someone said it I was beginning to think I was the only one

I just need certain classes to be more balanced, imo monk, dragoon, whm, abs a few others are a bit overturned. Also, yes to limiting CC spam/lock.

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Originally Posted by Novani

In all honesty, it's here more than anywhere where the frustration comes in. Not the damage potency, not the duration of cooldowns, not imbalanced classes (though the way some interact with the game's systems is definitely not evenly scaled), not even the map design. It's the general lack of consistent reactivity, even with good connections. A fancy animation ultimately achieves nothing versus actual gameplay impact, it might seem minor in the design board or even just from watching things, but in the heat of gameplay, it is a major oft overlooked component, especially since actions that are attempting to be weaved in often get lost in the process with some of them.

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You summed it up pretty well right here. Its not the balancing of the jobs that makes pvp frustrating right now.

Its the way pvp "Feels" when compared to games I've played in the past. This game mode has to be smooth and responsive, and right now... it uh.. isn't.

Definetely got most of the changes I've been pushing for, for awhile now. Theres a lot of potential in FFXIV pvp but I just can't see the developers putting any time or resources into it. They've made it clear over the years that they don't care about pvp with some of the nonsensical changes they make, or more specifically they Don't make.

To add on to this, They need to balance Front lines, and Crystaline conflict SEPERATELY. They're two completely different game modes, played in entirely different ways, but share the EXACT SAME balancing, excluding melee DR in front lines. Is it really that hard for them to change potencies of skills between modes?

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Originally Posted by Archeron

Definetely got most of the changes I've been pushing for, for awhile now. Theres a lot of potential in FFXIV pvp but I just can't see the developers putting any time or resources into it. They've made it clear over the years that they don't care about pvp with some of the nonsensical changes they make, or more specifically they Don't make.

To add on to this, They need to balance Front lines, and Crystaline conflict SEPERATELY. They're two completely different game modes, played in entirely different ways, but share the EXACT SAME balancing, excluding melee DR in front lines. Is it really that hard for them to change potencies of skills between modes?

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They actually do this. SMN gets a... I think its 20%? Damage reduction in Frontlines. There are others as well.

That being said, I don't think the fundamental problem with PVP in FFXIV is individual balancing of abilities. I think that there's a bigger issue with just responsiveness and timing of when things occur. You can tweak individual potencies for days and not make the game feel any better to play.

Here's a simple example: Why is it you can't just hit an ability button and automatically dismount? Why does being silenced keep you from dismounting? Mount/Dismount is considered a spell? What?

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Originally Posted by Rexxus

That being said, I don't think the fundamental problem with PVP in FFXIV is individual balancing of abilities. I think that there's a bigger issue with just responsiveness and timing of when things occur. You can tweak individual potencies for days and not make the game feel any better to play.

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The fundamental problem with PvP is this; Square Enix Doesn't care about the PvP community, its opinions, or the competitive scenes integrity. They're never going to give us the fast responsive servers people have been begging them for years to have. You can just scroll through these forums for proof of that, Or even the JP forums since thats all their team seems to take feedback from.

Job balancing is left as the second biggest issue with PvP. Salted/Shatter combo in frontlines is completely, and utterly broken. Games with a lot of DRK/DRG feel almost unplayable, completely boring, and not fun to play. But if you nerf or change the abilities it will render them broken, or unplayable in CC. This is why they NEED to balance these game modes seperately.

The last biggest issue FFXIV PvP has, at least as far as frontlines is concerned is the maps in general. Seal rock is completely unbalanced, especially for the North spawn. Borderland Ruins played too much like a PvE map, and didn't incentivize people to play defensive. Seal Rock, and Onsal are too RNG heavy. Don't get me wrong I absolutely love Onsal out of all of our maps, but the spawning of the end game nodes is absolutely ridiculous. The winning team should be the team that played the best by holding objectives and killing the other teams, not by whoever got the random 3 lucky S nodes in their spawn area in the last 3 minutes of the game.

And yes I'm aware they're rebalancing shatter, (The changes sound like it'll make it worse than it currently is. We'll see about that in 6.4) and Borderland ruins is probably being shot in the back of the head never to be seen again, just like Astralagos. All we can do is throw temper tantrums on their forums, Unsub, and whine at the devs on twitter until they decide its time to implement more nonsensical changes made with our feedback not in mind.

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Originally Posted by Archeron

The fundamental problem with PvP is this; Square Enix Doesn't care about the PvP community, its opinions, or the competitive scenes integrity. They're never going to give us the fast responsive servers people have been begging them for years to have. You can just scroll through these forums for proof of that, Or even the JP forums since thats all their team seems to take feedback from.

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You pretty much hit the nail on the head. The FFXIV team doesn't care about cleaning up PvP and for all of Yoshi P's bluster about "You can go play other games!" they still want you to go in and play PvP by using a battle pass to enforce it.

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Originally Posted by Archeron

The fundamental problem with PvP is this; Square Enix Doesn't care about the PvP community, its opinions, or the competitive scenes integrity.

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I think this is a bit defeatist :) Made the topic in the hopes of actually building some kind of meaningful discussion - even if the powers that be will never actually see it.

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Originally Posted by Archeron

Job balancing is left as the second biggest issue with PvP. Salted/Shatter combo in frontlines is completely, and utterly broken. Games with a lot of DRK/DRG feel almost unplayable, completely boring, and not fun to play.

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As I mentioned in my initial post, I don't really think the problem with DRK/DRG is a job imbalance, per se. The animation locking of the salted pull is at the crux of the problem. You could probably simulate the same effect with enough SMN's timing their Mountain Busters, or heaven forbid a 4-DNC team. I've actually seen some pretty wacky comps pop up. (The 4-SAM squad was the most terrifying. Would always make sure they were staggering their Chitens so it was *never* safe to AOE on their kill squad)

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Originally Posted by Archeron

The last biggest issue FFXIV PvP has, at least as far as frontlines is concerned is the maps in general. Seal rock is completely unbalanced, especially for the North spawn. Borderland Ruins played too much like a PvE map, and didn't incentivize people to play defensive. Seal Rock, and Onsal are too RNG heavy. Don't get me wrong I absolutely love Onsal out of all of our maps, but the spawning of the end game nodes is absolutely ridiculous. The winning team should be the team that played the best by holding objectives and killing the other teams, not by whoever got the random 3 lucky S nodes in their spawn area in the last 3 minutes of the game.

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I disagree with a LOT of this. The RNG nature of Seal Rock and Onsal are my favorite elements of those maps. Trying to get 24-people to stay mobile and not get bogged down with conflicts is the #1 appeal of Frontlines as a game mode. The matches are never over. Shatter as it exists right now can be effectively over in the first 5 minutes of the match. Once one team is 400 or so points ahead, you can't really hope to make a comeback at that point. But you'll have to sit in there for another 10 minutes anyway. That feels terrible :/ (The main reason for this is the point distribution on kills/deaths. 10/-5 kill/death means that if you are hoping to 'shave' points from the lead team, you have to kill twice as many of them as you lose in a push just to break even. They aren't actually fixing that issue in 6.4, but they are going to make the ice more randomized in their location so there may be possibilities for come-backs, which is nice.)

I'd take a map where a dominating team has an RNG chance of losing at the end, over a map where a losing team has no chance at recovery at all.

But that may just be me :)

This is not about just snapping your fingers and getting "more responsive servers", the problem is how the system works and is coded behind. If everything was instant like crowd control abilities, you'd have a lot less people complaining already. What has animation delays is damage application, even though to make it less intuitive, the snapshot still happens at skill activation. It's especially noticeable on LBs, but I guess I'm the weirdo here that actually likes the delay to foster some last minute heal saves, skill play, etc, which also can mitigate the power of LBs like marksman.

However, salted earth annoys everybody for the simple reason that it's the only crowd control that doesn't happen at activation, but waits for the animation delay so you get a double punishment, the draw in, then the crowd control debuff.

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Originally Posted by JamieRose

You pretty much hit the nail on the head. The FFXIV doesn't care about cleaning up PvP and for all of Yoshi P's bluster about "You can go play other games!" they still want you to go in and play PvP by using a battle pass to enforce it.

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The battle pass point hold little water especially when you have 4 months to complete it (or get to rank 25 as many do). I took a 3 month break from the game at one point came back and still had 30+ days to finish.

I think it's obvious and has been for years that PVP isn't a main focus in this game. Anyone who thinks otherwise has deluded themselves. Best to go to another game if pvp is your focus/want

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Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer

The battle pass point hold little water especially when you have 4 months to complete it (or get to rank 25 as many do). I took a 3 month break from the game at one point came back and still had 30+ days to finish.

I think it's obvious and has been for years that PVP isn't a main focus in this game. Anyone who thinks otherwise has deluded themselves. Best to go to another game if pvp is your focus/want

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Yeah, I've never understood even calling it a 'Battle Pass'. You can get the reward in a weekend if you are in it for just the reward, and you can do it over the multiple months if you want to be more measured. The idea that purely cosmetic / collectables that have no gameplay effect require you play a mode of the game is not a negative. It's like... if you think it's a Battle Pass to get a mount from a Series, why should I have to do content to get new mounts from Savages? What's the point of locking anything behind accomplishments?

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Originally Posted by Rexxus

I disagree with a LOT of this. The RNG nature of Seal Rock and Onsal are my favorite elements of those maps. Trying to get 24-people to stay mobile and not get bogged down with conflicts is the #1 appeal of Frontlines as a game mode. The matches are never over. Shatter as it exists right now can be effectively over in the first 5 minutes of the match. Once one team is 400 or so points ahead, you can't really hope to make a comeback at that point.

I'd take a map where a dominating team has an RNG chance of losing at the end, over a map where a losing team has no chance at recovery at all.

But that may just be me :)

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I disagree with shatter. There is plenty of oppurtunity for comeback in the last 10 minutes of the game. Keep in mind that getting wiped literally costs your team hundreds of points, and ties your team down and prevents you from attacking nodes. I've had countless games where both teams shut down the dominant DRK heavy premade teams on shatter by just locking them into combat. Of course this doesn't work if both your teams are just feeding them kills, rather then killing them.

The new map for shatter also raises more problems then it does solutions. Nodes will now respawn so they can be captured again. This just sounds like seal rock 2.0 to me, but I leave my judgement until the map is out and we've played it enough to complain on the forums until 6.5 about it.

I'd understand if you said the RNG on Onsal was fun, because sometimes it can be. But most of the time, It's not. Is there anything rewarding about working together as a team, if in the last 3 minutes of the game all of your hardwork is completely invalidated by X team getting all of the S nodes on their doorstep?

Could they fix the RNG so that it *might* be more fun, or give the last place team a fighting chance if they're down a lot of points? Maybe. But in the instances where the 2nd place team, or even the first place team are just handed free wins and S nodes at their doorsteps - That's not fun. That's bad game design, and defeats the purpose of a competitive game mode.

Honestly I want them to put new maps out that prioritize capturing, holding, and defending points. Not PvE "Whack the pinata for points" type nonsense. Turn borderland ruins into a king of the hill map, knock the tower down, and give teams the option of holding the middle, or capturing/holding bases. How about a Battlehigh free pure deathmatch where points are only gained through your team KOing other players - Everyone complains about their team NOT following the objective, so why not?