PvP is BROKEN and needs FIXED

As someone who's been playing PvP since 6.1, I'm finding the ranked experience this season to be quite frustrating. While I appreciate the effort put into the recent rehaul, I feel matchmaking could be vastly improved. Roughly 70% of my matches I often find myself in matches where my team's composition or individual skill levels seem significantly different from the opposing team, which leads to unbalanced matches that feel more determined by luck than skill.

Also, I believe allowing players to queue with at least one friend would greatly improve the social aspect of ranked PvP and provide more strategic opportunities. Many other competitive games offer this feature, and I think it would be a valuable addition to FFXIV. In this current state, ranked PvP is a very lonely and frustrating activity because it often feels like 80% luck, 10% teamwork, and 10% skill. It would be nice if we had some sort of control over the match. Another problem we have is with win-trading at the higher levels. In the end, most people end up sync-queueing and getting into matches together anyway. This is also frustrating because sometimes it feels like my teammates give up because they don't want to fight their friend.

Suitable Fixes:

• Allow for someone to queue with you that is in your bracket.
  (e.g. Bronze player wants to queue with someone so they must be Bronze-Gold
  Platinum player wants to queue with someone so they must be Gold - Diamond
  Crystal players must queue with another Crystal player).
  
• Fix the matchmaking so it measures your skill and pairs you with people of equivalent skill (currently tier DOES NOT EQUAL skill).
  
• Create a new ranked section for Duos PvP if you are worried about solos being upset.
  
• Lastly, fix issues with unbalanced classes. (e.g. RDM)

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Originally Posted by PixelLatte

80% luck, 10% teamwork, and 10% skill

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Better matchmaking wont change that. It is pretty ridiculous that some of the former or current best players die like wet noodles in 1s, because they get meme killed while trying to hide behind a wall. Your assumption might be wrong that the devs want tier to equal skill - I think they don't. They want it to equal time spent. Because then everyone is happy and spends another month on the sub. So everyone can rank up, no matter how unskilled. Mahjong is more complicated, Minion battles are more complicated, Crafting/Gathering rotations are more complicated. For some reason PvP has to be stupidly fcking easy to play. For some reason almost every skill is offensive, defense and has utility at the same time - see you can't do wrong - just press a button, it will be okay. You can't make a mistake.
Why do you not see your winrate anymore?
Why is the winrate no longer visible on the ranking board?
Why can't you even know how many games you played, it just shows victories now. So many victories. No defeats I guess.

So nope, diamond games can feel like bronze-crystal games, can't fix matchmaking if you can't separate good players from bad players efficiently.

Like, if a rank1 player from an older season, and there are many that I saw last days, sometimes even 2 in one team - and they are unable to carry the semi-bad player. Then a rank1 player is worthless. Then ranking makes no fcking sense at all.

I don't think there is another MMORPG PvP or RPG PvP, that is less complex than FF14 PvP.

Just make the mode casual only, and then you should be able to duo queue all you want.

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Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

Better matchmaking wont change that.

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It may not change it drastically, but it would definitely feel a bit more fair like you have more control rather than just hoping you are lucky enough to get good teammates or not. If they do what most Battle Royale games do by giving your character a matchmaking rating value and if you do really well, even too good for your tier you get more stars because you are being pitted against stronger players so it weighs more heavily. I would like SOME sort of matchmaking system at least. As you said, it is probably about as basic as it gets at the moment. I think it would also be better for new people because they won't get put with experts right off the get-go, so if they rework the matchmaking system it will make the experience much better for everyone involved and subs would probably last longer. My main thing in FF is PvP so it's a shame things are the way they are. Let's cross our fingers and hope things get better soon :( lol

I mean you can see older seasons before CC. They had a rating system throughout from unranked to diamond. You lost like 5 points at bronze and like 30 points at diamond, while getting 20 for a win. That kept people with low winrates permanently in gold at least if they didn't perform well (like this was their limit, they didn't get further). Now you have your lucky streak system, which only works 1way, in the positive way up. So people are getting way higher than they should, just by chance. Though if you use the old system for the current game mode, I still think everyone would become at least diamond, it would be the new gold.

They let your ranking fall after each season again, step by step, I think they shouldn't tbh. Then good players won't have to be in lower tier games at least. But it requires the player to play every season right now to stay like that.
They could use other metrics like damage taken, dealt, healing done etc. if it is over 20 games at a high level than others - it should mean at least something. Similarly they could reward people more in frontline who perform well like that too. But it would be a complex system, and they want to keep it simple.

They could also go back to only allow same tier to play against same tier. As there are enough players now. But they prefer fast queue times over better matchmaking. Because in the past, queue times were an issue. Because people were afraid of playing healer or melee - too much responsibility. So they made healing meaningless.

Good thing you have hope, I have none after the years lmao.

i'd like for CC to be the one place where they enforce anti-cheat and then implement a system where all the people running bots and scripts only queue in together, while the rest of us can play fair.

Honestly, if you want to fix majority of the problems that ranked CC has including matchmaking and queue times stop setting the bar to platinum and let the community find the average rank to be at themselves. In other words: bring back the punishments. Let folks keep a low rank if they cannot grasp the basics. It's why you still have a few people at platinum who doesn't use Recuperate at all waiting on a healer to heal them.

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Originally Posted by Mistress_Irika

Honestly, if you want to fix majority of the problems that ranked CC has including matchmaking and queue times stop setting the bar to platinum and let the community find the average rank to be at themselves. In other words: bring back the punishments. Let folks keep a low rank if they cannot grasp the basics. It's why you still have a few people at platinum who doesn't use Recuperate at all waiting on a healer to heal them.

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lol. technically, there are no healers in CC - there are support classes. you have your heal. use it or run and elixir. id rather have my AST using their double cast to help with bursting down a target than ot aspected benefic x2 someone who is gonna die anyways.

You'd think people would have learned not to rush ahead one by one after a team stagger in crystal either and yet they do. Not sure if removing the glass flooring in platinum is gonna magically fix it. Not opposed to it though.

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Originally Posted by Mistress_Irika

Honestly, if you want to fix majority of the problems that ranked CC has including matchmaking and queue times stop setting the bar to platinum and let the community find the average rank to be at themselves. In other words: bring back the punishments. Let folks keep a low rank if they cannot grasp the basics. It's why you still have a few people at platinum who doesn't use Recuperate at all waiting on a healer to heal them.

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Even in diamond this happens.

Anyway, many players here didn't understand that it's a team game and not a solo one. Even in diamond you still see about 1 match out of 2 of people who just go chase in solo to try to get the most kills that they can. They are never close to the cristal, or to help their backline of getting bullied. So in the end they lose and then will come to cry here in the forum because they are stuck and will blame everyone else than themself.

Also, many people don't know when to fallback and regroup. Let's say you have an huge advantage, pushed the cristal up to 90% but now someone died or need to back because he used all their ressource. It's normal, that will happens, because the other team respawn and is close to the cristal. Well, you have the % advantage : Back off, regroup, and let them push back the cristal a bit so it's at your advantage, anyway they can't win if they don't push it more than what your team did. But no, many player will stay there, even when a call to retreat is said, die, and then, the team never recover because they never wait to regroup.

And, there is many exemple of bronze play like that in plat/diamond. You just need to get a bit lucky even if you are unskilled and you'll rank up.

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Originally Posted by AlliciaCapulet

Even in diamond this happens.

Anyway, many players here didn't understand that it's a team game and not a solo one. Even in diamond you still see about 1 match out of 2 of people who just go chase in solo to try to get the most kills that they can. They are never close to the cristal, or to help their backline of getting bullied.

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I typically play one or two unranked CC games a day, and I'm really surprised by this. Sure some games in casual are a bit of a mess, but for the most part, players seem to understand the team nature of the mode. Specifically, I rarely see people dying sequentially and feeding themselves back into the enemy one by one.

Do you suppose this is a consequence of low-skilled players seeking rewards? Or has the unfortunate padding tendency that is so prominent in FL (which Discord FL mentors actively promote) infecting CC?

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Originally Posted by Mistress_Irika

Honestly, if you want to fix majority of the problems that ranked CC has including matchmaking and queue times stop setting the bar to platinum and let the community find the average rank to be at themselves. In other words: bring back the punishments. Let folks keep a low rank if they cannot grasp the basics. It's why you still have a few people at platinum who doesn't use Recuperate at all waiting on a healer to heal them.

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It blows my mind that demotion is not a thing below platinum.... I still remember how l fell back to silver back then during the feast

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Originally Posted by spoo

i'd like for CC to be the one place where they enforce anti-cheat and then implement a system where all the people running bots and scripts only queue in together, while the rest of us can play fair.

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Scripting/hacking is far, far, FAR less frequent/prevalent than people like to beleive. What is more common is players who form PvP teams and frequently play in custom matches together who then go on to que sync together in the solo ranked mode at 4am to 7am before work (or 2am to 4am PST with no job the next day) to achieve high rank. Which is the main cause of these issues mentioned earlier:

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Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

... It is pretty ridiculous that some of the former or current best players die like wet noodles in 1s, because they get meme killed while trying to hide behind a wall. Your assumption might be wrong that the devs want tier to equal skill - I think they don't. They want it to equal time spent. Because then everyone is happy and spends another month on the sub.

Like, if a rank1 player from an older season, and there are many that I saw last days, sometimes even 2 in one team - and they are unable to carry the semi-bad player. Then a rank1 player is worthless. Then ranking makes no fcking sense at all.

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Que syncing at the earliest hours of the morning to rack up 10-20 wins at a time has always been an issue in ranked PvP game modes (in many games not just XIV) and will never truly begin to be solved unless solo que is casual only, and custom, pre-made team-based matching is the only ranked option. However, this will indeed hamper the que times and likely kill the ranked mode e tirely due to the inability to participate in PuGs (pick-up groups) for ranked team games and instead being restricted to your registered team mates only as seen back in Feast days.

And please do not misunderstand, there are some truly great rank 1 players out there who consistently achieve their ranks fairly with an incredible amount of skill, persistence and patience (playing for fun instead of e-clout). Lets not discount these players' efforts by lumping everyone together due to the few bad apples.

Can you elaborate on how this queue syncing works exactly?

Hey now ppl how am i suppose to be (insert top player here) If I 1v 5 a team ill be like them said not a damn person lol all jokes I have ever only did season 1 ranked I can't stand that limited speech.

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Originally Posted by Sinstrel

Scripting/hacking is far, far, FAR less frequent/prevalent than people like to beleive. What is more common is players who form PvP teams and frequently play in custom matches together who then go on to que sync together in the solo ranked mode at 4am to 7am before work (or 2am to 4am PST with no job the next day) to achieve high rank. Which is the main cause of these issues mentioned earlier:

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you'd be surprised to find out that its more common than you think. I've even gone on a fake discord account to join a server that makes and sells these scripts. so many people there. It wasnt hard to find at all either.

I would guess there are people that track guard cooldown of enemies, or plugins that show who is the target of each enemy member - would be easy to heal/cover/support/retreat once you know there are 3 people looking at you suddenly. I usually used /as focustarget but I think they removed that capability from the game.

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Originally Posted by spoo

you'd be surprised to find out that its more common than you think. I've even gone on a fake discord account to join a server that makes and sells these scripts. so many people there. It wasnt hard to find at all either.

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Originally Posted by Commander_Justitia

I would guess there are people that track guard cooldown of enemies, or plugins that show who is the target of each enemy member - would be easy to heal/cover/support/retreat once you know there are 3 people looking at you suddenly. I usually used /as focustarget but I think they removed that capability from the game.

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I hadn't even considered these types of hacks when I initially wrote my post. Spoo definitely has an argument here then actually.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Can you elaborate on how this queue syncing works exactly?

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Its quite easy actually. Everyone has access to the Eorzean Time clock in-game. Picking an appropriate Eorzean Time and having everyone simultaneously que exactly when the clock strikes that time will most often get you all in the same game, and more often than not, also the same team. Even during prime time peak hours.

This has various uses:

For mentoring

You can organize like this through a linkshell, FC chat, or PvP Team to teach a friend, family, FC member etc. how to play CC and help get them up to speed with all of the current game knowledge/mechanics faster.

For example if you have a friend wanting to learn how to play DRG effectively, you can pick DNC and teach them how to, and get them practice with, limit break syncing. You can guide them on how they should be preparing to set up thier LB and give very good practice with timing thier LB to slam down during Dancer's charm. You can help them get familiar with paying attention to when they have dance partner and sabre dance buffs so that they can get maximum strength wymwind thrusts every time. You can start off by teaching them in a way where you always ping your DNC LB before using it, and gradually increasing the difficulty by no longer pinging and instead having them pay attention to when you are getting into position for a DNC LB to more closely mimic a real ranked match. Or pinging "Covering Dragoon!" when you throw them dance partner and sabre dance, then slowly transition into no longer pinging and teaching them awareness of their buffs and of how thier burst cooldowns align well with abilities like sabre dance, just as a true high elo player would.

You can teach someone good positioning as a healer by playing a ranged job and having them stand on top of you throughout the whole game as you stand in all of the sweet spots for healing on each map until they start to get the hang of it on their own. There are near endless ways you can use this to mentor.

Mind you, all of this can be done by forming a custom party instead and playing custom matches, but what if you dont have 10 players? Or if you just want to mentor someone 1:1? There is currently no better way I can think of personally. But this also leads into the second point.



*For cheating solo que ranked matchmaking*

There are many folks who organize custom match events where you find friends and other players to form a team with and play private games of full pre-made vs pre-made teams. In an earlier iteration of PvP in XIV there was even a ranked team mode where you and 3-5 others could go to Wolve's Den to sign a petition which would ratify a PvP team that you could name and get an additional chat channel. You can still see vestiges of this feature in the Wolve's Den actually.

Forming PvP teams in-game is probably a lot less common now (I don't know) but custom games are alive and well and people do have teams or a group of players they most often do cusrom matches with (like the PvP equivalent to a static).

As you are trying to improve your gameplay, you learn to play exceptionally well with your teammates, learn all their habits, and generally have a good awareness of when to combo your abilities due to having played so many challenging matches with eachother vs other pre-mades.

There is nothing stopping these types of players from que syncing in ranked solo que on Eorzean Time to get onto the same team, especially when the ques are just about dead in the very early hours of the morning. Having just 1 other player on your team who you've played countless challenging matches together, using all of the strategies you guys have practiced together, and know all of thier habits and positional tells inside out gives you an enormous advantage over a solo que player on a team of randoms. You're effectively playing an entirely different game since many of the custom-match strategies are nearly impossible to execute with a group of randoms as the solo que mode is intentionally designed to be this way.

There are occasions where you guys wont get on the same team, and one of you will lose a few hundred points every now and then. But more often than not you will be on the same team together if you guys are playing the correct jobs and que synced correctly. And you will have ssuch an enormous advantage over everyone else in the lobby allowing you to go on 10-20 game streaks in crystal rank every time you guys sync like this.

Hope this helps explain what I meant in my previous post.

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Originally Posted by Sinstrel

There are occasions where you guys wont get on the same team, and one of you will lose a few hundred points every now and then. But more often than not you will be on the same team together if you guys are playing the correct jobs and que synced correctly. And you will have ssuch an enormous advantage over everyone else in the lobby allowing you to go on 10-20 game streaks in crystal rank every time you guys sync like this.

Hope this helps explain what I meant in my previous post.

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Aha. This is a factor I'd missed. So the point is, because CC matchmaking tries to balance jobs for the two teams, careful selection of jobs greatly increases the probability that collaborators get on the same team?

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Originally Posted by Sinstrel

Hope this helps explain what I meant in my previous post.

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Ah yeah ok, you mean people just sync queueing as duos (above wouldn't work since the matchmaker tries to balance out ELO at least a little as far as I'm aware). That's what I was missing. Does ranked actually pop early morning? It doesn't seem to start before reset here.