Was this a Blatant Lie?

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/BdiW5yU.jpeg[/IMG]

It is very clear to anyone that pvps that these changes were not play tested at all. I could tell by reading the HP increases before even playing the patch that it would not be enough considering the amount of potency increases across the board. That's not to mention how much more crowd control was added too. It would take at most 30 minutes of gameplay to see that Purify does not work, Astrologian is completely overtuned, and Black Mage is even weaker than before. A lot of these things were problems that were patched and fixed in the past. For some reason all those were forgotten and some things are in an even worse state than when they were patched long ago. I will list many issues with the current patch.

-Too much damage. As the main topic of this post, it really feels like the statement in the image above was either a blatant lie or just so off base because the devs did not play and test this enough. It feels even easier to get KOs with bursts. It feels like there is burst more often so it is easier to keep rolling when a KO happens. High end solo queue games feel really bad with this, I don't even want to know what high end Light Party gameplay will look like.

-Too much crowd control. They already addressed that Purify is broken (I think, I can't read Japanese and they didn't bother giving us an English translated explanation.) But that is only part of the issue. Purify only lasts 3 seconds now, making it feel way easier to be crowd controlled. The duration needs to be reverted. Monk and Black Mage lost a lot of crowd control, this was a good change. But why does Red Mage suddenly have a silence AND an OGCD stun? Vice of Thorns did not need to be a stun, it didn't even need to be a crowd control effect. We needed a major drop in crowd control abilities. This was something Overwatch changed and it made the game feel much better. This is something our game needs to fix too.

-Long animations with crowd control abilities feel terrible. It can be so easy to just walk away from some crowd control effects because the animation is so long. This is the case with both of Samurai's crowd control abilities and Warrior's Primal Rend. You use these abilities to set up more Damage but they will be out of range by the time the crowd control comes up.

-Setsugekka range going from 8y to 5y. This was something fixed in Feast as it was too easy to just walk away and cancel the Samurai's cast. It is even easier to do so now than it was during the Feast days. I tested this, using all three charges of Soten on someone who was sprinting away and every single time they were able to out run the Setsugekka cast. It needs to be reverted to 8y

Apologies, what I had written was too long and I needed to add more in a reply.

-Astrologian is way too strong. This was something that happened early on in Crystal Conflict and was patched and they were tuned to a more balanced level. This current iteration of Astrologian is even worse than that time when they needed to fix it before. It feels horrible to play against and it feels way too easy to climb with. This is something I experienced and tested myself. I was Gold 4 switching between every job for over 12 hours and I went Astrologian to see just how overpowered it really was and was able to get to Platinum in one map, less than an hour and a half. I have little experience with Astrologian.

-Black Mage is weaker than before. While losing all its crowd control capability was good, it seemed to have lost a lot of its damage as well. Casting is very hard to do in Crystal Conflict and having most of the Black Mage's damage tied to casts does not feel great, especially if you can die from a burst before the cast is even over. Why does Pictomancer get to switch between its instant cast and casting combos but Black Mage can't? Why does there need to be 4 ability cast combo chains for Black Mage? They could remove Fire and Blizzard and have it as 3 ability combos and it would feel much better and be able to dish out more damage.

-Reaper plays completely different now and requires too much team presence to have an impact. This one is a bit personal because this is my main job. Most of our damage is tied to the target having 50% or less HP and it is very hard to get them to that much HP without help from teammates. It is also very rare to see a highly stacked Plentiful Harvest, usually seeing only 4/5 stacks at max when it is time to use it off cooldown. It is already a minute cooldown and did not need to be hindered more by this patch. It also lost its Limit Break Regeneration aspect and did not need to lose its damage aspect too It is easy to avoid the skill as well because of the long animation. I think it should go from 8 stacks to 6 stacks maximum and it would feel a lot better.

I am sure I am forgetting things. I also had to rewrite this because this outdated forum website logged me out when I went to preview the post, so I am sure I lost some thoughts but I believe I got most of what was said and maybe even added more and cleaned it up a bit. I am very passionate about Crystal Conflict and FFXIV pvp and I hate seeing it treated so poorly and feeling like we are being lied to about the game mode so many enjoy and play exclusively. I signed up to these forums just to post this because I care too much to just complain to my fellow players and wanted to put it somewhere it can be read by devs. Though, I may need to google translate it and post in on the JP forums.

BLM's changes are severely disappointing. It was my favorite before and now it feels totally worthless. I was able to get some decent AOE damage, but it kinda feels like anyone else can do the AOE damage I'm doing while also being more effective in every other possible way. DRG feels similarly weaker.

I think they were very drastic with their changes...

While I personally feel that the crowd control wasn't the worst before, it was really rough as a melee, esp in frontlines. It's still just as bad as before (even despite my awareness of the purify changes) while my enjoyment has gone down a lot. And I play a lot of PVP! I'm sad.

Well said.

I agree. I have stopped the PvP climb I just couldn’t take it anymore. The changes are so bad. I don’t find it fun at all. It’s just a clunky mess. Bursting is just way too ridiculous now and Astro is OP. I’m with you about red mage too. Why do they get silence and a stun? I mean pictomancer has it too but they can’t do it back to back like red mage can.

I love PvP but yeah these changes have completely turned me off. No more ranked for me. I’ll wait to see what changes they make after the feedback they are getting. Even then I’m not sure.

I wish everyone luck in the PvP climb.

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Originally Posted by Vessy

BLM's changes are severely disappointing. It was my favorite before and now it feels totally worthless. I was able to get some decent AOE damage, but it kinda feels like anyone else can do the AOE damage I'm doing while also being more effective in every other possible way. DRG feels similarly weaker.

I think they were very drastic with their changes...

While I personally feel that the crowd control wasn't the worst before, it was really rough as a melee, esp in frontlines. It's still just as bad as before (even despite my awareness of the purify changes) while my enjoyment has gone down a lot. And I play a lot of PVP! I'm sad.

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Drg was probably the one job spared the. . .intelligence of the design team because they only added one ability that doesn’t at all fit with the burst flow but didn’t take anything away, so drg can just continue its pre 7.1 burst style.

Blackmage lost its phenomenal lb running bazooka style sadly. Firing off insta cast crowd nukes after a long day just felt so satisfying. That’s gone now. Single target pressure isn’t so bad, but that kinda defeats the purpose of blackmage in the first place.

Count your lucky stars. You COULD be throwing. . .6k fireballs like mnk hahaha

Similar issues in FL. More crowd control and hit detection throttled by animation lock is the main reason FL feels so strange IMO. And why they'd shorten Purify to 3s in an environment where that is also around the resolution time of some interactions doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

Completely agree, OP!

Everything feels a lot more direct and straightforward now to me. With everyone being stronger and consequently everyone dying faster I get the impression that the game mode has shifted much more towards "Just hit things hard and don't think too much about it". At least personally I experience it as having less room to outplay people or pull off difficult recoveries and escapes.
It's not impossible of course but now if a stun is cleansed you can count on even more players to follow up with their own than before. In many cases when you get hit by one you know you are essentially as good as dead. The first stun baits your unreasonably nerfed purify and leaves you defenseless while more CC rains on you.

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Originally Posted by SweetPete

I’m with you about red mage too. Why do they get silence and a stun? I mean pictomancer has it too but they can’t do it back to back like red mage can.

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RDM's changes are mind-boggling. Not only can you disable players twice in a row. You can now also hit right through their guard, which they will understandably pop after you already lowered their HP while they were CCed by you. Punish people and punish them even more when they try to stay alive because you just rendered their most important defensive tools useless.

And regarding PCT I wouldn't even be mad if they gave the job its old debuffs back (heavy and bind). Whereas silence and stun are of course incredibly powerful, heavy and bind still worked well enough with PCT's kit. Being able to immobilise a person you are bursting down from the back and keep them in one place was already an effective tool to allow your teammates to kill them. Even heavy fulfilled this purpose.
(In fact currently I feel as if before 7.1 I could enable more reliable kills for other teammates who finished my burst targets off because I had two immobilising debuffs, and not just one like now. So far, in my games silenced targets manage to run away more often while nobody is going after them and I just wasted my entire burst. That’s probably just a low-rank problem and better players would get much more out of silence than heavy. But it’s still frustrating.)

Asian Todd Howard lying? I don't believe it bro. Say it isn't so.

I rather waited 15-20min for one match in the past years, it was better than to play this what we have now.
You just can't play it seriously anymore, it is a 'fun minigame', I really think it is not bad as that. Just ranked mode shouldn't exist. It has no place with this kind of laggy gameplay.

https://i.imgur.com/VvM6kUS.png

Competitive PvP really died after 5.x for me personally already.

https://i.imgur.com/PrcJTTW.png

It is kinda sad what path the devs went with this game mode. The first thing PvP should be about is the "player" as it is in the name right, Player versus Player, it is about the skill of the player, it is not about trying to figure out the bottlenecks of your netcode.
You make PvP tournaments, but if you put those same very best players into solo queue, they will probably lose some games in bronze tier too - in the past that was unimaginable.
You kinda put PvP players in a mental cage, with a muzzle on, with hands tied behind their back - that is how I feel like when I play this game nowadays, I am more like a mere mortal watching the game unfold. You can't do sh!t anymore. There is no expression of player skill that really matters to a significant degree left. You are at the mercy of RNG and your teammates. If that was your plan over the years, then great job - you have done it! But I won't be playing this ranked mode anymore. It has lost any appeal. I happily did all Feast seasons top100, I did a few seasons in CC, but for what? People can just go afk in frontline to get their items now (and can't be kicked after 5min anyway, whatever)

Whoever made the trend change back then(picture below), couldn't have gotten it more wrong. The opposite is exactly what PvP players would have liked to keep. And with Stormblood and Shadowbringers you had the numbers and ex-WoW players who migrated anyway, who would have liked that kind of "complex" PvP.
But changing CC now would be a huge effort, because its about pushing the crystal and not team-deathmatch or medalsystem - the maps are too big for that. So it is a dead end.
Maybe a true arena mode should have been small team-deathmatch "The Fold" maps with healer healing and no recuperate spamming...

https://i.imgur.com/XciA9KL.png

I loved the fold. It was just carnage. No weather systems to dodge, no medals, no pushing the crystal. Just wallop your opponent. PVP now is 100% that horse drawing. 4.x was the best minus that goofy looking moogle arena.

I have to bump this post because it's so interesting to me how this post got so many upvotes. Perhaps it's just me who thinks this is brigading, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Do you know the average of the other posts on the first two pages, excluding this?
(5),(4),(7),(7),(11),(4),(6),(8),(7),(3),(7),(5),(2),(14),(1),(31),(3),(6),(1),(19),(1),(1),(1),(14),(0),(0),(8),(0),(45),(5),(15),(0),(1),(6),(6),(1),(0),(1),(7),(2): Average: 7.5

Who are you, Lief?

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Originally Posted by brancinaed

I have to bump this post because it's so interesting to me how this post got so many upvotes. Perhaps it's just me who thinks this is brigading, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Do you know the average of the other posts on the first two pages, excluding this?
(5),(4),(7),(7),(11),(4),(6),(8),(7),(3),(7),(5),(2),(14),(1),(31),(3),(6),(1),(19),(1),(1),(1),(14),(0),(0),(8),(0),(45),(5),(15),(0),(1),(6),(6),(1),(0),(1),(7),(2): Average: 7.5

Who are you, Lief?

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Okay, I'll bite. Why did you bump the post with the 2nd most upvotes rather than the one with the most upvotes?

It was posted in a few large PvP community Discords, which is absolutely what one should do, given most people do not check these forums.

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Originally Posted by brancinaed

I have to bump this post because it's so interesting to me how this post got so many upvotes. Perhaps it's just me who thinks this is brigading, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Do you know the average of the other posts on the first two pages, excluding this?
(5),(4),(7),(7),(11),(4),(6),(8),(7),(3),(7),(5),(2),(14),(1),(31),(3),(6),(1),(19),(1),(1),(1),(14),(0),(0),(8),(0),(45),(5),(15),(0),(1),(6),(6),(1),(0),(1),(7),(2): Average: 7.5

Who are you, Lief?

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pvp forum posters are so disconnected from the actual pvp community that even rank 1 players are met with a "who is this guy"

Not only rank 1 players, but literally a guy who ran an international tournament that Square Enix themselves has yet to do.

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Originally Posted by joansbones

pvp forum posters are so disconnected from the actual pvp community that even rank 1 players are met with a "who is this guy"

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That raises an interesting conundrum, doesn't it? Why do you suppose this is? What is the origin of the schism between the forums and "the actual PvP community" that leads to such ignorance? And why would a rank 1 player who clearly has deep insights into the mode not join the forums until Nov 2024?

Maybe the issue is the definition of "the actual PvP community"?

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

That raises an interesting conundrum, doesn't it? Why do you suppose this is? What is the origin of the schism between the forums and "the actual PvP community" that leads to such ignorance?

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Its because when the experienced and insightful players do come here to explain things, due to the echo chamber nature of these forums, their explanations and insights are met with willful ignorance where people have already decided that their own opinions are correct and work backwards to cherry pick facts to prove their ignorant point of view was the correct one all along.

For example you can go through these forums and see the types of posts where someone complains about getting 100 to 0'ed through guard by SMN and MCH LB, or killed by NIN/SAM without having the kuzishi debuff, and complain about how hacks and cheats are rampant. But when explained that this was actually caused by netcode snapshotting these effects before the player pressed Guard, or before the Kuzushi effect expired, these players will not view that as a valid answer and instead double down on how hacking/cheating is the problem, and the majority of forum posters will even agree with them.

After only so many times of experiencing this do the more experienced and insightful players write off these forums alltogether.

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Originally Posted by Sinstrel

Its because when the experienced and insightful players do come here to explain things, due to the echo chamber nature of these forums, their explanations and insights are met with willful ignorance where people have already decided that their own opinions are correct and work backwards to cherry pick facts to prove their ignorant point of view was the correct one all along.

For example you can go through these forums and see the types of posts where someone complains about getting 100 to 0'ed through guard by SMN and MCH LB, or killed by NIN/SAM without having the kuzishi debuff, and complain about how hacks and cheats are rampant. But when explained that this was actually caused by netcode snapshotting these effects before the player pressed Guard, or before the Kuzushi effect expired, these players will not view that as a valid answer and instead double down on how hacking/cheating is the problem, and the majority of forum posters will even agree with them.

After only so many times of experiencing this do the more experienced and insightful players write off these forums alltogether.

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This is manifestly untrue, as evidenced by the number of "experienced and insightful" players who have joined these forums within the last few months.

I agree with you that some of the tinfoil hat assertions one gets here are enough to make anyone give up on the place, but equally we are assured the devs do read these forums. I'd add that the signal-to-noise on these boards is far higher than the Discord echo chambers, which seem to be used as venues to point-and-laugh at the stupid, outsider PvPers (that they need to populate games), interspersed with dodgy gifs and anime. Maybe someone could provide a gif of the Smug Cloud from South Park?

Unfortunately, different PvP sub-communities have incompatible goals, thereby making it far more difficult to lobby for important changes. The new hit detection fiasco, for example, makes Frontline borderline unplayable. And we're likely stuck with it for 2-3 years. At least those who keep playing are.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

This is manifestly untrue, as evidenced by the number of "experienced and insightful" players who have joined these forums within the last few months.

I'd add that the signal-to-noise on these boards is far higher than the Discord echo chambers, which seem to be used as venues to point-and-laugh at the stupid, outsider PvPers (that they need to populate games), interspersed with dodgy gifs and anime. Maybe someone could provide a gif of the Smug Cloud from South Park?

Unfortunately, different PvP sub-communities have incompatible goals, thereby making it far more difficult to lobby for important changes. The new hit detection fiasco, for example, makes Frontline borderline unplayable. And we're likely stuck with it for 2-3 years. At least those who keep playing are.

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You're probably right, I just speak from my own experience and why I seldom post on these forums. I'm not part of any of the discords so I haven't got a clue whats going on on them to tell you otherwise. Or the latest PvP discord drama vs Forums drama. The last PvP discord I was part of was PvPaissa but theyve shut down years ago and consolodated their stuff somewhere else I beleive.

I have been on the forums more so in recent days because I've recently picked PvP up again and was thinking of sharing everything I knew in some guides but wanted to get an idea of how people were thinking about this game first and the pain points they experience.

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Originally Posted by Sinstrel

You're probably right, I just speak from my own experience and why I seldom post on these forums. I'm not part of any of the discords so I haven't got a clue whats going on on them to tell you otherwise. Or the latest PvP discord drama vs Forums drama. The last PvP discord I was part of was PvPaissa but theyve shut down years ago and consolodated their stuff somewhere else I beleive.

I have been on the forums more so in recent days because I've recently picked PvP up again and was thinking of sharing everything I knew in some guides but wanted to get an idea of how people were thinking about this game first and the pain points they experience.

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I'd be very interested in such guides. Your historical and technical knowledge of FF14 PvP is apparent in your posts.

Guides would be very appreciated, esp. on higher-level strategy. You can find good write-ups for foundations in discords but when it comes to advanced gameplay there's not much formalised information, esp. for people outside of discords. (And in my experience, within discord advanced knowledge is passed down via ongoing channels/chats and new people won't read a whole channel, esp. if the discord has been active for a long time. So if you miss a discussion or something has been discussed in the past long before you joined you'll probably not come across all that info.)
On youtube and icy veins you'll often find discussions of individual classes (and to their credit, some of these guides are very thorough and share advanced class-specific knowledge) but when it comes to general game awareness, playing together/common team strategies, gameplay optimisations, dos and don't at diamond/crystal levels, discussions of different team comps and their strengths/weaknesses and counters there isn't found as much on publicly available sites.
So, guides from veteran players on such things would be awesome.

the balance should add a pvp tab to their mainline guides for each job. Not because the balance is better or worse than other resources, but because its more likely for people to find it.

I don't like guides too much tbh.
The question is, what do you want to learn? How to play a situation perfectly or how to play a situation according to the teams capability? The way PvP is designed now, it is extremely punishing for one bad press of a button, you could be dead, and if you don't press you could still be dead just 2s later. So if you attempt to play it perfectly, you might not have the HP for it and your team might not have the time or awareness to react to it, because they are thinking about something else - the kinda meta gameplay that they are comfortable with, because they have done that for a few seasons now.
And in a sense it will be a self-fulling prophecy, as more people play according to those strategies, no matter if they are actually better or not.
But that is ranked play, even if you have great ideas, you have to dumb down or change your playstyle to play like your team plays. Especially now that the skill ceiling is so low, where I would lose more games in casual than crystal queue, you have to play like your teammates play. If they play bad, you have to play bad too, it will be better than dreaming about something better, because there is a higher chance you end up killing something at least then.
If I have to pick two things, its people being afraid to chase someone down to get a kill, because someone probably told them chasing is bad. It is often, but not rarely it is actually good.
And the other thing is AST, SAM, NIN LB probably, people don't see the buffs and either do not retreat when the enemy team has 30% dmg buff, attack the samurai with his LB up, or do not heal over 50% even with full MP. Often these mistakes cost the whole game - because someone doesn't want to leave the crystal for 10seconds.

If skill and awareness really should matter again, then developers need to split skills from cc/effects/chains etc. - it can't be that my mitigation skill is my best offensive skill, is my best crowdcontrol skill, is my best support skill. I can't even fill half of the crosshotbar in PvP, there aren't enough skills. Most jobs just have 7 job specific buttons. In PvE we can have like 3-4 times as much while playing ultimate...Are PvP player brains too small to press 4-5 more buttons, is it really too hard to balance? Do we really need to introduce new max level PvE skills every expansion for PvP? Why?

And they need to make sure that reaction time matters again, that I can press purify and recuperate and actually heal myself, before the 2nd GCD from the enemy lands on me, but due to hit detection being delayed now, I get stunned later, I purify later, I recuperate later - while they are gonna press a 2nd skill that is one of those that doesn't have a big delay and hit me before the heal registers.