Should they end the season on 3.3

[Synestra]

Party Arenas are dead because we dont have enough players for that , and we cant play with friends from other servers....

To help Party Arenas we need to be able to play with people from other servers... Cross Data Centers for PVP would be great... We would be able to play against lots of other people and nationality...

Well i hope they will do something with this, its sad to see that main mode is dead while majority bitches about public mode(solo que). I want to see 2 awesome coordinated teams fighting for glory and cheer for personal favorite, i just love sprorts no matter if its real or e-sport :P

[Februs]

I just don't think the current rewards are generating any real interest... That number one spot should be something everyone wants, even if they're realistically not going to be able to reach it

That exclusivity is also part of the problem.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not the kind of person who thinks that everyone should get a gold star just for participating. Rewards have value because they are exclusive. The problem is that there is a point at which people come to the ultimate conclusion that they aren't even in the running for them based on time alone. Currently, to get any kind of reward outside of your standard tome bonuses, you have to be ridiculously active. We're talking hundreds of matches per season. Not everyone has that kind of time to play. With an hour of log time a time a night, you're looking at only one or two matches, and that's if you ignore all the other content in the game (roulette's, raids, etc.). If you're down to the wire on your weekly caps, then you are even more pressured to split your time doing other things that have a higher payout. So, whereas you're still climbing ranks, you're not going to get any of the abysmally few PvP rewards that are only available to the top tier players.

Ideally, the alternative would be to have other incentives in the form of currency exchanges, but the Wolf Marks's system is also, tragically, out of date and offers nothing of any use or value (aside from a money laundering alternative using desynthesis). If they had a real, useful, purpose to our Wolf Marks, things would be different. Casual players might not have a snowballs chance in hell at getting the PvP exclusive rewards, but at least they could spend their marks and have a reason to actively collect more. If they split up what goods are available between the ranking brackets (ie: lower value items at Unranked-Bronze. Higher value items at Silver - Platinum), there would also be more incentive to actually try to rank up. Even if you knew you'd never make it to the top 10, you'd still have an incentive to play your fair share of matches.

[Zojha]

Rewards have value because they are exclusive.

...frankly, no. Rewards have value because you ascribe value to them for one reason or another. Character progression (for example via experience points/level) is by no means exclusive, but XP are nevertheless a reward whose value motivates people hundreds and thousands of times over in video gaming. And an exclusive turd is still a turd.

The time argument primarily is one for longer seasons. If you have less time per day, you need more days to get to do the same as someone who can manage more games in less days. But that's about it. Currency rewards technically are a good idea, but that's already been debated in other places - the issue of what exactly to offer remains.

[Februs]

...frankly, no. Rewards have value because you ascribe value to them for one reason or another. Character progression (for example via experience points/level) is by no means exclusive, but XP are nevertheless a reward whose value motivates people hundreds and thousands of times over in video gaming. And an exclusive turd is still a turd.

On that we disagree. Firstly, exclusivity most certainly does ascribe value. No one gives two cents for an armour set that literally everyone can have. Why? Because people want to feel special, and there's nothing special about being the exact same as everyone else. Secondly, not all rewards have the same value. If the prize for getting last place was the same as getting 1st place, then there would quite literally be no reason to even try to get 1st. I don't even consider something as insignificant as experience points to be a reward, because quite frankly it's not. It's just progression, and it's available to everyone. The rewards come at the end, if you can carry that progression far enough. It's even worse if you consider the actual value of exp, which is abysmally low in FFxiv. You're not even, technically, progressing, because exp doesn't actually unlock anything new, so much as just improve the tools you start with by tiny amounts.

The time argument primarily is one for longer seasons. If you have less time per day, you need more days to get to do the same as someone who can manage more games in less days. But that's about it. Currency rewards technically are a good idea, but that's already been debated in other places - the issue of what exactly to offer remains.

Gonna have to disagree with this, as well. I'm not making an argument for longer seasons, and making such an argument is utterly pointless. Why? Because the length of the season changes nothing. Say you have two players. Player 1 gets 6 hours a day to play. Player 2 gets 1 hour a day to play. By the sheer difference in play time, Player 1 will always come out on top in the leader boards. It doesn't matter if the season is longer if player 1 is still playing more games. The only way a longer season would be a benefit to the casual player is if the hardcore player gets lazy and decides to take a break.

Currency exchange isn't a way to somehow offer rewards to casual players, or make a half-assed attempt at balancing casual and hardcore players. Frankly, that's impossible. Currency exchange is to offer incentive to continue playing, even when you know that the exclusive rewards are beyond your reach. As for what kind of items to offer, that's simple. You just have to ask yourself what gets, and keeps, people in the game? What content is lacking from PvP that might pull willing players away to other content? Materia? Crafting materials? Relic items? Gear upgrades? Mounts and Minions? I can probably think of about 100 different items that I can only currently get by not playing PvP which would be awesome to see at a WD vendor, and that's just with existing content. If we're talking about speculative content exclusive for PvP Vendors, then the list is damn near endless.

[Zojha]

No one gives two cents for an armour set that literally everyone can have.

Except everyone who simply likes the look of the armor. Or, the stats. Or anything else that might make it desirable to you. And due to this, rewards are indeed not equally valuable - you might like the look of X item, but not Y item. So X is more valuable to you than Y.Whether X or Y is exclusive is irrelevant. That's why I said: An exclusive turd is still a turd. It's not valuable and no amount of exclusivity will make it so. Meanwhile, oxygen is very valuable, but not exclusive at all (yet, luckily). Exclusivity objectively has no value and creates no value - it has subjective value to you as a person because you believe it does. But exclusivity has no innate utility.

I don't even consider something as insignificant as experience points to be a reward, because quite frankly it's not. It's just progression, and it's available to everyone.

That's...kinda the reason I brought it up. It's a reward, you don't get it for nothing. You get the XP for killing enemies, FATEs or doing other tasks and you get the abilities for reaching certain XP milestones (aka: Levels). It is objectively a reward. You do something, you get something in turn. The fact that it's a reward available to everyone does not make it any less of a reward. And that's the point. Not every reward, especially not every desired reward, is exclusive. And not everything exclusive is desirable.

Gonna have to disagree with this, as well. I'm not making an argument for longer seasons, and making such an argument is utterly pointless. Why? Because the length of the season changes nothing. Say you have two players. Player 1 gets 6 hours a day to play. Player 2 gets 1 hour a day to play. By the sheer difference in play time, Player 1 will always come out on top in the leader boards. It doesn't matter if the season is longer if player 1 is still playing more games. The only way a longer season would be a benefit to the casual player is if the hardcore player gets lazy and decides to take a break.

You are currently arguing that the leaderboards have nothing to do with skill, only with time. Otherwise, the better player would end up on top given enough season time, not the person who plays more. I'm sorry, but if that is true, leaderboards and rankings as such are complete and entirely pointless and we should get rid of them ASAP. Uhm...yeah. I don't know what to do with such an argument.

What content is lacking from PvP that might pull willing players away to other content?

I'm not sure that's a good question to ask, because it's trying to substitute every other content with PvP. Trying to answer this question, I can name everything from crafter leveling over MSQ to Gold Saucer points and Savage Raids. And truly, if I asked the same question for gold saucer players, pure crafters or pure dungeon players, I'd be in the same position. How many of these make sense as rewards for PvP? How many are redundant, since PvP awards tomes?

[Dimitrii]

I believe the queues will pick up a little later on, at least on Primal. There's dozens of players atm who naively believe they will be able to just stop queuing right now and still end up within the top 100. Imo if you dont have 1150+ points you arent safe to do that and primal has at least 40 ppl in the rankings with less than 1100 points which is not a safe position at all. As the season starts drawing to a close numbers 42 to 100 are gonna get pushed more and more because they have so little points (i.e all are under 1150 points).

[Februs]

That's why I said: An exclusive turd is still a turd. It's not valuable and no amount of exclusivity will make it so.

You're not 100% wrong, but you're oversimplifying this by a dramatic margin. If exclusivity allotted no value, the no one would do savage raids. No one would go out of their way to get obscure titles that require an obnoxious amount of time and effort to get. No one would bother to go after rare mounts or minions, and no one would spend Millions of Gill on the Market Board on what is essentially useless glamour pieces. Sure, value is widely attributed to an object based on personal tastes, but originality is gained by exclusivity. Having that rare and unobtainable item is a status symbol in the community. I could pretend that people don't care about that kind of thing, but I'd just be telling myself a beautiful, and wholly unconvincing, lie.

I do agree that there should be more value to attributed an exclusive reward than it's exclusivity alone, but people are still going for it regardless. Given that stats are next to worthless in PvP, they're not going after for that reason ...

That's...kinda the reason I brought it up. It's a reward, you don't get it for nothing. You get the XP for killing enemies, FATEs or doing other tasks and you get the abilities for reaching certain XP milestones (aka: Levels).

This is a fundamental difference in perspective and mindset. I don't see exp as a reward at all, no matter how hard I worked for it. It's progression; not reward. The levels and skill I attain by gaining exp are nothing more than tools to be used for my advancement. The reward is what I get when I achieve my ultimate goal by using those tools, which is victory. I compare it to getting a paycheck at work. I put in my 9-5, and I get what I earned. It's not a reward for achieving anything. It's a direct exchange between effort and effect. The reward, by comparison, would be your yearly bonus for overachieving on a performance evaluation. These two things are not equal to me. If they are to you, then we won't see eye to eye on this, which is totally fine. Everyone is entitled to their own perspective.

You are currently arguing that the leaderboards have nothing to do with skill, only with time.

No. Not even close. Again, you are dramatically oversimplifying what I said and flat out misunderstanding the entire concept.

If we're comparing two players who have equal opportunity to play, then the difference between their position is determined by skill and luck (it is a team based game mode, after all). If two players have an identical total number of matches played, then any differences in their final standing could only be explained by A) their personal skill level and/or B) how lucky they got with their teammates. That's not even a question, and I never once contested that.

However, I wasn't comparing a two players with equal an opportunity to play. I was (hypothetically) comparing two equal players who don't have equal opportunity. In that circumstance, the player with less matches played couldn't possibly surpass the player with more matches played, even if they were dramatically better at the game. You can't pull bonus points out of an un-played match. Extending the duration of the season doesn't help either, because making it a longer season doesn't change the fact that one player simply has more time to log in. If a player is working 16 hour days, he can't compare to the log time of someone working 4 hour days, regardless of how long the season is. I'm not really sure how you're confusing this, because it's pretty straight forward.

Regardless, I never said anything about the skill levels of higher top tier players. I'm just accounting for the possibility of equally skilled players who don't get nearly as much time to enjoy themselves. I also didn't say a single word about leaderboards being pointless and that we should get rid of them. I really don't know what you should do with that argument either, because I didn't make it.

I'm not sure that's a good question to ask, because it's trying to substitute every other content with PvP.

Given the current position of PvP, it's a perfectly fine question to ask. The reason being is that, currently, we have more reasons not to play PvP than we actually have to keep playing.

Almost everything in this game overlaps with something else. Crafting materials can be obtained from dungeons/trials/raids/diadem/beast tribe quests. Gold Saucer Points can also be exchanged for rare cards found in dungeons/trials/raids etc. You can gear up traditionally (tomestones/ex trials/raids) or you can craft and meld gear. The GC and Hunt systems are practically married to one another, and you can obtain lower level gear upgrades using Hunt marks. The list goes on. If we're talking about redundancy in content, then PvE has it in spades. Practically anything you want to do outside of savage level content can be obtained or worked towards while doing any number of other things.

Do you know what overlaps with PvP? Tomestones. Just that one thing, and it happens to be the one most common "reward" in the entire game. It's no wonder why the incentive to queue for PvP is so heavily outweighed by the incentive to queue for practically anything else. The only truly exclusive rewards across the content in this game is mounts, minions, and titles, and we have all those things already. I'm not saying that more exclusive rewards wouldn't be a good thing. It sure would be, but regardless of how much sense those rewards make for PvP, they're not enough to tip the scales and keep PvP queues alive. That's a fact, and it live and breathes in the DF every day. Trying to all of the other content in the game with PvP would be a bit dramatic and going to far, that's true, but providing a little bit of balance in incentives is definitely not a bad thing, especially considering literally everything PvE related already does this shamelessly. No one should feel left out or punished just for playing and enjoying PvP. SE could stand to level the playing field a little if they want to make a serious run at keeping this content alive.

[Titor]

Yes, feast needs to end in 3.3. Look at the leaderboards for many of the data centers, it is so stagnant. Probably less than 30% of those on the leaderboard are actually playing (you can see their modifiers from the last day) and it is only going to get worse, especially with 3.3 and shatter. I know I am done with Feast for the season (Unless something drastic happens in 3.3 and/or I start to fall off the board for my datacenter)

[Vaeria]

The rewards of your blood, sweat and tears. Assuming the stats will be beastly at least..cuz another Kirimu jacket with an additional cod piece just makes me wonder why we just didn't do it for free.


..know im gonna get in trouble for this but just gotta ask. ...if it was between this gear set and.....bigger boobs for your character...which? K..I apologize. Don't answer.

[Chilla]