Are you happy with FFXIV PVP and its current direction? Yes or No?

[Fuma]

Why penalize top players? They're already penalized by being forced to play with players of lower skill, risking their ranking. No, just no.

Matchmaking makes the chances of them playing with a player much lower than their ranking much more unlikely when they get to higher ranks. And they should have to prove their worth over the course of the season and not just the first 2 or 3 weeks as they get their rank up.

[Dimitrii]

Why penalize top players? They're already penalized by being forced to play with players of lower skill, risking their ranking. No, just no.

As much as I hate the idea of being forced to play a set amount of matches per week this is something that has to be implemented if this mode is supposed to survive. Its a complete joke how the whole mode shuts down once 100 ppl reach 1050+ points. The whole being forced to play with players of lower skill risking their ranking thing isnt a valid reason to not institute it either imo as its something EVERYONE has to deal with anyway. The better players will rise above it to get ranked in the end anyway if everyone is forced to have to do it.

[Nirokun]

Matchmaking makes the chances of them playing with a player much lower than their ranking much more unlikely when they get to higher ranks. And they should have to prove their worth over the course of the season and not just the first 2 or 3 weeks as they get their rank up.

People want rank decay to keep the queue times low, but rank decay you propose hurts the people who play the content the most.

Top PVPers shouldn't have to prove "their worth", they already have by virtue of sitting at the top. Nothing is stopping anyone else from using the same queue times the "top" players are using, it's not invite-only or something. Besides, the faster you rise to the top, the lonelier it is and longer the queue times. On Primal, the queue times were acceptable up until Shatter was released, which was much more than 2 or 3 weeks of Feast activity. I play ranged in Feast, which had the longest queue times as far as I can tell.

Besides, tightening the ranks in the party composition to adjacent tiers might be enough to keep top players playing. Silver and below won't notice it after ranks are established because of the groupings (Silver and below/Gold and up). If you're not at least Gold, you won't play with the players you're attempting to penalize anyway, top players will still play and below will continue to wait.

[Fuma]

-snip-

While I didn't state it originally but better queue times are also something I hope would come out of having a decay system. But I still stand by my point that just because you're at the top doesn't mean you shouldn't have to play matches to prove yourself, what's the point then? If you truly are good you can prove it week to week and finish at the top. I also feel like I stated that the minimum games needed should be around 10 as it's very little effort after your first big initial push and would help keep the number of players playing up over the course of the season.

[Februs]

People want rank decay to keep the queue times low, but rank decay you propose hurts the people who play the content the most. Top PvP'ers shouldn't have to prove "their worth", They already have by virtue of sitting at the top.

That's not true at all.

Obviously this varies between party and solo-queue, but Rank is not just a product of personal skill. Feast is a team match. The people you crawl over to get to the top are just as responsible for your rank as you are. Luck as well as total play time are equally big contributors to your rank as your own efforts, and a person with the free time to play 30+ matches a night is far more likely to reach a higher rank than someone who only has the time to play 1 or 2 matches a night. A player at platinum is not somehow "better" than a bronze or un-ranked player just by the virtue of them sitting in the top ranks. They could be, but it's just as likely that they suck and simply had good luck with party compositions or had far more time to play. So, no. No one should get a free pass on defending their rank just because it happens to be higher than someone else's.

Further, players with higher potential play time are the ones who stand to lose the least with a decay system in place. I can understand why players with high rank would feel threatened by rank decay because they can no longer sit on their safety cushion when they reach 1000+ points, but if you actually play the game more than other people, you have more opportunities to maintain your rank. A player who doesn't get to log in often, for whatever reason, stands to lose their rank without contest far faster than someone who logs in every day but simply chooses not to play. If you log in frequently but chose not to queue for Feast, then it's no one's fault but your own when your rank drops. As far as I'm concerned, if you're not willing to defend your rank, then you don't deserve it.

[Nirokun]

While I didn't state it originally but better queue times are also something I hope would come out of having a decay system. But I still stand by my point that just because you're at the top doesn't mean you shouldn't have to play matches to prove yourself, what's the point then? If you truly are good you can prove it week to week and finish at the top. I also feel like I stated that the minimum games needed should be around 10 as it's very little effort after your first big initial push and would help keep the number of players playing up over the course of the season.

Okay, let me give you an example. Someone who works 2nd or 3rd shift can only play during off-hours when queue's are long, getting 10 matches a week is much more difficult for them compared to someone with a traditional schedule? Your proposed system would now penalize someone for their work schedule if they couldn't manage those 10 games (with long queue times compared to peak hours). Why can't they keep the points they've already earned? Your system encourages them not to queue at all, because of their schedule causing them to continually drop their rating.

As far as "playing to prove yourself", that doesn't make sense at all, you cannot achieve a high rank without playing and proving yourself. You're just proposing a secondary system that forces steeper penalties on players who are already winning. You shouldn't have to do that, they're already being penalized; at higher ranks, wins gain you less rating, losing drops your rating more, compared to lower ranks.

Besides, the PVP community is so small that the people in the top 100 are playing the most, winning the most, and driving the queue. If they stop playing and the queue stops, then there arent enough people left over who want to play. These few should not penalize the majority because they either play so infrequently as to not drive the queue, or are not competitive enough to be in the top 100 during the active part of the season.

[Nirokun]

That's not true at all.

Obviously this varies between party and solo-queue, but Rank is not just a product of personal skill. Feast is a team match. The people you crawl over to get to the top are just as responsible for your rank as you are. Luck as well as total play time are equally big contributors to your rank as your own efforts, and a person with the free time to play 30+ matches a night is far more likely to reach a higher rank than someone who only has the time to play 1 or 2 matches a night. A player at platinum is not somehow "better" than a bronze or un-ranked player just by the virtue of them sitting in the top ranks. They could be, but it's just as likely that they suck and simply had good luck with party compositions or had far more time to play. So, no. No one should get a free pass on defending their rank just because it happens to be higher than someone else's.

Further, players with higher potential play time are the ones who stand to lose the least with a decay system in place. I can understand why players with high rank would feel threatened by rank decay because they can no longer sit on their safety cushion when they reach 1000+ points, but if you actually play the game more than other people, you have more opportunities to maintain your rank. A player who doesn't get to log in often, for whatever reason, stands to lose their rank without contest far faster than someone who logs in every day but simply chooses not to play. If you log in frequently but chose not to queue for Feast, then it's no one's fault but your own when your rank drops. As far as I'm concerned, if you're not willing to defend your rank, then you don't deserve it.

It goes without saying that the other people in your party affect the outcome of the match. Your line about the Platinum player not being objectively better than the Bronze player is just plain silly. While there is certainly the possibility that they were carried by sheer luck to the top, it is much, much more likely that they had something to do with it. If you play the feast, you know that the higher your rank is, the more likely that you are either: 1) Really good at your job in helping your your team win in the PVP environment that is the Feast, or 2) Really good at overall match "awareness" and calling the match, producing strategies/directions that are easy to digest in the fast-paced PVP environment that is the Feast. It is intellectually dishonest to assume that the Platinum player is not objectively better than the Bronze player, that winning is somehow determined equally by luck and skill. In a small sample of matches, that's a possibility, but over hundreds of matches luck is equalized and and it is skill that speaks for the player's rating.

As far as having a lot of time to play allowing you to reach the top 100, sure, that can affect it, to a point. If, however, your win rate (again, determined over a series of matches rendering pure luck as invalid) is lacking, you will suffer once you reach Gold and losses cost you more than wins will gain.

As far as earning points then opting out, there's a reason. When queue's stretch out toward the end of the season (burnout, w/e), a string of losses isn't something you can recover from. A player who has been working the whole season, fighting against the arbitrary rating decay the entire time, can be put in a team with a new healer, who has not been penalized with this system because they haven't been playing. Thus, the system would disproportionately penalize the avid PVPer over a new player, not even including the fact that the penalty proposed would be higher for a higher-rated player. It's prioritizing the minority who are not invested in the content over the majority that are, that are driving the queues and keeping it alive. This, again, would dissuade participation by the majority.

My take on this whole rating decay thing is: Don't make it harder for winners to win. Provide incentive for winners to keep playing, like a "Bonus Day". Every 8th day (so it rotates throughout the week to fit all schedules), increase rating won, decrease rating lost. Then you would have winners saying "Ooh, bonus day" and not "Welp, hope my team isnt so bad that I can't carry".

[Dimitrii]

Snip

Luck still ends up factoring in it anyway in over a long stretch of matches. There are several people in the top 100 on primal with sub 50% win rates (in other words they have actually lost more games than they have won) yet miraculously made the top 100 because luck just so happened to be on their side in their win/loss point differentials not being as steep as others.

The thought of being forced to play a certain amount of games a week is no more appealing to me as it is to you but something must be done to prevent this recurring problem. Rank decay is probably the simplest solution. Your bonus day solution you already made an argument against yourself since you would be punishing the players unable to queue that day due to real life constraints and given those that can an unfair advantage.

[Nirokun]

Your bonus day solution you already made an argument against yourself since you would be punishing the players unable to queue that day due to real life constraints and given those that can an unfair advantage.

Repeating every 8th day would let everyone have an equal go at it.

I would support an equal rating decay across all ranks (allowing for negative ratings so people can't just gun it at the end and avoid the rating decay), that lasted from the beginning of the season up until the end. That would be FAIR. A big part of the reason I'm against the proposed rating decay is that it would hurt those with more points more than those with less (decay by percentage of total rating).

[Dimitrii]

I would support an equal rating decay across all ranks (allowing for negative ratings so people can't just gun it at the end and avoid the rating decay), that lasted from the beginning of the season up until the end. That would be FAIR. A big part of the reason I'm against the proposed rating decay is that it would hurt those with more points more than those with less (decay by percentage of total rating).

Negative rating doesn't make sense. That would mean you HAVE to play week 1 of the season else you are gonna start in a hole that the players who played week one didn't have to. The decay should in fact be static across all ranks (I don't think anyone ever suggested percentage based) but it shouldn't take you down to negative points lol. If you wanna stop people from just waiting till the end to just "gun it" then instill a minimum requirement of games played in the season to be eligible for top 100 then or something along those lines.