i love PvP....

[Nalien]

I think the GC issue effects both Frontlines and Wolves Den.

It doesn't. The Grand Company restriction is solely for Frontlines. Wolves' Den had its own Rank restriction, which was piss-poorly implemented. It matched your party up based on your PvP Rank. If anything it should have matched players up based on their win ratio. Even then though, they only implemented that restriction because win traders got i100 and started stomping everyone with Morale gear, which naturally put a lot of people off. Now that Morale is much weaker there seems like little reason for the restriction to still be in place, yet there it is...

Doesn't help that Wolves' Den was split into several brackets to further compound the queue issues, with the i80 option not even being apparent since you have to unlock it by talking to an NPC with no indication that you should talk to said NPC (that's always going to irk me it seems).

Really, Wolves' Den has just been poorly handled and forgotten about. They're more interested in churning out new Frontlines versions. Secure put the last nails in Wolves' Dens coffin, Slaughter is doing the same to Secure and Slaughter seems to be largely unpopular as it is. It certainly put me off PvP.

The Grand Company restriction is certainly not helping Frontlines queues, but at the end of the day PvP is suffering because "for fun" isn't keeping people interested long enough. I'll do PvP "for fun", but it wont consistently keep me doing PvP. Likewise, the physical rewards wont keep people queuing consistently. Some people get them then stop. All of that causes queues to eventually just suffer over time and then people cannot get back in; "These queues are too long, I wont bother".

What PvP really needs is rewards which are unique to it and consistently useful. Currently the most Wolf Marks offer you once you've obtained whatever gear you want is a desynthesis option, which is nice but not everyone crafts... Appealing to e-peen seems like the best option; A proper Leaderboard system and Tournaments would keep something like Wolves' Den appealing in the long term. Something like Final Fantasy XIs Conquest system could keep Frontlines appealing as well. Instead we get new versions which are hot for a week or two, but once people move on the damage is done and queues suffer.

Also, I'm of the opinion that FF14 should do what SWTOR did and put all PvP under one queue option. You queue for PvP and it randomizes between Wolves Den, Slaughter, Frontlines, blah blah blah. This prevents older content from being unofficially obseletededed.

With Slaughter in the mix? No. I don't use the PvP Roulette because of Slaughter. If there was only one option and it might stick me in Slaughter I'd drop PvP completely.