The "Removing GC Restrictions Will Increase Interest In PvP" Caveat

[Thekk]

That's all just potential, tho. We all know that in practice, tanks are not as common as healers on average and likewise, a GC that is overall underrepresented might be overrepresented in PvP. We also don't know how the role distribution in PvP looks like. Heck, we don't even know if a game isn't starting because we're waiting on that one last adder or because we're 5/5/5. Transparency is rather lacking.

Just having it show the number of people queueing for each company akin to what is done with roles would go a long way to help balance them out and reduce complaints from people having no clue why they are waiting for so long. I'm also pretty sure that would be much easier to implement than getting rid of GCs in frontlines, though that should be the end goal.

[Februs]

The motivation behind removing GC restrictions is not to increase interest in PvP. The idea behind removing them is to fill queue slots faster by switching the queue to a first come first serve style.

The way things work now, GC restrictions ensure that the queue times of the most populated GC are at the mercy of the least populated GC, because the match can only go through so long as all 3 GC's have a complete team to play. We already have a small pool of players to choose from, so further dividing it with strict matchmaking requirements just makes it worse. To give an example:

With GC restrictions on: If Maelstrom and Flames have two full teams queued (Mael: 48 players / Flames: 48 players / Total of 96 players), but Adders only has one team (24 players) queued, then only one of Maelstrom's and Flame's teams will go through the queue. The other two full teams they have will have to wait in limbo until enough players on Adder's end queue up to create a second match. If Adders simply doesn't have the players to fill a second match, then that match can't happen until the first match ends, which is a damn long wait that could be made even longer if the number of players queued isn't even.

With GC restrictions off: With the same example as above (Mael: 48 / Flames: 48 / Adders: 24), the combined total of queued players from all three GC's is 120 players. GC affiliation is irrelevant. The first 72 players of those 120 get into a full match of 72-man Front Lines. What is left is 48 players. With GC restrictions, those players would have to wait for all 3 GC's to have even numbers to get in. However, without those restrictions, those remaining 48 players can make two additional matches of 24-man Front Lines.

This is simplifying quite a bit, but obviously the second situation is the more favourable one if we're interested in actually getting people to play as many matches as possible during their available log time.

Now, would that generate more interest in PvP? It's possible, but that's not the goal. The goal is to drive the average queue time down, so that we can get as many people who are already interested in PvP, people spending hours waiting one queue times, into actual matches. If queue times were lower, then people who don't have the available log time each night to wait 30+ minutes for a match might actually try. People who prefer to party with friends but couldn't due to GC restrictions might also take an interest, but, again, those things (if they happened) would just be a happy side effect. The goal is to get those wait times down. There are a lot of other ways that they could do this, but removing those GC restrictions is by far the simplest and most effective thing that they can do right now.

[kensatsu]

Some players think pvp:
1- is not fun
2- is too long to queue
3- lack reward [completely unbalanced with pve]
4- Pvp set is ugly,and don't have a lot of use for pvp, and it's ilvel205 so we won't it use for pve.
After this you can say the feast was without restriction, you think pvp is not popular at all, it's true it's not popular, but the feast 8vs8 was just even worst in popularity, because players got to queue only for seize and 4vs4 feast when the season started.
I guess a lot of players don't like the medals mechanics at all, and was just doing 4vs4 feast to get in top100.

In tend to proof most of the players only doing this for rewards, and players doing pvp for fun is a few, afterall you got the rewards and after you can get others reward by doing pve content.

Even if i like arena pvp, Front seem more popular than arena, the small community is divided about it.
about GC restriction : why think it won't change anything in the queue, players is asking this to get rid of unblanced population in GC, even if the community stay small, it's seem a logic to me it will make front queue faster without this restriction, you tell it's don't make any change of the feast 8vs8, you are right, because instead of queueing feast 8vs8, players was queuing seize to get casual pvp and feast 4vs4 to get toxic drugs and maybe the reward of the top 100 XD.
I even heard some players saying: i don't like the feast and the mount is ugly so i don't queue the feast, i can get 24 players seize instead.

[NorthernLadMSP]

The main argument for GC removal is not that more people would try out PvP (sure there might be some), but that the current people interested wouldn't have to wait for the stars to align.

There most likely is 72~ people in queue quite often, but all 72 of the people could be in the same GC.

This.

The other thing that needs to happen is that the PVP gear you grind needs to actually do something, because it is now literally useless other than cool glamour.

[Cleanse]

It doesn't help that, universally across all servers, the breakdown of GC membership is Adders> Maelstrom> Flames, according to the last Eorzea Census.

I would hope that SE is becoming aware of these metrics and planning to adjust accordingly

The overall GC breakdown doesn't mean much. We're talking about the PvPers on each datacenter (friends tend to all pick the same GC to group together). When one GC has long wait times and others are much shorter, that shows that a skewed interest is being shown per GC, per datacenter.

Also, as an aside, I am unsure if rank, language etc have any part in it, but those also are things that splinter an already small group of players.

Finally, removal of GC _could_ also potentially balance out matches. Organized groups will potentially be more spread apart and not all in one GC/team.

[Casmir_Chev]

Youa re wrogn OP, Feast had low que tiems for healers and tanks because of no GC restrictions.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

Youa re wrogn OP, Feast had low que tiems for healers and tanks because of no GC restrictions.

And not because it was newer and tanks/healers generally have lower queue times due to a smaller pool of both jobs and players queuing as them? I'm not attacking your point, but I am rounding out the spectrum with the factors that must be considered as well.

And my larger point is exactly as I'd said. Removing GC restrictions - which I want as well as anyone else - is not going to be the magic fix that suddenly increases interest in PvP. Not when you have players that admit they avoid it, ignore it, or sarcastically crack "what's PvP?"

[kensatsu]

The feast have long queue, because players play front and also because of the healer/tank need also.
The same happen when you enter in the front, i am almost all time forced to switch to healer, because my team is full of dps.
exemple : 80/100 of the want to queue as dps in pvp, it's an exemple but i don't think it's far from reality XD

[AbandonHopeTD]

Seriously, no one wants GC restriction. They know we don't want GC restriction. It's basically just a case of them not giving a shit at this point. Remove GC, Make the team names Claws, Fangs and whatever like feast. I don't see what is so hard. "Give us feedback, We listen" Yeah okay.

[Dumbledoremd]

Hopefully they add a level 60 version of the older maps too that would also generate interest