Something about the incoming PvP that really disturbs me. The names. Fresh meat.

[WintersMoondancer]

PvP is the perfect outlet for these types of people- they'll do it there instead of in your dungeon run.

Could deal with that, isolate them to one area only. Make the rest of the things to do in the game a bit more enjoyable for the rest of the people tired of dealing with toxic players.

[Jynx]

The real epeen value

As much as you would like to think Vanity (Or even powerfull) PVP gear is some kind of carrot on a stick to PVP players I just can't get behind that.


In my experience coming from PVP heavy MMO's like Ultima Online (In it's heyday) It wasn't about how many people you could kill it was who you could kill. Not knowing the names of the people you are fighting devalues alot of the "Rush" the more heavy PVP players get. While the whole cross server duty finder itself allready dilutes this enjoyment, the more well known active guils/names will be out there regardless of server, especially if the PVP system is any good and matches players by skill range instead of just Gearscore (Win/loss ratio)

The higher tier guilds will want to know who they are fighting to the point where I bet if they don't let us see the names chances are people will announce them before a match even begins, it's just a really silly way to try and deter toxic interaction with a type of community where that behavior is commonplace. Instead of punishing players who can't play nice (Outright harassment dealing with those reports) SE looks to be taking the easy way out to make it so they get less reports about harassment.

But like I said before I'm not all that into PVP, but I can guarantee SE that their attempts to curb bad behaviour through a even larger screen of anonimity will fail. Think it was bad when you didn't know if someone was on your server? Well enjoy meeting up with the same D-bag "Fresh meat" everytime you enter the PVP arena and not even be aware until it's too late.

[Arkghyom]

In phase 4, as you can see here and here, when you enter the arena, all your enemies have the same exact name: Fresh Meat.

"Ahh, fresh meat!"

[Alhanelem]

As much as you would like to think Vanity (Or even powerfull) PVP gear is some kind of carrot on a stick to PVP players I just can't get behind that.

reward drives PvP in any game. Without incentive to participate, any game that isnt 100% full PvP won't see people participating in it. With incentive, it will work just fine. People only played PvP in WoW because it had rewards (I'm more specifically speaking about the non-pvp servers).

Ballista in FFXI failed because there was nothing to attract people to it- there was pretty much no reward of any kind, not even vanity. Ballista was fun and (in my opinion) well desgined- it's a shame that lack of incentive killed it. It was actually very popular when it first came out- but when people saw there was no point to it, they stopped playing it. Brenner was dead on arrival because, again, they didn't offer any incentive to participate.

The higher tier guilds will want to know who they are fighting to the point where I bet if they don't let us see the names chances are people will announce them before a match even begins, it's just a really silly way to try and deter toxic interaction with a type of community where that behavior is commonplace. Instead of punishing players who can't play nice (Outright harassment dealing with those reports) SE looks to be taking the easy way out to make it so they get less reports about harassment.

One thing to note here: Yoshida did say that premade parties will only face other premade parties, which facilitiates competitive behavior a bit. Beyond that, player names and worlds ARE revealed, at the end of the match on the scoreboard (God, I wish I took more screenshots during beta 4), but you still can't chat to them.

All that said, I do hope that the name masking is limited to the Wolve's Den Colosseum. The more objective based content, such as the later-coming "Frontlines" probably shouldn't have this.

[Meimei]

Ballista in FFXI failed because there was nothing to attract people to it- there was pretty much no reward of any kind, not even vanity.

I thought it was because SE completely abandoned it after 2007 or so. It didn't get any kind of update for many years as it withered and died. I even remember the Brenner cutscene that hinted at something else in the works - but nothing ever came of it.

'Course PVP continued to thrive on maybe two servers. I know Fenrir 60 caps were still booming for a long while to come, last I checked...

And about the "name masking" to "prevent harassment"...can't you see everyone's names on the scoreboard at the end of the match anyway? Or is that going to change?

[Alhanelem]

I thought it was because SE completely abandoned it after 2007 or so. It didn't get any kind of update for many years as it withered and died. I even remember the Brenner cutscene that hinted at something else in the works - but nothing ever came of it.

Abandoning it was a consequence of its lack of popularity, not the other way around.

...can't you see everyone's names on the scoreboard at the end of the match anyway?

You can, but you still can't chat to them, and names are mostly irrelevant at that point. The issue during/before the match is say you see someone you know and hate on the other team, you can have your team gang up on that person and then teabag/curbstomp them repeatedly or whatever because you know who they are, when you might not do that to someone you don't know.

[Misiah]

Any PVP in this game is likely to go the way of Balista and Brenner because only a small fraction of the Final Fantasy community will have any interest... even with incentives. And, if they make the incentives better than what you can get outside of PVP, they'll offend the player base (the 90% who won't be doing PVP) and kill the game for far many more people than if they never had PVP.

[Eldelphia]

I can see both sides of the name thing. I think eventually most regular PvPers will recognise each other's gear/team setups/playstyle and if we can see who was in the team at the end, that's a least half decent.

But half of the fun is going into a fight and realising 'oh crap X guild is in here!'. And promptly doing your best to take them down or avoid being taken down. Or watching an amazing player take people apart. Building up guild reputations in PvP is fun too. I can see that if you want to encourage people to try PvP, making them anonymous will help.

PvPers will work out in less than a minute who is squishy, who is the healer and who is dangerous, 'Fresh Meat' or no. But what is nice is to compare yourself to others, good or bad.

I'm sure it'll work out fine if the game and the balancing is good enough. That concerns me far more than anything else but I have to admit I'm a little disappointed at the name thing.

[AjoraOak]

I've been wondering, did anyone even test the strength of bard in pvp all that much at least in comparison to melee? I mean, with how things currently are couldn't a bard just kite forever while the melee get errors chasing a target that's actually further away?

[hansred]

You do realise that for every person who will respect the ability of the person who bested them in a match, there are many more who are willing to hound them to their server and create characters to harass them ceaselessly over their loss, right?

Good for you if you won't harass someone! The problem lies in the people that will, and the potential for that is, at the moment, too high for SE to risk not placing an anti-harassment feature that can be easily patched out. To you, someone sending you death threats when you log on might not be an issue, but it might break a person who's been struggling with their own issues and plays the game to distract themselves. (I happen to be one of them.)

Anonymity over the internet can bring out deplorable behaviour, even from those who deem themselves adults, especially in an environment where tensions can run high. Remember that you're a small vocal minority on the forums, and you can't speak for those who will act differently.