PVP-CC-Rank

I'm approaching my first year anniversary in the game! I've loved every second of it, and lately, I've been really enjoying PvP! I started off with Frontline and never touched any other game mode, but I recently saw the Hellhound weapon and I've been wanting it so badly! So, I decided to start grinding for it. I set my mindset, watched YouTube videos to help me rank up, and got ready to grind.

However, I found out that the PvP rank queue is dead! Queue times are 30 minutes during the week on Primal, with only 1-2 hours of prime time to queue. For me, it's impossible to achieve that goal simply because I don't think I could get Diamond or Crystal rank in a season due to the lack of games available. So, that weapon seems unachievable.

My thought is that maybe they could add an achievement in the game that gives commendation crystals. Maybe just one hard achievement, not something that casual players could achieve, but still possible for people who really want it. This achievement could grant 2 commendation crystals for players who want the Hellhound weapon. For example, something like playing PvP for 30 consecutive days, playing 1000 PvP games (within a specific time period), or dueling 100 different people! This would be an achievable goal for PvP lovers who can't wait 2 hours to queue for CC rank games.

The Ranked reward system needs an overhaul that is beyond Commendation Crystals, it is fundamentally flawed and does not respect the time investment one might need to make to get "any" tangible rewards. It also is the root cause for the death spiral of queues becoming unbearably long - until you reach Diamond, you do not get anything worth your time that you can't get playing Casual CC or large-scale PvP.

And if you don't reach Diamond because the bottom end of the queues dries out? Good luck getting anything at all.

It needs a better reward structure that rewards you with desirables for specifically playing ranked, regardless what tier you end up in - do this and you will naturally have a healthier ladder, because people will not mind playing even in metal tiers if their time is respected.

They need rank decay during the season (series?), not just between them. If people can get the rank they want in week one, they don't need to play again for the rest of it, making it basically impossible for anyone who wasn't there at the start to participate.

Hot take: REMOVE CASUAL. Funnel everyone into a ranked queue and just call it CC, don't use the word ranked or casual. Seriously, there is no cost or loss in doing ranked, so why have a casual queue at all to split people up?

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Originally Posted by Emitans

They need rank decay during the season (series?), not just between them. If people can get the rank they want in week one, they don't need to play again for the rest of it, making it basically impossible for anyone who wasn't there at the start to participate.

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Rank decay does nothing to address people not even being interested to attempt ladder, it's purely a thing that affects the top-end.

The onboarding rate of players in Ranked is significantly lower than the churn rate (i.e. the rate at which players quit ranked or heavily reduce how much they participate in). Furthermore, the rate of how fast it churns is also turbo-accelerated into a death spiral by ever-increasing queue times.

Between having a fairly terrible way to introduce people into pvp in the first place by being in the furthest corner of low level La Noscea, a playguide that leaves MUCH to be desired considering how hidden it is within submenus and NPCs and an absolute tragedy of rewards being handed out at a basic level, it needs a change at the bottom end before all else.

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Originally Posted by Altina_Orion

Hot take: REMOVE CASUAL. Funnel everyone into a ranked queue and just call it CC, don't use the word ranked or casual. Seriously, there is no cost or loss in doing ranked, so why have a casual queue at all to split people up?

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Bad take. This alienates players that want to practice jobs in a 5v5 environment or feel ranked anxiety when playing Ranked modes in games, because they will now feel responsible for the losses their teammates might incur. Remove casual CC and the casual players will not offboard from Casual into Ranked, they will go and do Frontlines/Rival Wings. This is not the way, the lack of players in Ranked can barely be attributed to split queues.

This season has been extra bad because it released at the same time than Occult Crescent. The first week was absolutely dead in ranked. It's already problematic when it releases during savage releases, but savage at least generally leaves time for people to play in the evenings their groups don't raid. This time however, it's been a disaster. I actually wanted to take advantage that it happened on my DC to play more than when it is on the other one (which is also a huge detriment to play rates btw), and I couldn't even. Add to that that the high end crowd only starts queuing at crazy times like 22:00 or midnight and you end up with dead queues.

To reply to the OP: generally ranked is extremely FOMO and you'll need to be active in the first weeks of each season, that's when people play before it peters out. Sometimes there is a resurgence in the last week before the next season patch that you can try and take advantage of.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Bad take. This alienates players that want to practice jobs in a 5v5 environment or feel ranked anxiety when playing Ranked modes in games, because they will now feel responsible for the losses their teammates might incur. Remove casual CC and the casual players will not offboard from Casual into Ranked, they will go and do Frontlines/Rival Wings. This is not the way, the lack of players in Ranked can barely be attributed to split queues.

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Being afraid to make your bronze/unranked teammates lose is a bit odd, but funneling everyone into one queue i feel like is more valuable than considering people's anxiety. The ranked queue is dead because people would rather press the casual button so just kill the casual button.

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Originally Posted by Altina_Orion

Hot take: REMOVE CASUAL. Funnel everyone into a ranked queue and just call it CC, don't use the word ranked or casual. Seriously, there is no cost or loss in doing ranked, so why have a casual queue at all to split people up?

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Let’s be honest: ranked modes almost always bring out the worst in people.
This isn't new—it’s been like this since the days of Feast.
The moment a player loses a ranked match, their first instinct is to blame their teammates.
It doesn’t matter if they made mistakes themselves—someone else must’ve thrown.
This mindset is toxic, and it's exactly why PvP chat is disabled.
SE already witnessed what happens when egos mix with ranking systems

Also,not everyone plays to climb.
Some players just want to enjoy the game casually and have a good time without being flamed or blamed.
There are more people playing Casual CC than Ranked CC right now.
That should say something.
Ranked turns PvP into ego battlegrounds.
It encourages blame, salt, and gatekeeping.

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Originally Posted by Valence

To reply to the OP: generally ranked is extremely FOMO and you'll need to be active in the first weeks of each season, that's when people play before it peters out. Sometimes there is a resurgence in the last week before the next season patch that you can try and take advantage of.

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FFXIV is a theme park MMO.
Most of its player base is here for PvE content—story, crafting, housing, glamour, raiding—you name it.
PvP has always been a side activity.
And yet, you think the decisions made around Ranked Crystal Conflict (CC) are more important than the broader game experience.
Why should that be the case?
Ranked CC is dying for the same reasons it always has: toxicity, elitism, and win-at-all-costs behavior.
That kind of environment pushes casual players away from the start.

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Originally Posted by Divinemights

Let’s be honest: ranked modes almost always bring out the worst in people. This isn't new—it’s been like this since the days of Feast. The moment a player loses a ranked match, their first instinct is to blame their teammates. It doesn’t matter if they made mistakes themselves—someone else must’ve thrown. This mindset is toxic, and it's exactly why PvP chat is disabled.
[...]
There are more people playing Casual CC than Ranked CC right now. That should say something.[...]

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...let's be honest, this applies to *every* game with Online PvP in it and is not limited to Ranked Crystalline Conflict or The Feast. The average player going for the common coping mechanism of rejecting blame is also fairly common elsewhere, but specifically in FFXIV chat gets disabled and turned into quickchat - not necessarily because FFXIV players are so much worse in toxicity, but more probably because of japanese development standards doing this as a preventative measure.

As for "there are more people playing casual than ranked", this has very little to do with toxicity and everything else with the systems surrounding it. I do not like the implication that social behaviour is a primary reason here.

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Originally Posted by Divinemights

FFXIV is a theme park MMO. Most of its player base is here for PvE content—story, crafting, housing, glamour, raiding—you name it. PvP has always been a side activity.

And yet, you think the decisions made around Ranked Crystal Conflict (CC) are more important than the broader game experience. Why should that be the case?

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PvP, within the scope of PvE-centric MMOs, may be a side activity, but has generally been the most standard side activity to be considered and worked on. Story is a baseline, crafting is a means to an end that some people may enjoy as an activity, housing is limited to availability and funds - raiding is arguably "the" main drive here.

PvP being seen as a mere side activity comes from two sides - word of mouth advertisement from other players, that it is awful / forgotten / just side content, devaluing one's opinion and interest before they even touched PvP in the first place; and a variety of rather questionable decisions of how they tried to make PvP approachable and more importantly "worth your time" (or rather failing to do so, despite the miniscule steps required to pull it off), a subject I could dedicate a separate thread to.

That said, Valence did not say that at all, even in the unshortened version. Valence made comments on the state of Ranked CC on how fast it dies out, the most likely chances to have enough games to play Ranked within a season and his experience with how much of a disaster it has been based on the timing of everything else essentially siphoning players away from it. There is no statement whatsoever why it should change, nor any thought why decisions made around Ranked CC are more important "than the broader game experience", which is also fairly odd to suggest given PvP changes can be made that do NOT impact the broader game, this isn't zero-sum game development.

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Originally Posted by Divinemights

Ranked CC is dying for the same reasons it always has: toxicity, elitism, and win-at-all-costs behavior. That kind of environment pushes casual players away from the start.

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Ranked PvP has been a malnourished carcass due to terrible design decisions to make the mode even remotely worth playing. We have an equivalent in PvE regarding this - Criterion. Its' rewards were absolutely underwhelming to the point that active parties died out about the same rate Ranked dies out. Criterion had very little replay value and no interaction with the main gearing system (which has been criticized for a while now) and its rewards were incredibly paltry.

Ranked PvP, pre Crystalline Conflict, at least had people fighting tooth and nail for the Top 100 rewards, because they were actually desirable and worth fighting for. This however was also a time when casual rewards were absolutely lacking (lack of Battle Pass, cool things outside of wolfmark vendor, etc) and the one-of-each-role queue system made The Feast incredibly difficult to approach and learn.

Ranked PvP, post Crystalline Conflict (6.1), has seen a full revision to the reward structure, with GREAT benefits to the casually available items, but at full neglect to Ranked rewarding you anything of desire (which would NOT need to be a FOMO reward, mind you). Ranked PvP went down the same path of Criterion, where the average player sees absolutely nothing worth in it to spend time on it. This isn't a "PvP is a side activity" thing either because they've made side activities with GREAT rewards multiple times - Ishgard Restoration and Cosmic Exploration on the crafting side for example.

It also currently suffers from a death spiral of "nothing interesting for me here before reaching a rank that is out of my skill potential -> I leave -> queue times get too long for me to care while casual has more games -> I leave -> repeat". Crystalline Conflict is fun - but queue times aren't. I do not like sitting between 5-30min for a game of ANYTHING, much less if the result of me doing so does not offer any tangible rewards afterwards.

To say "Ranked is dying for the same reasons it always has" means you actually do not look at the state off things with any analytical thought on objectively distinct designs on its User Experience and reward systems, but rather regurgitate hear-say of what is mostly anecdotal to begin with. This is incredibly disingenuous.

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Originally Posted by Divinemights

And yet, you think the decisions made around Ranked Crystal Conflict (CC) are more important than the broader game experience.

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I'm sorry, I think what now?

Your best bet is either a low rank queue sync or just afking in queues. As the season winds down, activity might pick back up, but best practice is to queue early in the season. Once you get to plat and above, its much easier to get pops. As for queue syncs, theres a few discords like revival, emperor gray's discord that I dont remember the name of, etc that do them.

Making comm crystals obtainable from something other than ranked makes the joke of a prize pool ranked already has more worthless, so I dont agree with the achievement idea. Square just needs to add more incentive to queue.

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Originally Posted by Divinemights

Ranked CC is dying for the same reasons it always has: toxicity, elitism, and win-at-all-costs behavior.

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How can anyone be elitist in a mode where chat is disabled?

And what does "win-at-all-costs behavior" even mean in a competitive game mode? Are you only supposed to try half the time?

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Originally Posted by Altina_Orion

Being afraid to make your bronze/unranked teammates lose is a bit odd, but funneling everyone into one queue i feel like is more valuable than considering people's anxiety. The ranked queue is dead because people would rather press the casual button so just kill the casual button.

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I mean... Using your idea, the ranked queue would become even more dead.
The ranked queue being the way it is has nothing to do with people just wanting a casual match for various reasons, and everything to do with the ranked system having a lot of issues.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Bad take. This alienates players that want to practice jobs in a 5v5 environment or feel ranked anxiety when playing Ranked modes in games, because they will now feel responsible for the losses their teammates might incur. Remove casual CC and the casual players will not offboard from Casual into Ranked, they will go and do Frontlines/Rival Wings. This is not the way, the lack of players in Ranked can barely be attributed to split queues.

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Practice part is true, but the anxiety™ people never touch ranked anyway. Maybe if they went back to having no rank decay.

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Originally Posted by VictorSpoils

Practice part is true, but the anxiety™ people never touch ranked anyway. Maybe if they went back to having no rank decay.

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I know. Now imagine if you merge Ranked and Casual. The "anxiety™ people" as you call them (also those suffering from impostwr syndrome) not only not interact with Ranked, but in this hypothetical scenario also Crystalline Conflict in general because anxiety doesn't just go away from merging modes.

Basically it a placebo change for those that believe this to be the issue until reality hits again, that this change benefitted nobody.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

malnourished carcass

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A carcass doesn't need nourishment so how can it be malnourished? Food for thought, pun intended.

But yeah imo there should only be one queue and your rank should be tied to your job. So if you wanna play around in the bronze queue you can switch jobs. And even if you don't know how to play it that well, if you're a crystal player you'll still be better than most people at that level. And if you're just hopelessly bad and cause your team to lose all the time then you won't make it very far in which case there's nothing really to worry about. Anyone who knows what they're doing will never stay below Platinum for very long regardless of RNG with bad teams, so "bad players in muh ranked queue" won't be an issue.

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Originally Posted by CidHeiral

How can anyone be elitist in a mode where chat is disabled?

And what does "win-at-all-costs behavior" even mean in a competitive game mode? Are you only supposed to try half the time?

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ikr I'd rather deal with 200 hundred toxic "elitist" PVP chud goons than 1 guy that needs to bring moral grandstanding in to a video game. Absolutely insufferable.

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Originally Posted by DallsBeep

A carcass doesn't need nourishment so how can it be malnourished? Food for thought, pun intended.

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A carcass can be from a nourished entity that dies/died from other reason, a malnourished one implies starvation or malnutrition as the leading cause. Plus since we are in a fantasy game, you can "revive" and then renourish things after all.

Regarding your actual points though:

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Originally Posted by DallsBeep

But yeah imo there should only be one queue and your rank should be tied to your job. So if you wanna play around in the bronze queue you can switch jobs. And even if you don't know how to play it that well, if you're a crystal player you'll still be better than most people at that level. And if you're just hopelessly bad and cause your team to lose all the time then you won't make it very far in which case there's nothing really to worry about. Anyone who knows what they're doing will never stay below Platinum for very long regardless of RNG with bad teams, so "bad players in muh ranked queue" won't be an issue.

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Putting aside the previous points that I mentioned in this thread (ranked anxiety, "always having stakes" environment, Frontline becoming the new "casual mode") of why merging Ranked & Casual into one queue is a bad idea...

...it "will" either make queue times insufferable by metric of being queued into your rank pool (as a Gold you can play with Silvers or Plats for example) instead of having the ability to just join for a quick game OR make rank pools not become a thing and greatly diminish the average match quality for higher ranked players, essentially defeating the point of having a "rank" in the first place as it is just Casual with badges then.

There is also the seemingly unexplored idea of "high rank players maybe just want to play a chill round on a job they play less in casual WITHOUT having to wait 10-30min to get a game", which merging queues will not help with.

Regarding the per-job ranking - while it has merit on paper, the problems that arise when implementing this are the following:

• 1.) Ranking up with specific jobs that rely more heavily on team synergy (PLD, SCH, maybe DNC) so you can use them in the higher ranks will be a painful experience as a lot of the viability of said jobs hinges on one's teammates knowledge/ability to capitalize on the support they bring. The common recommendation has been to use self-sufficient or solo carry jobs over supportive jobs in the early skill tiers to climb for this reason, so job-based rank progression gives supportive jobs a huge handicap at the bottom end of the ladder, even if you might be a Crystal player usually.
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• 2.) This hard-enforces onetricking, which can become an issue if you play one of the more common jobs on ladder (depending on meta balance at the time) to get queues as only two of a specific job can be present per match. Making it per-role (tank, healer, melee, ranged, caster) would at least allow for "some" alternatives in your job pool to help with job diversity.
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• 3.) Speaking of making it per role/job, for anyone on the high-end of the ladder it would essentially discourage them to switch jobs/roles (which is something you should consider depending on maps and specific high-profile players in the queue) as it would not benefit them for Top 300 progression in the slightest. This punishes someone who may be both an excellent Astrologian and Dragoon for instance as they have nothing to gain to switch jobs.

While you might hold the opinion that it may be a good idea, this is what most likely will be the side effect if that opinion would be implemented - based on logical conclusions and/or precedence cases from other games that tried this.

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

Frontline becoming the new "casual mode"

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Frontline should be the casual mode. The stakes are always higher in CC because you as an individual player have much more personal responsibility than you ever will in FL, this is regardless of whether it's a ranked match or not. In fact, removing the distinction between casual and ranked would highly encourage players of all skill levels to take the matches more seriously overall. They should funnel players who are new to PVP into FL so they can learn the basics. They already basically do this by giving players a daily bonus for it, but they could do more. The basis of this thread is the fact that ranked queue dies, that's for a few reasons which are well documented. Higher ranks it's because people get their targeted ranking and then stop and there's no incentive to keep playing. Lower rank it's because most people who are really interested in playing ranked have already surpassed Gold tier and probably a lot due to the anxiety you're talking about.

No, I don't think if you collapsed to casual queue completely that ranked queue would die off, especially with the proposed change of linking ranking to job. It would have the exact opposite effect. I'm sure there are some issues it would cause, that will be the case with any change normally, but killing off the queue? I really don't see that being a problem at all. Casual players till need to get their wonderous tales done, they still want to fill out their challenge log. That's something no one ever really takes into account. All that kind of change would do would directly address the fact that lower tier ranked dies off, and plenty of other changes to reward structure could easily address higher tier ranked matches dying off as well.

Oh, where do I begin... first, my apologies for reformating your post a bit as I will go through specific points at a time and I think it might help readability.

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Originally Posted by DallsBeep

[1] Frontline should be the casual mode. The stakes are always higher in CC because you as an individual player have much more personal responsibility than you ever will in FL, this is regardless of whether it's a ranked match or not. In fact, removing the distinction between casual and ranked would highly encourage players of all skill levels to take the matches more seriously overall.

[2] They should funnel players who are new to PVP into FL so they can learn the basics. They already basically do this by giving players a daily bonus for it, but they could do more.

[3] The basis of this thread is the fact that ranked queue dies, that's for a few reasons which are well documented. Higher ranks it's because people get their targeted ranking and then stop and there's no incentive to keep playing. Lower rank it's because most people who are really interested in playing ranked have already surpassed Gold tier and probably a lot due to the anxiety you're talking about.

[4] No, I don't think if you collapsed to casual queue completely that ranked queue would die off, especially with the proposed change of linking ranking to job. It would have the exact opposite effect. I'm sure there are some issues it would cause, that will be the case with any change normally, but killing off the queue? I really don't see that being a problem at all.

[5] Casual players still need to get their wonderous tales done, they still want to fill out their challenge log. That's something no one ever really takes into account.

[6]All that kind of change would do would directly address the fact that lower tier ranked dies off, and plenty of other changes to reward structure could easily address higher tier ranked matches dying off as well.

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1.) You are mistaking "stakes" for "individual impact" here. Stakes are there if a loss matters more than in other environments (i.e. losing Rating in Ranked for instance), individual impact increases in modes with less players in the instance, so 5v5 Crystalline Conflict gives individual players the most impact out of all modes. That is not a bad thing, this means Player XY performing an action leads to a more noticeable outcome than in Frontlines and is a good way to learn your core kit. Frontlines are also much more punishing regarding the positioning aspect as you are potentially being stared down by up to 24/48 players if you are out of position.

The basics are best learned in a smaller environment - 5v5 CC. By removing/merging Casual CC and "only" having Ranked, you remove an essential training environment for a mode where it matters. You cannot learn the nuances of Crystalline Conflict in Frontlines. Between the role action, differences in objectives, reduced damage per individual and more enemy players and their toolkits to account for, it offers a poor learning environment for future Rankers.

We literally "had" this problem with Feast Training due to the forced-role system - due to queue times, newbies were forced to learn Feast immediately in Ranked, which made for a piss-poor learning experience and caused many to avoid the mode because of this.


2.) They do this because its a 72-man mode. It's essentially similar to roulettes, there to encourage at least once a day to help fill the queue (per player). There could be "more" yes, by also making "Daily Challenge: Rival Wings" (large-scale mode) and "Daily Challenge: Crystalline Conflict" (to encourage 5v5 Casual interaction) - one for reach.


3.) Kind of, close. Correct on the upper ranks, there is no incentive to keep playing for them (no Top XY rewards like back in feast, no Ranked Currency to spend on a lot MORE things than Hellhound upgrades). Lower ranks its actually a bit more than that - there is many that might forever be Bronze, Silver or Gold - which is fine, these players are the foundation for anyone to keep playing. But because there is no incentive for the lower tiers (think Ranked Currency, not Commend. Crystals), there is a pool of players saying "whats the point, I can't climb to Diamond anyways and I get nothing for being here".

This lengthens queue times, which affects a different pool of players that doesn't want to wait in a queue to have "balanced matches" forever and instead goes for 5v5 Casual or Frontlines (if at all) - which is a death spiral, as you can tell. We had this exact phenomenon happen multiple times in PvP, even Frontlines - and it essentially all boils down to "incentives not found".


4.) I'm gonna address this one more time, under the assumption that if a merge of both queues happen, it would retain Ranked Mode's matchmaking for skill tiers (i.e. a Platinum player can be matched with Diamond or Gold, but not Crystal+ or Silver-Bronze).

Casual Mode's distinct property is that it forms matches regardless of skill tiers in Ranked, which allows for matches to be created much more quickly. It also does not affect ranked so you can learn and experiment with your job rather than just stay with cookie-cutter "do only this" strats - or you could play FOR FUN. (reminder that Frontline is NOT a good environment to learn 5v5 job impact and strategies)

Ranked Mode's distinct property is that player queues are separated by skill tiers, so a Diamond wont be stomping on Golds and Silvers. Ideally matches are much closer to its respective skill tier and offers a general challenge, it will make you use what you learned and practiced, either in previous Ranked matches or in Casual.

If you full-merge Casual + Ranked into one mode, you will sacrifice either:

• A) match quality & Ranked integrity by making matchmaking ignore individual ranks and skill tiers (i.e. why is it even Ranked)
• B) fast queues by matchmaking with a skill-tier based system (i.e. nothing casual about it)

These are mutually exclusive. Without a stable onboarding and churn of players (which we DO NOT HAVE thanks to a lack of meaningful incentives), pulling on one side will affect the other. Furthermore, by going for Option B, everyone's Rank and therefore ability to play the mode is now at stake if they don't climb at equal paces with everyone else. You are forcing two or more fundamentally different player groups into one and tell them to deal with it, regardless what their goal in 5v5 is.

On the matter of linking Ranking to job (or role), I think you are not seeing the issue at all with it here. Currently queue times are affected by onboarding (new players), retention (players who stay for longer) and churn (players who quit) in short human resources. They are also affected by skill tiers, naturally as players progress (or don't which is a reality we must face).

If you add job-based Rank, you add a third layer of things that will affect queue times, which can either be "it added absolutely nothing" because players don't switch their jobs anymore because onetricking for higher ranks is now encouraged since only your highest job now counts, or creates a scenario where Crystal player "John FFXIV, the Warrior" can't get his match because "Brave Lee, the Paladin" and others decided they wanted more access to jobs in higher ranks for some odd reason. It will also lead to Brave Lee curbstomping half the players he moves across if he is any good, something many do not like happening in Casual in the first place.


5.) Wondrous Tails, Challenge log - former can be done without 5v5 with up to 15 duties that you can also repeat, latter is just wolfmarks. They are in the grand scheme of things negligible


6.) Your "solution/fix" is forcing everyone into one pool, disregarding what the individual modes' purpose and their players' interest is supposed to be in a ham-fisted attempt to solve the "queue crisis of Ranked" like Thanos snapping his fingers. It does not organically address that the incentive structure for Ranked is awful across the entire board since Season 1 and in fact will only excarcebate things with your job-rank link.

I'm gonna say this not as someone looking critically at design, but as a player - I want my limited time I can spent on FFXIV to be rewarded with something I can put on display on my character. If the activity that I intend to put time into to learn its nuances, get good at and excel in doesn't respect my time with adequate rewards or benefits, then I will not do the activity.


Mind you Dalls, this is nothing against you, no hard feelings - I am just annoyed at the concept/idea and criticize that instead, because it has been thrown in the ring (also dissected and refuted) multiple times. In the end, you believe in that and I believe in something else.

On the merging of casual into ranked, I'm opposed to it. It would just kill the mode (and the potentially coming dual queue as well).

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

[*]1.) Ranking up with specific jobs that rely more heavily on team synergy (PLD, SCH, maybe DNC) so you can use them in the higher ranks will be a painful experience as a lot of the viability of said jobs hinges on one's teammates knowledge/ability to capitalize on the support they bring. The common recommendation has been to use self-sufficient or solo carry jobs over supportive jobs in the early skill tiers to climb for this reason, so job-based rank progression gives supportive jobs a huge handicap at the bottom end of the ladder, even if you might be a Crystal player usually.
-[*]2.) This hard-enforces onetricking, which can become an issue if you play one of the more common jobs on ladder (depending on meta balance at the time) to get queues as only two of a specific job can be present per match. Making it per-role (tank, healer, melee, ranged, caster) would at least allow for "some" alternatives in your job pool to help with job diversity.
-[*]3.) Speaking of making it per role/job, for anyone on the high-end of the ladder it would essentially discourage them to switch jobs/roles (which is something you should consider depending on maps and specific high-profile players in the queue) as it would not benefit them for Top 300 progression in the slightest. This punishes someone who may be both an excellent Astrologian and Dragoon for instance as they have nothing to gain to switch jobs.[/list]

While you might hold the opinion that it may be a good idea, this is what most likely will be the side effect if that opinion would be implemented - based on logical conclusions and/or precedence cases from other games that tried this.

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Having been a big defender of the per job ranking option (I don't know who came up first with it):

1) It may be incredibly easier to carry with melee jobs and specific ones (DRG, GNB, etc) especially at lower ranks, doesn't mean it's a painful experience to rank up with team oriented ones. If you're good enough you'll climb. Anybody knows it takes more effort to climb with team focused jobs, until you reach a point where your skill with even more individualistic jobs averages over 50%, and then it becomes identical. I fail to see how this is a problem. We have many people way past gold that do main support or team focused jobs (ranged, buffers, etc). Maybe there is less of them even in high crystal, but that's a problem of meta there if anything, because some melee jobs like VPR don't fare much better.

2) I do understand it may be frustrating to have longer queues when a job is saturated in the games you play, but that's like queuing as a DPS in pve: you can choose to keep doing it (it pops eventually, it's not like you're getting 1/10th of the game pops anyway), or you can choose to try and rank up another job. I understand your argument there, but I don't think that's a problem at all.

3) That could be a problem for very high ratings (with the coming Ultima and Omega ranks). On the other hand, they're also no lifing this so...

I can see the benefits of per-job ranking "if done correctly" (keywords) but a variety of factors would need to be done before that is put in, such as making maps either random on a per-match basis or making each job generally be good on all maps (i.e. no massive advantages due to specific CCs or job interactions present). Also "how" the reward structure would look like is also important.

Last factor is "do we have the playerbase to sustain this", which at least in my opinion I have strong doubts.

But yeah, hard no on merged queues.

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Originally Posted by Valence

3) That could be a problem for very high ratings (with the coming Ultima and Omega ranks). On the other hand, they're also no lifing this so...

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Let's not design around people no-lifing things...

I think the playerbase requirement to sustain it would actually be easier, because there is also a gain in flexibility, namely that if your ranked diamond crystal games don't pop, then you can instead go and play on a job you have at a lower rank to try the queues there instead, which is something you can't currently do unless you have an alt precisely placed in different ranks. This would also offer incentives for people to play more once they just reach their rank goal with their main job for the season.

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Originally Posted by Valence

I think the playerbase requirement to sustain it would actually be easier, because there is also a gain in flexibility, namely that if your ranked diamond crystal games don't pop, then you can instead go and play on a job you have at a lower rank to try the queues there instead, which is something you can't currently do unless you have an alt precisely placed in different ranks. This would also offer incentives for people to play more once they just reach their rank goal with their main job for the season.

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Point noted, I can see that benefit for the lower ranks, but it's also hinging on higher rank players willing to do that (and also may not exactly last for long). I'd prefer a more organic approach of making sure lower ranks are picked up from adequate incentivization, as that would lead to a longer lasting solution over purely choice driven queue boosts. (not that they are mutually exclusive, but if I had to pick I'd prefer that)

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Originally Posted by Reinhardt_Azureheim

In the end, you believe in that and I believe in something else.

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1. The whole "stakes" thing. CC rewards suck. There's nothing to play for. Pretty much everyone universally agrees on this. First timers wanna get a weapon glam but after that? Not much point unless you want more weapons glams. Thus the stakes are just your competitiveness as a player and wanting to perform well so your team can get a win. Once you get past the frivolous baubles you'll get from ranking up the only point is pride. So if you're that kind of player who's playing the mode for fun and to compete, which is the vast majority of players, the stakes are entirely self imposed. This is the reality of this community and the mode, if there was something actually worth competing for then I would be willing to accept the traditional definition of "stakes" but it doesn't exist at present, so no, it doesn't really have a place in the discussion unless something changes.

2. I've ranked up multiple characters just in the last year I've gotten at least 5 characters to diamond, three to crystal. Starting from the very bottom. The queue is already full of players who have no idea what they're doing. There's very little difference in quality of opponents below gold and your standard casual match. So no, learning the intricacies of CC at that tier presents no real issue. Anchors are there just as they are in casual, a good player won't suffer that long for it. What I'm talking about as the "basics" players should learn how to do in FL: sprint, recuperate, how to hit buttons. If you don't know these things then CC isn't the place for you, play FL until you figure it out.

3. "What's the point if I can't climb to Crystal anyways" There really isn't much point, that's the point. The difference between casual and ranked queue is entirely superficial, it makes no difference, I think I've illustrated how that is the case. If a player has no shot to rank up to Crystal, they remain at gold and below most likely. And there are lots of players like that, and for some reason you think that queue's going to die when that makes up the vast majority of players. It's pretty weird to type long posts about this issue when the main fundamental point of your argument is something this illogical and flawed.

I don't even really need to go to point 4 and beyond, there's really no reason to. But I will say that getting an easy box ticked on WT is pretty enticing for people who do that every week. It takes 5 minutes which is shorter than a lot of your options week to week. Also, there are plenty of casual players that could use wolf marks, and don't discount the fact there are plenty of completionists who just want to fill out their challenge log every week because it's there. These kinds of players are basically why your casual queue pops fast as it is now to begin with, so it's just weird to act like they don't exist lol

Also, another thing we need to keep in mind here is that they've consolidated ranked to one server per data center now, and have mentioned they'll look into allowing players to queue for ranked from their home server while still being placed in that composite queue. If casual queue were to go away, and every player from the same data center was put into one ranked queue. Queue times are gonna be the least of your problems. The main problem is getting Diamond and above players to play continuously under those conditions. That can be done very easily, it's not hard to think of ways to give incentive to players to play a game mode that they clearly have mastered and like to play.

I'm staunchly convinced that removing casual will just turn CC into a mode where only the same few culprits would play, with the need to constantly queue sync else nothing would pop. Whether there is a difference between casual and ranked or not at a materialistic level, that's still not taking into account how players think and react. Even I, as a ranked player, sometimes I just want to chill without the pressure.

Trying to shoehorn casuals into ranked is doomed from the start, and even if you did, it would only help queues up to gold (unless you want them to be paired with plat/diam+).

I misspoke in my last post. Obviously the way ranked works now is you have to travel data centers to play ranked if the season isn't on your data center so I worded that wrong. As it stands now, casual queue is from your entire data center, and ranked is from one particular data center per season. If they do change it so you can queue up for ranked regardless of which DC you're presently on as they've said they would like to do, and casual queue was removed, that would mean that every player queuing for CC in all of NA would be put into the same queue, at all times. As it stands now you have to consciously make the effort to move data centers to even participate in ranked if it's not being held on your home data center, and we have casual queues being ran for each individual data center, obviously. Now imagine we throw em all together. Not getting an instant queue pop would be basically unheard of.

If consolidating what is presently 5 queues with each data center's casual queue and 1 NA ranked into one queue is going to kill queue times because of hypothetical mumbo jumbo then nobody is actually playing the mode anyways so may as well remove both queues. Casual matches are "ok" sometimes, but you'll always get better matches in ranked, at any tier because the matchmaking is just flat out better. That's why I create new characters to manipulate their stupid system.

I log in to play PvP. I do not log in to sit in a queue simulator for hours, score two matches, and then be locked out of a dead season due to sheer inactivity. If Square Enix has any genuine ambition for a healthy PvP scene, the current design isn't just neglectful it's actively punitive. This is a punishment for wanting to engage with the mode.

The Core Problem, Summarized:

Dead Queues: Ranked is a ghost town. Waits are measured in hours, not minutes, for the vast majority of players outside peak windows.
Self-Sabotaging Fragmentation: The division between Casual and Ranked, coupled with data center isolation and talk of per-job ranking, shatters an already small player base into unsustainable pieces.
Enforced Incompetence: The forced muting of team chat in a mode that demands coordination is a design paradox that undermines any pretense of competitive integrity.

Why This Design is Objectively Flawed (Not an Opinion, It's System Dynamics):

1. The Death Spiral of Time: Players queue expecting a reasonable chance to play. When queue times become unpredictable and excessive, the expected value of queuing drops to zero. They leave. Fewer players mean even longer queues, which drives more players away. This is a basic, predictable negative feedback loop. The current system is engineered to fail.
2. The Incentive Vacuum: "Bragging rights" and a single glamour set are not a reward structure. They are a one-time participation trophy. Healthy PvP requires recurring, tangible incentives seasonal cosmetics, unique mounts, rank-specific currency, titles to maintain player engagement and lower churn. We have none.


Concrete, Implementable Solutions:

Solo/Duo Queue: This is non-negotiable. It is the standard for 5v5 competitive games for a reason. It allows friends to play together while drastically increasing the available player pool for matchmaking. The technology and design principles exist in every other major title.
Dynamic Matchmaking: Implement a "Ranked-First" queue that prioritizes perfect matches but can intelligently relax rank boundaries during off-peak hours to form games, with strict bounds to maintain integrity. Inactivity is a greater threat to competition than a slightly wider MMR spread in a low-pop scenario.
Restore Communication (With Safeguards): The solution to toxicity is not amputation. Enable opt-in text chat for Ranked only, paired with robust moderation tools, cooldowns, and swift penalties for abuse. Empower players to coordinate; do not force them into silent frustration.
Cross-Data-Center Ranked: Merge the queues. The player pool is too small to be divided by artificial server lines. Implement intelligent sharding to preserve ping quality and competitive brackets.