The Fields of Glory (Shatter)

[Eorzean_username]

AEGIS BOON OF TEXT because I really like Frontlines and I want Shatter to work, since I was excited for it before release.

I'm still getting used to Shatter (now that I gave up and switched GCs so my queues are actually popping).

So far, though, I don't understand Shatter. It's kind of PvP, but not really. Note that the hours I can play mean I always have 24-player matches (I've never seen a 72 pop in any mode, ever).

First, here are my immediate negative impressions:

As a PLD I feel basically pointless:

• If I try to approach Shatter like Seal Rock and strategically CC or control targets, I seem to just cost my team a Crystal, because the time I spend Stunning does not even come close to the DPS that the rest of the enemy team outputs while I'm running around doing 110 potency every few GCDs. I get better results when I just smash my face against my GCD combos and tune out the enemy.
• If I try to fall back and protect healers or casters, again, we just lose the zerg. I get better results when I just pretend it's Feast and leave my allies to fend for themselves unless an absolute emergency occurs.
• If I spend Full Swing on a strategic enemy target, I feel stupid, because now I can't Full Swing the next Crystal.

I'm not even sure if Aegis Boon or Testudo are accomplishing much, since aside from disorganized midfield skirmishing when everyone is bored waiting for Crystals, no one is really fighting. I'd much rather have Melee LB or any DPS boost. Maybe this is a datacenter or time-of-day thing?

Feast (before I stopped out of guilt toward people's Ratings) and Seize made me immediately love FFXIV PvP because they felt tactical and satisfying. Shatter feels like farming FATEs. Yeah, I'm getting good XP and Wolf Marks, but if this was my first exposure to FFXIV PvP I would probably think it's very boring and stop.

I apologize if I come across too negative here — I think Shatter has a lot of potential and I like the concept. I'd just rather queue for EX Roulette or PF a Trial if I want to min-max my DPS against stationary boulders.

The whole thing that was nice about PvP when I first tried it during the Seize/Feast meta is PvP was a change of pace from PvE. I was able to feel smart for using all the tools that basically get ignored most of the time in PvE (Stuns, group defenses, Silence, etc).

A comparison that strongly comes to mind is the two Slaughter matches that have somehow appeared in my Frontlines Roulettes.

I have a lot of fun in Slaughter — that's interesting, because both modes are about zerging down an NPC object.

But in Slaughter:

• The battlefield is tight, claustrophobic, and dangerous.
• Enemy confrontation is inevitable and intense.
• In-between Drones, there is non-stop brawling.
• Drone spawns are predictable both in position and clock, so teams know where to condense to, and you can also anticipate and push to slaughter the enemy team and deny their Drones right before a pop.
• Drones spawn in mass quantity, so it's not effective to just zerg one point, the action is necessarily distributed.
• Drone distribution and tiny HP means you must watch your flanks to prevent opportunistic opponents from nibbling on your Drones before you're finished.

Slaughter feels exciting, and despite the NPC objects and deathmatch vibe, I still have a lot of incentive to use all my tools as a PLD, and my team is very much rewarded for me doing so. (Maybe. Hopefully. It seems so.)

Shatter, in contrast... it's like everyone's really exhausted and just wants it over with. I run up to Crystals, and even if I'm in the middle of a huge pack of Flames (sorry guys, ♥ Flames, I just want my queue to pop) or Mael, everyone just ignores me so they can keep DPSing the Crystal harder. And I don't blame them.

I'm not even sure if zerging Crystals and tuning out everything else is the actual optimal strategy.
In fact, I suspect it is absolutely not — but it seems to be the comfort zone that most players in my matches have settled in to, on all 3 teams, and so Shatter turns into a universal meta of 'Get the Crystal, nothing else matters'.

I loved Seize (Seal Rock) most of all, because contesting a node took effort, was exciting, and required prolonged attention and defense. Distributing players correctly was a tactical decision that could make or break the match. Using CC and defenses to hold or overcome a node was an effective and rewarding support tactic.

My positive impressions about Shatter so far:

It's kind of fun to zone out and just smash a Crystal, I guess? It's like a Striking Dummy that's also a piñata filled with Wolf Marks.

The basic idea of the Compress ↔ Expand system is actually interesting. I think the idea is that teams are supposed to collapse on Crystals, at which point they decide between an uneasy truce (just letting each team race their DPS) or a hostile takeover (trying to disrupt and destroy the other teams so they can't take your Crystal Data).

In practice though, unfortunately it's always been the 'uneasy truce' in my matches, and any team that violates this and tries to be aggressive vs. other players just ends up as a meat-headed bully that loses the zerg.

A few times, I've seen some really interesting stuff happen though:

• Flames deciding to farm kills instead of Crystals, chasing Mael around the map (I assume because Mael seemed weakest) and just farming Battle High for all the Flames until they spent the match slaughtering Mael for my points.
• Mael, being bullied, gave up on engaging and just started retreating around the map trying to hold all 3 capture points.
• Flames tried taking our base while we were on the other side of the map at a Crystal, but a team split with mass-Return caused a swift thwarting of the effort.
• Similarly, other matches have tried to focus on a balance of Crystals and Control Points. This is more fun, it vaguely echoes the fun of Seize, but much weaker.

Unfortunately the conclusion every single time so far is that the team that ignores all this side stuff and prioritizes Crystals still comes out on top.

In fact, Flames would have lost the match for that Mael-farming effort if it weren't for a few choice Crystal pops that ended up right next to Flames and allowed them to combine Crystal'ing with slaughtering.

That's what feels frustrating with Shatter so far: all the positive potential is drowned out by Crystals Crystals Crystals, because by the time I travel around the map to do anything else, I've basically just wasted my time and probably cost my team the match.

The map itself is also extremely confusing compared to Seize.

Seize is fun and intuitive to travel around. Shatter's terrain is hostile to the player — that is interesting, it is a challenge to learn and overcome, but I don't enjoy it very much.

I think what frustrates me about the map is that in practice, the map is mostly just a nuisance that gets me disoriented while trying to reach the next Crystal, because the 2D map is hard to navigate when it's constantly leading me into cliffs and walls.

And the Crystal itself is usually located on a convenient path that players who know the map can keep looping around or camping. The side paths feel mostly like a maze / trap to punish new players, then become ignored (not navigated) once a player is familiar with the territory.

Overall, every single time I try to do anything interesting in Shatter — back-cap an enemy base, support my healers/casters, lock down enemies, trap a straggling opponent in a stunlock for a kill — all I seem to accomplish is wasting my team's time and Data.

Every time I just pretend I'm in Bowl of Embers (True), tunnel the NPC target with max DPS rotation, and strafe 3 yalms out of ground AOEs sometimes ... my team pulls ahead.

I feel bad for not being more enthusiastic. It's just, I have PvE for this. Lots and lots and lots of PvE for this. I'd rather have a little more emphasis on PvP, and something to discourage and punish ignoring your opponents.

What I would really like to see is Crystals requiring Control by a specific Company before the Crystal can be shattered, rather than being a dull tunnel-vision cooperative-truce DPS zerg.

ie, Control of a Crystal is established either Seize-like (you must deactivate a field protecting the Crystal) or capture-point like (you must have majority presence in the Crystal's radius).

Once your team controls the Crystal, you can begin breaking it. But if you lose control, then the enemy has a chance to begin breaking it. Points are still awarded on shattering, based on total DPS done per Company.

This would force player conflict — tunneling and ignoring your enemy would mean losing the node, and having your DPS stream shut off as the Crystal becomes unattackable (first) and then opponent-attackable (second).

Thus, when a Crystal spawns, you would either have all your stuff together and wipe off enemy opposition, or you'd fumble it and lose the node. Then, you must divide your resources to hold the Crystal open for your team while your DPS break it down. Much more like Seize.

But that might upset a lot of players, by slowing down the pace of the match.

Ultimately, I also caution the developers to take my feedback in the following context:

• I play PLD in PvP, so my perspective is very different than any other Job (based on my understanding of FFXIV PvP).
• I'm a newish and relatively inexperienced PvP player.
• I don't tend to PvP much in any other games I play, so I'm also not an experienced PvP gamer overall.
• My opportunities to play are at odd hours of day and never on weekends, so I only experience off-time queues, populations, team compositions, and match sizes (I always get 8v8v8 / 24 matches).
• I do not have a pre-made team to queue and coordinate with.

Some of my concerns and complaints may simply be due to approaching PvP from a relatively low level of skill and coordination, so please take into consideration feedback from other PvP players more experienced than me, which may contradict my more naïve impressions.