Quote Originally Posted by reality_check View Post

All in all, the Final Fantasy crowd has always been a hard crowd to get onto the PVP train. I am not surprised that PVP has failed up to now. It feels as though PVP has been implemented with 0 foresight.

Please, I implore you to take a hard look at FFXIV PVP again and make some drastic changes. The fundamentals are there -- an action based combat system with gorgeous visuals and decisive moments that can make out break an outcome of a skirmish. But, the execution has been poor since the beginning and doesn't look like it will change any time soon.
PvP is generally awful in every MMORPG.This stems from gear and skills designed for fast-paced dungeon crawls get used against players who aren't on an even playing field. Want to run over every PvP player, pick tank and steamroll over every DPS. Want to be an annoying pest, pick healer and throw loads of DoT's at your target so they will never be able to self-heal from them. PvP also encourages hacking, and FFXIV has no anti-cheat check. These anti-cheat programs tend to make the game sluggish and horrible to play.

A game designed from the very beginning to have PvP as part of the game (see Archeage's Piracy mechanics) tends to fail in the long run because griefers chase casuals out of the game on purpose because PvP games attract sociopaths, even when there is no reward in doing it. I gave up on that game because it just wasn't fun once you get to level 50.

I've stayed out of FFXIV's PvP system because similar systems in other games have been full of cheats, and whoever has the lowest latency wins.

If you want to get more people into PvP in FFXIV, there needs to be something more storyline-relevant to do so. As far as I know the existing PvP content isn't storyline relevant other than what unlocks it. Open-world PvP would not work in FFXIV, because the game just doesn't have lore to back that up.