"There are no seasonal rewards for party rankings."

[Myon88]

I don't get the argument that this is to prevent win trading. This isn't like Triple-Triad or Verminion where you can simply stand in the same room with someone and guarantee you'll get matched with them. Match making is Duty Finder based, so it's random. To win trade you'd either have to collude with an entire data center; which would be impossible, or find a way to manipulate their matching algorithm in Duty Finder. Yes, people could arrange win-trades off-site and that would be an issue on the chance that the two parties do in fact get matched (which in and of its own is a very low chance)

I don't think it's a very low chance at all. The PvP community is already small enough as it is - it will be a simple matter for two colluding teams to simply queue simultaneously at 3am or something where the vast majority of the datacenter is asleep.

If the penalties for refusing the duty finder pop are not strict, you can additionally game it the same way people game the Verminion queue for an additional level of certainty. Two wintraders queue, if one guy gets the pop and the other doesn't, you know a stranger is getting matched with you - so you drop it and both try again.

It seems a little counterintuitive, but if you think about it logically, making solo ranked the only 'real' mode is the best course of action for SE if they want the mode to stay alive. At least this way you pull from the entire server's population instead of the incredibly tiny subset that actually 1. Takes PvP seriously and 2. Bothers to make a premade team for it.

[Kyani]

I don't think it's a very low chance at all.

It seems a little counterintuitive, but if you think about it logically, making solo ranked the only 'real' mode is the best course of action for SE if they want the mode to stay alive. At least this way you pull from the entire server's population instead of the incredibly tiny subset that actually 1. Takes PvP seriously and 2. Bothers to make a premade team for it.

I agree with this. Everyone knows who the "stack things in my favor" PvPers are, and those of us on Aether have a good idea of just how willing they are. The top spot (hell, maybe the top 10 spots) had absolutely zero chance of being touched by players outside of their clique.

I do think the number of rewards should be increased, (Top .1%, Top 1%, Top 10%?) but if you're good enough to cross a percentage threshold with a team, you can do it solo.

[Renault]

Snip

I'll respond to both you and the person you quoted. The reason the PVP community is so small is because there is no incentive to PVP. There have been very little to no rewards for a very long time. If there was more incentive, I guarantee the population would be higher.

That said, "stacking things in your favor" is the whole point of premade teams. You get together skilled, like minded players to work towards the top. In party play, everyone is in a party, so I don't see how any one team has the upper hand in anything other than skill.

[Airget]

I agree with this. Everyone knows who the "stack things in my favor" PvPers are, and those of us on Aether have a good idea of just how willing they are. The top spot (hell, maybe the top 10 spots) had absolutely zero chance of being touched by players outside of their clique.

I do think the number of rewards should be increased, (Top .1%, Top 1%, Top 10%?) but if you're good enough to cross a percentage threshold with a team, you can do it solo.

Ya, I think reward wise it should have a similar mentality to the Mega Cactpot.

Say something like. Reward Quanity starts at 100% then for each player who gets over 500 in ranking .1% is added to that quantity. Then if players get over 2k another .2% is added to that mix.

So let's say 500 players made it to 910 and 150 made it to 2k+ 50% for those 500 players and 45% for the 150 players, which sadly would just miss the ability to offer second place the grand prize but it would Body gear to 19 and Head gear to 195 players so overall 195 players get reward out of those 650 players. Which does mean that the 45 players from the 500 player list would at least gear a head gear while the 150 at 2k+ all are guaranteed to get head piece.

I think a method like this would create incentive to keep pushing to become stronger/win because at one point if you keep trying to play you may just become discouraged much like in Triple Triad when you see 50 wins, near max point for all the people on the chart you pretty much go "pft not gonna win no point joining in tourney." Which will happen with Feast if a player who let's say has 250 look at the current and sees other players with 3k-4k, they will just go, "no chance I"ll rank so I won't even bother this season."

At least by creating a reward system that can increase in quantity you encourage people to push to the last moment.