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

[Nirokun]

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.

Not sure if it's been mentioned in this thread but I'd love to see decay added to ranking. Require players to play a minimum of say 10 games per week to keep their standing otherwise it begins to drop as the weeks go by. And make it percentage based so top players stand to lose more by not playing that way they're in queues giving others a chance at them instead of those players jumping out to a big lead and then just never queueing again and coasting the rest of the season.

This is basically what I've been debating.

As far as negative points, a penalty is a penalty, if you don't play, you get penalized. If you do play and support the queue, no penalty. This would fly under the proposed rating system, with the added effect of giving everyone the same opportunity from the start. Don't plan on playing? Don't worry about it. But the proposed penalty system would be pushing players who are active to continue playing, and not penalizing those who want to hang out until it gets rough once active players reach Gold and are penalized again with win/loss rating you get starting at Gold.

I do like your minimum requirement of games played, though. Regardless, it doesn't affect me because I'll get the rewards (minus the ugly crown) from the previous season and necklaces are poop. Not having new rewards gives no incentive, aside from new/old achievement titles. I just have to say my piece when people come in trying to "level" the playing field unfairly against the active PVP community.

[Dimitrii]

Not sure if it's been mentioned in this thread but I'd love to see decay added to ranking. Require players to play a minimum of say 10 games per week to keep their standing otherwise it begins to drop as the weeks go by. And make it percentage based so top players stand to lose more by not playing that way they're in queues giving others a chance at them instead of those players jumping out to a big lead and then just never queueing again and coasting the rest of the season.

As Nirokun pointed out I did miss this part of the suggestion. While I agree with you about implementing the rating decay it needs to be static and universal across all ranks. Percentage based is way too harsh considering we already get penalized enough with unfavorable win/loss point differentials when compared to silver and lower (as in once you achieve gold losses generally start subtracting more points from your ranking than wins are adding). The more I think about it having a minimum requirement of games played to be eligible for the top 100 would be nice from the standpoint of actually being better able to compare your record with other players (since anybody halfway decent will generally have win percentages exceeding 60% in their first 100 games or so when they are beating up on the "noobs" but then see that win percentage drop when they reach gold and higher and are consistently getting matched up against people their level of skill). The number could be the minimum number of games you need to play per week to not incur rating decay multiplied by the # of weeks in that Season. This obviously wont happen but it would make the standings more legitimate imo.

[Februs]

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.

Just the opposite, actually.

Having played the first season, I can say with certainty that a player's rank is absolutely NOT a pure and unbiased representation of their skill. By the end of the first season, I've saw just as many platinum players get utterly stomped by lower ranked players as I saw lower ranked players get stomped by platinum players. This was especially apparent at the end of the season, when queues revived a short time after Shatter came out. I'll admit that a Platinum player is likely to be more experienced than a Bronze player, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're better, and it ABSOLUTELY does not mean that they'll win the match. The reason is that, no matter how good a player is, one player cannot carry an entire team. That's a fact. So, as much as skill is a factor (and it certainly is), it is not equally weighted in comparison to party composition, play time (opportunity), and just pure dumb luck. This is especially the case in solo-queue where the party composition is a roll of the dice, because even if you have a team of all platinum players, there is no guaranteed that they will work well together. I've seen enough crap-shoot matches with high ranked players to know that you should never, under any circumstances, assume that they'll win just because they have a respectable rank. It was pretty easy to see this in the rankings as well, as there were a ton of players who had some pretty shady win rates in the top 100.

That said, I do agree that negative reinforcement is perhaps not the best answer. I like the idea of a bonus day, for example. That seems like a good idea. The question, though, is would it be enough? SE has attempted to implement positive reinforcement measures in PvP before, such as bonus tomes or bonus exp for consecutive losses (in Front Lines). It didn't work. In fact, all it did do was provide toxic players with a means to exploit the system. I can already see how a bonus day would do exactly the same thing, because it would provide "booster" players with a perfect environment to maximize their gains while they cheat. Instead of encouraging the majority to queue, we'd be doing the exact opposite. We'd be creating an environment so toxic that real PvP'ers wouldn't even want to deal with it, kinda like how we don't want to deal with Tome Farmers. The players who'd suffer the most would, again, be the ones who don't get to queue regularly, as an inconsistent play schedule prevents a player from being too choosy on which days they can skip to avoid boosters or farmers. So, between this or a fairly applied decay rate (definitely agree that percentage based is not the way to go), it's hard to tell which would be the lesser of two evils. Something needs to be done, certainly. It's just a matter of figuring out what the best possible option is.

[Nirokun]

Having played the first season, I can say with certainty that a player's rank is absolutely NOT a pure and unbiased representation of their skill. By the end of the first season, I've saw just as many platinum players get utterly stomped by lower ranked players as I saw lower ranked players get stomped by platinum players. This was especially apparent at the end of the season, when queues revived a short time after Shatter came out. I'll admit that a Platinum player is likely to be more experienced than a Bronze player, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're better, and it ABSOLUTELY does not mean that they'll win the match. The reason is that, no matter how good a player is, one player cannot carry an entire team. That's a fact. So, as much as skill is a factor (and it certainly is), it is not equally weighted in comparison to party composition, play time (opportunity), and just pure dumb luck. This is especially the case in solo-queue where the party composition is a roll of the dice, because even if you have a team of all platinum players, there is no guaranteed that they will work well together. I've seen enough crap-shoot matches with high ranked players to know that you should never, under any circumstances, assume that they'll win just because they have a respectable rank. It was pretty easy to see this in the rankings as well, as there were a ton of players who had some pretty shady win rates in the top 100.

No one is arguing the bolded parts. Classic strawman argument.

This is all I'm talking about:

You: 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.

Me: 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.

[Igrainne]

Yes i love this cc spamfest into 1 shoting people with limit break. its very engaging and balanced.

[Fuma]

This is basically what I've been debating.

As far as negative points, a penalty is a penalty, if you don't play, you get penalized. If you do play and support the queue, no penalty. This would fly under the proposed rating system, with the added effect of giving everyone the same opportunity from the start. Don't plan on playing? Don't worry about it. But the proposed penalty system would be pushing players who are active to continue playing, and not penalizing those who want to hang out until it gets rough once active players reach Gold and are penalized again with win/loss rating you get starting at Gold.

I do like your minimum requirement of games played, though. Regardless, it doesn't affect me because I'll get the rewards (minus the ugly crown) from the previous season and necklaces are poop. Not having new rewards gives no incentive, aside from new/old achievement titles. I just have to say my piece when people come in trying to "level" the playing field unfairly against the active PVP community.

Yea, I don't have strong feelings towards it being percentage based but I feel having a penalty of some sorts would be good. I'm fine with the idea of static or percentage.

[Februs]

Classic strawman argument.

That's not what a straw man fallacy is. A straw man fallacy is when someone forms a counter-point to an argument that was never advanced by the opponent in the first place. That's not what I did, which you show in your own post.

You formed a point:

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.

And I responded directly to that point:

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.

While also providing reasoning behind my counter-argument. There's nothing "straw man" about that, because I was addressing a point you explicitly made. The bold points that you outlined are more akin to qualifying statements, anecdotal evidence, or drawn conclusions, rather than straw man arguments.

Regardless, if you want me to respond directly to your quote, then I would have to say that you're using the term "intellectually dishonest" incorrectly. There's nothing intellectually dishonest about assuming a Platinum player is not objectively better than a bronze player, so long as you apply the same rationale to all Platinum players equally, which I do. This is not self-serving logic, nor am I being more critical of others as I am to myself. I never assume that a player's rank alone (including my own) is a purely accurate representation of skill or will dictate the terms of a match. I also do not exclude any players (including myself) from my reasoning when I say that skill and luck both play a factor in how a person achieved their rank. You can disagree with that if you want to or claim that it is false, but it's not, by definition, intellectually dishonest. In fact, assuming that a Platinum player is objectively better than a bronze player could be considered an appeal to a false authority, as the assumption itself allows for the rank of a person to speak towards the truth of their skill instead of relying on empirical evidence.

Regardless, I've gotten off track here; so, I'll just leave it at that. Like I said, you can disagree if you like. That's fine. I'm more interested in how SE plans to tackle the issue, if at all.

[Zensho]

At this point I just roll with the punches and try not to get excited about anything, cuz in the end, I always get boned.

[SkyKlaws]

Well, i'm NOT happy with Seal Rock queue time now, it's nearly dead for me, and i'm still 33 wins away for my coat...

[UnstablePersonality]

Well, i'm NOT happy with Seal Rock queue time now, it's nearly dead for me, and i'm still 33 wins away for my coat...

Sad to say I gave up trying, I am half the wins you are from getting it myself and it's just..not fun waiting for hours for nothing now.