Is PVP just luck?

I decided to give ranked PVP a shot, and its been miserable. I've been playing for about 2 hours and won a single game. Every game has been a curb stomp, I'm pitted against silver opponents and no pushes the crystal. I've tried tagging opponents, using the CC shoutout tools, and its like herding cats.

Am I missing something? Is there something I can do to get better?

You just joined ranked really late, which is a huge mistake to try and do a fresh climb this late in the season. Because CC ranked climb is designed for most players to just climb eventually due to the win streak bonuses, most half decent players will be at high ranked games by now, even if it took some like 150+ wins to get there. So you're stuck with the players who are hard stuck bronze/silver, and they're stuck there for an obvious reason. It's due to them losing well more than 65% of their matches. Not because they're unlucky, but they're the ones making the detrimental mistakes that lets their entire team down.

So it is quite rough. The only way you can get a good fast climb out of what I like to call 'Ranked Hell', you just need to be a really good player where you can adapt with your team no matter the skill level, and heavily impact the outcomes of teamfights. Understanding how bad players play can be used to your own advantage. It can be things like:

- Knowing that enemy teams rarely punish you for overextending because they tend to tunnel vision on one player.
- Knowing that even after you're losing a teamfight, the opponents don't chase stragglers down and tend to do a 5 man stack on crystal and moving with it, which allows you to reset with your elixir and then heavily co-ordinate a potential cleave (AOE burst) on them.
- If you're tanky and efficient with your resources to survive, you can bait enemies into chasing you and lead them away from the crystal, since they will tunnel vision and not know that your team has the number advantage when fighting the 4v2 on point. And if you can survive, they wasted their time and resources for no reason.
- Punish players with low mana, no guard, no recup, because they refuse to reset with elixir. Even put a marker on that opponent to see if you can lead your teammates to targeting them.
- If you're a healer, knowing that bad players will ALWAYS focus on the first person who goes in (they never bother to dive), which means that you can pocket heal your teammate that you can see is going in first, thus ensuring their survival and getting your opponents to waste their resources.

There's many examples of how you can just take advantage of bad players mistakes, and use it to your own benefit if you're trying to speedrun out of Ranked Hell.

Things players need to work on is 1. Understanding how to play your job efficiently. 2. Understanding the core fundamentals of Crystalline Conflict and how the mode actually works.

You sound like you're new. Everyone starts the same. I don't know what you're doing wrong since I've not seen you play. But try to play a lot more, and then get your answers later. So just keep going. You always have next season where some decent players join you in low ranked and you can learn off them.

Thank for your response! Those are great tips, and they have helped. I managed to get to bronze, but overall I'm disappointed with PVP in general. I can't replay a match to see what happened, I have trouble figuring out how I die so fast (even scrubbing through the battle logs is a pain), and the hit detection seems wonky. I can see why people don't play pvp outside the daily frontline.

And I know you brought up teamfights, but those 4 games I won to get to bronze? One person on my team had 10 kills, pretty much kited the enemy team around and I did nothing but stand on the crystal. In one of those I had 0 kills, deaths or assists. I didn't get better, I got pitted with people worse and tbh that didn't feel good. Is there even MMR in ranked? Or are there so few people playing that the game forces matches so you're not waiting around forever? And I know you brought up that I started ranked too late, and again, if you can only play a mode within the first month if you hope to even place, it feels like something's wrong there.

yeah i agree

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Originally Posted by Kelayda

Thank for your response! Those are great tips, and they have helped. I managed to get to bronze, but overall I'm disappointed with PVP in general. I can't replay a match to see what happened, I have trouble figuring out how I die so fast (even scrubbing through the battle logs is a pain).

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This is something we have been begging SE to give us for years, allowing duty recorder to work in PvP.

For now you have to use a software like OBS to record your matches to view later. Also a pain in the ass. Alternatively, you can probably stream to yourself via YouTube and have the ability to just scroll back/.5x speed playback. But... also a pain in the ass.

I've given up on ranked and am trying the casual matches, which are somehow even worse than ranked. I played 25 matches today and won 2. I feel so discouraged. Even watching vids and reading doesn't do anything if no one gets on the crystal to push it. All the practicing and muscle memory means nothing if your entire team runs away as soon as one of them takes damage.

Anyway, the take away I'm getting from this is that PVP overall is just bad. Those of you who stick with it, I'm sorry but it feels like the weakest thing FF14 has ever put out.

For a competitive team-based game, CC is uniquely hard to carry in, but extremely easy to throw games in. In general, a weak player has way more influence on the outcome of the match than an equivalently strong player. Think about how unusual it would be to lose a coinflip that many times in a row. If you're losing the vast majority of your games, it is very likely you are personally responsible for that outcome.

The biggest trap that I think newcomers fall into is assuming there is some correct way to play the mode that will magically result in success.

Seriously, don't get hung up on stuff like the crystal not being pushed, or trying to micromanage what your team is doing. At this level you don't have enough understanding of the mode to make the right calls anyway (even players in crystal and above do not). All you're doing is distracting yourself and annoying your teammates with your pings.

What you need to be focusing on first is just staying alive and playing well on a personal level. Being comfortable using the UI to select targets and move your character around. Knowing your job so well that playing it becomes natural. Using the strong defensive tools that the mode gives you like recuperate, guard, and elixir. If you win fights, you can push the crystal as much as you like afterwards, but all that is secondary to having good basic fundamentals.

The main problem most players will face and I do believe it's not that different from many other multiplayer games is that until you actually improve from the point you're on, you're essentially blind as a bat to what you're doing wrong. Then once something finally clicks somewhere and you improve, you'll look back and see the actual failings you couldn't. You do rely on luck a little in ranked with the comps and players you get sure, but by definition probabilities will require a certain amount of sample before your skill average starts emerging. Being hard stuck at rank X after 10 games doesn't mean anything. Being hard stuck at rank X after 50 games however, and you may start asking yourself some questions.

Casual is also not the best measure of one's own worth, because there is definitely hidden mmr shenanigans behind that ensure that the better your perform the more you'll be paired with the players that do not, or something like this. Hard to prove either way, but for instance I almost never get paired with other ranked players in casual, especially the highest ranked ones. I played casual on my second main job yersterday and lost 9 games out of 10. Another thing is that some jobs do not carry at all and rely on your team, and carrying is very easy to do in my eyes at low levels with jobs that do carry, or half carry, but not with a fully team reliant job.

Obviously casual games are going to be lesser, you can end up with brand new players that don't know how to recuperate, guard or you see ranged jobs running ahead in the opener and die. You will normally not see this in ranked even in bronze.

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Originally Posted by Myon88

If you're losing the vast majority of your games, it is very likely you are personally responsible for that outcome.

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You're right. I'm bad at this mode and I think the amount of time and work it's going to take to get good feels like I could spend it on something with better rewards. I think it is fun to play, but the amount of randomness and frustration makes it unplayable for me. I'll stick to the daily frontlines instead.

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Originally Posted by Myon88

Seriously, don't get hung up on stuff like the crystal not being pushed, or trying to micromanage what your team is doing.

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I'm hung up on this because this is how my games go: My team rushes in, half of us get nuked, and its a wash cycle of people running in and getting wiped while the other team stand on the crystal. Or its the majority of the game no one on my team touches the crystal, fighting off point, and they push it through and we lose. All my games are the other team getting 3-4 kills individually and no one in my game getting one. I've actually stopped pinging, because no one listens anyway.

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Originally Posted by Myon88

What you need to be focusing on first is just staying alive and playing well on a personal level.

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I play monk in PVP, and the go to play seems to nuke that class down. I've had multiple games were a player on the other team will solely focus on hunting me down the whole match. I've gotten really good at delaying the inevitable, but its hard to play a mode when you spend most of it dead or running away and hiding behind barriers to use an elixir.

I am appreciative of the feedback, but overall this isn't for me.

What Job are you playing? Dont listen to non sense, in the lower brackets you just abuse some braindead non sense like PLD or SAM, especially SAM because yoshi p's got a sense of humor. I'm sorry to be the one to tell you the truth but there is almost 0 skill expression in yoshi p's definition of PvP paradise, you just take whats meta and join the season early. You can still climb high if you're committed to one job, but why bother when there are jobs like PLD and SAM that earn you ranks for practically existing.

PvP is not just luck, you really need to put in an effort and with ranked, this more you climb this more effort people want to put in.

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Originally Posted by Kelayda

I play monk in PVP, and the go to play seems to nuke that class down. I've had multiple games were a player on the other team will solely focus on hunting me down the whole match. I've gotten really good at delaying the inevitable, but its hard to play a mode when you spend most of it dead or running away and hiding behind barriers to use an elixir.

I am appreciative of the feedback, but overall this isn't for me.

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You should give yourself more time to learn honestly.

It seems like it's more luck base, because you're still learning pvp. That's normal.

My only advice is to be greedy and care for your own survival. You're in a solo q environment. People aren't going to play like how you want them to play. Worry about you and not trying to accure many deaths. Everything else will naturally follow over time. This isn't the only team game that's like this. :)

I took a break from PVP, and came back to playing a few days ago. Accepting that I was just gonna lose a lot, and focused on staying alive has helped. My win/lose ratio is still abysmal, but I am seeing that there is some skill to the madness of PVP.

I still wish the mode had some kind of replay feature, or a better battle log to parse what's happening. A lot of the frustration for me comes from not knowing what's going on. Even something simple, like showing what skill killed you, rather than just the class, would help. (I can't tell you how long it took me to realize that Machinists have a one shot LB with an ungodly range).

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Originally Posted by Kelayda

I took a break from PVP, and came back to playing a few days ago. Accepting that I was just gonna lose a lot, and focused on staying alive has helped. My win/lose ratio is still abysmal, but I am seeing that there is some skill to the madness of PVP.

I still wish the mode had some kind of replay feature, or a better battle log to parse what's happening. A lot of the frustration for me comes from not knowing what's going on. Even something simple, like showing what skill killed you, rather than just the class, would help. (I can't tell you how long it took me to realize that Machinists have a one shot LB with an ungodly range).

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A time-consuming approach is to experiment with all jobs so you get a stronger understanding of how to defend against them and exploit their weaknesses.

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Originally Posted by Kelayda

I took a break from PVP, and came back to playing a few days ago. Accepting that I was just gonna lose a lot, and focused on staying alive has helped. My win/lose ratio is still abysmal, but I am seeing that there is some skill to the madness of PVP.

I still wish the mode had some kind of replay feature, or a better battle log to parse what's happening. A lot of the frustration for me comes from not knowing what's going on. Even something simple, like showing what skill killed you, rather than just the class, would help. (I can't tell you how long it took me to realize that Machinists have a one shot LB with an ungodly range).

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Recording your games locally can already help to look them over calmly after.

What you do also can look for in the scoreboard at the end is multiple factors:

- Damage dealt isn't the alpha and omega. If you get constantly targeted and bullied, especially if you're melee or the single melee and only playing on point and pushing, it means you're gonna defend a lot more than actually attacking and your damage will be lower, and you'll soak a lot of damage that won't go onto your team mates. The good metric for this is how many times you died comparatively to the damage you ate and dealt.
- Damage dealt will depend on the job. Top damage dealers are usually heavy AoE padders and pressurers like SMN, DRG or MCH. If you know an average of what can be expected of your job (comparatively to other jobs) it can help inform a little. Obviously the longer the game the higher the damage so it's more important to see where you end up compared to others. SCH is a big exception in relation to damage because the way the job works.
- Related to just above, a losing team tends to align less damage than the winning one, which indicates that the winner has been dominating in engagements and pushed the other one on the defensive, guarding, retreating, and staggering respawn so that their damage just peters out. Sometimes a losing team can show as much damage as the winner, and the amount of deaths can be extremely low on the winner side, which usually means that one team was unable to breach through the other's defenses in spite of similar damage output and pressure. This can be due to a lack of focus burst compared to the other, and/or one has stupid strong defensive jobs like AST etc.
- Time on crystal can be important especially when you were on the defensive side all the time and lost. If someone has no crystal presence, they probably griefed you if you were defending. For the winner, it doesn't mean much since ranged jobs maybe just didn't need to get on point to push much.
- HP restored is secondary but can give you an idea how well you performed as a support (heal/tank), especially heal if your damage output is also high as well, then you're goated.
- The most important part is your total amount of kills and assists. It doesn't matter whether you killed or assisted. What matters is the total of both combined, and then compared to the total kills done by your team. If everyone in your team has a total close enough to the team kills, and yours is lower, then you're probably griefing and not participating in bursts or main action when it matters. If everyone has a total twice lower than the team kills, that tends to be a clear indicator that everybody is running around the map like monkeys doing small fights that lead to nowhere.

Go AST, SAM, PLD, RDM, SCH and you'll climb through attrition. The match making is non existent and the only two consistencies are it will try to bring you around 50% WR and it depends on which team ends up throwing the hardest. Unlocking a point is worthless, overtime makes no sense so unless you have a good game sense or lots of free hours I would just pick a stat check META job. Green jobs do everything better except for Sage. That one is balanced but seems pathetic by how excessively effective their green cousins are.

I played around 40 hours of last season, and around 1 for the new season. I don't think I'm ever going to get out of bronze. I have been pitted against the same pre-made FIVE TIMES IN A ROW. I don't understand. They've curbstomped me every match. This isn't fun. This is awful. If this is how normal ranked PVP is, I get why no one does it.

EDIT: PvP is pure luck and rng. I'm done.

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Originally Posted by Kelayda

I played around 40 hours of last season, and around 1 for the new season. I don't think I'm ever going to get out of bronze. I have been pitted against the same pre-made FIVE TIMES IN A ROW. I don't understand. They've curbstomped me every match. This isn't fun. This is awful. If this is how normal ranked PVP is, I get why no one does it.

EDIT: PvP is pure luck and rng. I'm done.

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Its unlikely you ran into a pre-made in Bronze. Most likely what is happening is that matchmaking system is trying to create a Bronze lobby and you all were the only 10 players still in Bronze at the particular time you qued. This is most likely due to de-rank protection, where once a player makes it out of Bronze, they can never fall back into bronze and populate your que/lobby again.

I think its time we get rid of the de-rank protection. Its an archaic system implemented at CC's conception to give all players a false sense of progress by helping everyone who participated reach Crystal rank in Season 1 (2 and 3?). The system was later nerfed a bit to provide protection at Platinum 4 in order to keep Diamond lobbies active and que times reduced. All players are required to come together on a single data center to populate ques now, there is no need for de-rank protection to exist anymore and the de-rank protection is no longer helping improve que times, it actually is damaging to que times at lower ranks since 60% of the playerbase is locked at Platinum 4 and can never fall down to populate these lower rank ques with more players.

But they locked cool weapons and armors behind ranked pvp, in a 'very good' pvp. You'll surely do PvP for cool armors right? It's fine, I'm in the same boat. I'll never see crystal rank, but here we go again. Had to take a week off work, because after 2 weeks of the new pvp seasons from bronze to gold is dead.

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Originally Posted by Kelayda

I played around 40 hours of last season, and around 1 for the new season. I don't think I'm ever going to get out of bronze. I have been pitted against the same pre-made FIVE TIMES IN A ROW. I don't understand. They've curbstomped me every match. This isn't fun. This is awful. If this is how normal ranked PVP is, I get why no one does it.

EDIT: PvP is pure luck and rng. I'm done.

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They practically ruined the lower brackets for late comers. The extension of the first bracket from Rank +/- 1 to Unranked -> Gold makes it so that those few who didn't push Platinum or up now have to deal with the cess pit where only handful of players play which results in harder and harder matches the closer you get to ranking to Plat. My diamond friend struggled with it for a while because once he hit gold he had to deal with 4 unranked/bronze teammates who probably didn't have all the buttons bound to play against a team of silvers who despite being bad would still run over the unranked/bronze team. So if you are late to the party you have to punch way past Gold skill level to actually get out from the bracket or be lucky enough to play at a time when the lobbies are mostly silver/gold if there even is that many players left.

As for rng, good players can still climb, but you might need to game the system if the player pool is limited. Like counter picking the same Job that the weakest player in current pool is playing and just outvaluing the matchup hard or taking a break if the system keeps pitting you into a team that is heavily disadvantaged against the opponent several times in row. For lower ranks I recommend choosing a Job based on what you think is the winning move. If you have no idea what's going on with the player pool just pick some heavy duty carry Job and outvalue the enemies hard. If you want to push player number advantage get a Job that has big burst and crippling stuns/silences and just follow up on your teammates targets the whole match. If everyone keeps just running around, pick a Job with good survivability and try to aggro 2 or more enemies and keep baiting them to chase you around the map.

If all of it was pure luck there would be no way the same names keep hitting the top 100 lists every season.

If you are looking for decent pvp, you might want to look back to WoW.
XIV pvp sure as hell isnt it.