Since 2.5 no one seems to do PVP anymore

[kpxmanifesto]

Many changes to Frontlines and Wolve's Den to come in Heavensward. Please look forward to it.

MMORPG.com interview with Naoki Yoshida on the Heavensward Expansion:

Naoki Yoshida: ... and with Heavensward, we’re going to have a new map for our Frontline with new rules as well.

After all that is implemented we’re going to work on the Wolves Den map, with the large scale PVP we’re trying to get as many people to come in contact with that type of content. A lot of Final Fantasy players have never played PVP or just hearing PVP makes them hesitate on trying to play so we’re trying to get as many people used to that type of content and once we have that in place, then we’ll expand on the Wolves Den so it’s a more intense PVP experience, where it runs in parallel to how the large scale and the more hardcore stuff develops, expands and progress in their own ways.

[Nalien]

Naoki Yoshida: ... and with Heavensward, we’re going to have a new map for our Frontline with new rules as well.

While I'm happy to hear about their plans (even if the majority of them have no timeframe for release), this pretty much sums up what I think the developers are doing wrong.

They're focusing on new maps and new rules when they should be refining the old ones. How old is Slaughter? How many issues does it have? How many issues do Secure and Wolves Den have? Forget that, work on new maps and new rules which will suffer the exact same fate because we'll almost certainly not touch them again once they're released...

The fact that he thinks Wolves Den is "more for core players" and not simply a haven for win traders is extremely telling of how out of touch they are... Christ, if they'd just worked on a proper ranking system to begin with the whole "newbs being put off when they're stomped by veterans" wouldn't even be a damn issue anyway, but no... Instead they work on more maps and rules... Sigh...

Most of the stuff I'm looking forward to is off in the distant future and instead they expect me to be excited for a new map/rules after Slaughter... Ugh...

Naoki Yoshida: So that’s why we wanted to focus more on the larger scale and expand on the Frontlines content, have people take their time and get used to the mechanics of it. Increase their skill level, so there isn’t such a gap between the general players versus the really hardcore players, and once we’ve seen that’s balanced out that’s when we’re going to transition.

This gets me as well. OK, I get that we want new blood in the PvP community, but... Build a core community that can sustain itself before you try expanding it... You want to get "casual" players used to PvP? Yeah, that's great. While you're doing that the "hardcore" players that make up the core of the PvP community are slowly getting tired of the utter lack of progress on anything that actually matters and might keep them around for longer and are leaving. Queue times slump. "Casuals" see long queues and don't bother. See the problem there Yoshi?

Also, this whole thing strikes me as absurdly backwards... You want to get new players in with a 24/72 man objective based instance which will obviously have queue issues off those numbers alone, so they can be comfortable in an 8/16 man instance? Wouldn't it make far more sense to do that the other way around? Have Wolves Den as the casual instance where you can enter quickly and sharpen your skills/obtain gear before heading into the epic large scale instance which should have a focus on group coordination/objectives?