PVP needs some serious improvement - Some suggestions

[Murakamo]

So after patch 2.25 came out I was looking at the new armours and got really excited. I couldn't wait to get my hands on them. Imagine my disappointment when I found out the following:

1. Leveling from rank 1 to 30 was (as I have heard) an extremely long grind.
2. Leveling from rank 30 to 40 was an even longer grind than rank 1 to 30.
3. The Queue times for PVP are extremely long (for a pvp queue)

Under normal circumstances, I would not care about issues 1 and 2. My idea is to have fun with PVP along the way until I can finally be rewarded with awesome gear. However, issue 3 is what is causing issues 1 and 2 to be an extreme let down.

Because of issue 3, I am forced to choose between the two options of:

Grinding for PVP gear OR
Raiding, boss fighting, crafting, gathering, ie everything else

This choice is what I feel is hurting PVP a lot. The long queue times are in my opinion the cause of all PVPers' concerns. With queue times being 15 minutes or more and PVP matches lasting around 2-3 minutes, means I am getting around 8 to 10 minutes of fun an hour.

Meanwhile, I can't do anything during the wait time. I can try doing fates and leveling some alts, however many times the duty finder pops mid way during a fate. I cannot farm myth for my atma because there are almost no ways to earn myth outside of dungeons (beastment give a laughable amount for what you have to do and I don't want to burn my gil on treasure hunts). Heck, I can't even level my chocobo because summoning him will cancel my DF.

The only real way to improve PVP's situation right now is to give people more incentive to try it. With more people trying PVP, I believe the queue time will drop significantly. One way I can think of to give people incentive to PVP is to provide non PVP rewards. Something as simple as small myth rewards would make it feel that focusing 100% of my time into PVP would not let me fall behind in other areas of the game.

The above suggestion is my two cents and I would appreciate it if others could post their suggestions as well.

[skaterger]

As much as I think your idea is sound, my suspicion is that the player demographics are just not into pvp. Many who play the game are long time followers of the ff franchise and it has always been more about friendship, camaraderie and working together rather than fighting each other. Its kinda like the tank and healer shortage and even offering incentives for players to play those roles didnt really help much.
Maybe a large scale pvp battle between factions would pique some interest, my 2 cents

[Murakamo]

As much as I think your idea is sound, my suspicion is that the player demographics are just not into pvp. Many who play the game are long time followers of the ff franchise and it has always been more about friendship, camaraderie and working together rather than fighting each other. Its kinda like the tank and healer shortage and even offering incentives for players to play those roles didnt really help much.
Maybe a large scale pvp battle between factions would pique some interest, my 2 cents

That was exactly my line of thinking. I too am more into the PVE side than PVP. However, I do enjoy PVP and it pains me that this game is making me choose between the two. If playing PVP also made me feel like I was progressing a bit PVE wise, it wouldn't feel so bad.

[Moheeheeko]

When other pvp activities that arent arena become available *cough*frontlinesgetonthatshitSE*cough* more people will pvp.

Theres a large group that likes pvp, but doesnt like arenas. I like both but have postponed my pvping untill others become more interested.

[Nalien]

Outside balance issues, the main issue I've heard from most people I know is that the current PvP mode is just dull. It really should have gotten some additional modes before Frontlines (which is 2.3, so too late now?);

• Skirmish: Kill count mode, team with the most kills wins. Players can obviously respawn.
• Capture the Flag: Transport (which was a feature added in 2.1) enemies Flag to your side to score points.
• King of the Hill: Destination spawns randomly on the map, first person to stand in it starts a countdown, when that's reached they score. Countdown can be interrupted by removing the player from the destination.
• Festival of the Hunt: More PvE than PvP, but some PvP included. Instanced version of one of the cities, kill enemies for points, most points win. You can also kill the opposing team to prevent them scoring points, but killing them wont earn you points.

Other than the last one, all of those should be fairly simple to implement, and they'd add variety to what is a completely bland system as it is. Plenty more achievements to earn, plenty more challenges they could build around them, and if they slap Seals/Gil on the PvP challenges I'd think a few people would PvP for that alone.

[Airget]

Might also be because pvp is designated in the same sense as DF so only a handful of servers actually compete with one another. It would be more logical if they made pvp into a single entity so that the queue times should go down. The reasoning for this is because there is no designated "PVP" server so it's possible that the pvp community is there but when some are on server group A, some on group B, C and D it stretches out the community to the point where it shows that there is no interest in it.

[Murakamo]

Might also be because pvp is designated in the same sense as DF so only a handful of servers actually compete with one another. It would be more logical if they made pvp into a single entity so that the queue times should go down. The reasoning for this is because there is no designated "PVP" server so it's possible that the pvp community is there but when some are on server group A, some on group B, C and D it stretches out the community to the point where it shows that there is no interest in it.

I heard about that as well. I don't understand why they would do this.

[skaterger]

That was exactly my line of thinking. I too am more into the PVE side than PVP. However, I do enjoy PVP and it pains me that this game is making me choose between the two. If playing PVP also made me feel like I was progressing a bit PVE wise, it wouldn't feel so bad.

The problem though is striking a balance between the 2. People will only pvp if they feel the classes are balanced but balancinv a game around pvp can be tredding on a slippery slope. For example certain changes to skills and abilities need to be made to classes that while balanced in pve, might be OP in pvp, thus alienating a large part of the pve playerbase. This has been a problem in many other mmos, most noticably Wow.

[Taruranto]

The arena gets boring after a while.

They should start considering open-world pvp, something like Ballista.

[Niroken]

As much as I think your idea is sound, my suspicion is that the player demographics are just not into pvp.

That could be but there could be players who don't like the current PvP system that was implemented, at least for me that was the reason I don't PvP even though I loved to PvP in other MMORPG's.