Japan Adrealine TV 3.4 PvP Update

[Nalien]

With the added duelling feature and the expanded wolves' den pier, would it not be a good time to introduce Data-Center-wide zones starting with wolves' den pier (or just limit it to wolves' den only), getting to duel with people outside of your own server too would be 10/10, and having a pvp "capital" (wolves den) instead of the semi desolate place it usually is, is pretty neat too. I don't know how much work it's gonna be but i know WoW has this feature almost everywhere and it works quite well, and i suspect, even with the duelling feature being added, it will be a fairly empty place most of the time still

If we're going to get such an area, I think they'd be better off adapting Frontlines into an open world event... If they could make it so Borderland Ruins, Seal Rock, and Fields of Glory are three zones shared across data centers, then they can potentially work as open world areas... Depending how it's done, it would quite nicely fix all the issues with Frontlines; Queue times would be gone, you'd just walk into the zone if you want to participate. The Grand Company restriction no longer creates a major issue, instead it could actually enhance the content if they implement a XI Conquest style tally. We'd also no longer be stuck with a situation where Feast and Frontlines compete for players, assuming one can queue for Feast while in the Frontline zones... That's perhaps not possible though, I'd expect any such zone to effectively work as an instance... If SE were capable of such implementations, Diadem wouldn't be an instance... Still, I've always figured Frontlines should be open world... Having it be "Here's your team, get this many points first" really limited its potential IMO, we've got these huge maps and we're stuck chasing static objectives because we're in a race to win points... It's very theme park-y, when I'd much rather have something more organic... I want to walk in and randomly encounter people from a rival Grand Company... The theme park design mentality really doesn't fit for PvP IMO, it's why Secure/Slaughter/Seize are completely dead - they're old rides... Make them sandboxes and I could walk into the Borderland Ruins, do shitty PvE objectives to score my Grand Company points and gain the attention of rival Grand Companies who then come in to stop me farming those points... Much more interesting than a 20m instance IMO...

I'm sure plenty of people prefer the current rigid 20m matches though, and it would take SE a lot of effort to revamp Frontlines like that anyway... Oddly, despite the developers claim to fame being revamping the broken mess that was 1.0, they're very reluctant to go back and fix their own mistakes (Hi, Diadem!)... They'd need to rework the objectives themselves, as well as the Achievements, work on a sort of rating system for Grand Companies, perhaps with associated rewards, even a XI Campaign style announcement system (so if I'm in Seal Rock and I score an objective, everyone in Frontlines gets a message that my Grand Company just scored points in Seal Rock, meaning they'd likely move to stop me giving my Grand Company said points), it's a lot of work that I have no confidence SE would put in... There are easier ways to revive Secure/Slaughter/Seize, and I'm doubtful they'll even ever do that much... This is a theme park MMO through and through...

[Mraj]

If we're going to get such an area, I think they'd be better off adapting Frontlines into an open world event... If they could make it so Borderland Ruins, Seal Rock, and Fields of Glory are three zones shared across data centers, then they can potentially work as open world areas... Depending how it's done, it would quite nicely fix all the issues with Frontlines; Queue times would be gone, you'd just walk into the zone if you want to participate.

I'd like if they'd give this a try - it's not like the old frontlines maps can get more dead, right? It also fits into FFXIV's 'PvP can't touch any non-PvP areas of the game' design.

Seems a good compromise - there are no pvp servers, but a quick queue into a frontlines map ( kind of like diadem ) would be great for people that don't want to wait for the usual structured PvP match or the routine Feast cage match. Objectives / teams could be added, or it could just be an unranked melee of sorts.

[Februs]

If they could make it so Borderland Ruins, Seal Rock, and Fields of Glory are three zones shared across data centers, then they can potentially work as open world areas... Depending how it's done, it would quite nicely fix all the issues with Frontlines; Queue times would be gone, you'd just walk into the zone if you want to participate. The Grand Company restriction no longer creates a major issue

Firstly, I think this is a cool idea. I would absolutely love to be running around in non-instanced PvP zone with objectives (likely FATE styled pop ups) while I wait for a real PvP queue to pop. Duels is definitely a good start, but this would be a very cool next step.

That said, I don't think Grand Company Restrictions would cease to be an issue. The issue would simply change. Instead of GC restrictions causing long queue times, they would be causing an uneven playing field. An open world setting like this would make the discrepancy between the populations of each GC glaringly apparent. Maelstrom would dominate the open world zone 24/7, due to the fact that they have 2-3x the numbers of both Flames and Adders. Anytime an Adder or Flame jumped into an open zone, they would be at the mercy of Maelstrom gank squads. I'd like to think that people would flip flop around to even things out, but we both know that would never happen. The only thing that forces people to swap GC's now is queue times. Otherwise, people chase wins. Unless SE offered some form of incentive, then this kind of thing would be doomed from the start simply because GC's exist in the first place.

[Nalien]

Firstly, I think this is a cool idea. I would absolutely love to be running around in non-instanced PvP zone with objectives (likely FATE styled pop ups) while I wait for a real PvP queue to pop. Duels is definitely a good start, but this would be a very cool next step.

Well, I find it unlikely that they can truly make it open world anyway... The only possible way to create enough of a population to maintain such a thing is by making it cross-data center, and that's almost certainly going to mean some degree of instanced content... It's still IMO better than Frontlines as it (certainly Secure/Slaughter/Seize, at least), though it does create some other issues... I think a Diadem style zone could work, but then we lose certain freedoms like being able to queue for other content while participating (which is arguably a good thing, would kinda suck to rely on a healer there only for them to vanish into an instance...), or even just forming/adjusting parties... That's a major issue I had with Diadem, and heck, it's already an issue with Frontlines... I've had plenty of instances where I get dropped in a party with no healer, while the alliance has plenty to spare, yet we can't swap people around... There'd likely also be a timer in place, given Diadem not only has that, but they've greatly reduced it, much to my annoyance, despite participation in Diadem rivaling that of Seize... An instances player limit could likely clean up any Grand Company population problems, but that pretty much neuters the event IMO...

If they can make a truly open world cross-data center zone, then... Well, I'm not sure I mind if one group dominates... It's PvP and if they're more organized, they're more organized... Might as well complain about people who won season 1 in Feast are taking up places in the top 100 in season 2... Where it does become an issue is with enjoyment of the event, being steamrolled over and over is likely to turn people away fast, but that could effectively manage itself... Is an entire alliance of Maelstrom going to keep turning up when they've chased off everyone else and Frontlines is now just essentially a PvE playground for them? That's also partly why I think it's more sensible to adapt Frontlines into this, rather than making it its own thing; Frontlines has three maps to split players across, it's much harder for the dominant Grand Company to hold three fronts, rather than one. There are, of course, also systems that can just be put in place to mitigate dominance... Take Borderland Ruins, I would expect a set of faction based NPCs to be placed at the Grand Companies main outpost to flesh out activity and help prevent spawn camping. The dominant Grand Company could, since they're dominating, justifiably have a weaker force of NPCs stationed at their outpost, making them a weaker target, while the losing Companies gain additional support from Grand Company. That could take a few other forms, but one thing I've always figured would be nice is if we had a sort of PvP Hunt Marks... Could twist the Battle High system into that, where each Grand Company has select players as targets because of how well they're preforming, providing additional intel (same as Battle High currently) and successfully downing them earns your Grand Company additional rating... This would put the dominant Grand Company at a natural disadvantage.

Ultimately, if it's even possible, I think they should at least give it a go... Not like Borderland Ruins is seeing any activity anyway, I'd rather have a dead piece of content that I can go in and get destroyed by a single Grand Company in (although lord knows what they're doing there in force if they've killed it a second time), than be stuck with the current sorry state of Frontlines... Granted, there are much easier ways to revive the dead maps, I just don't think I'm inclined to care about Frontlines in its current form anymore... I guess if they slapped a rating system on the current form I might give it a second look, but the points race to win a match just doesn't entertain anymore... If I want a match, I'd queue Feast for quick and snappy matches, and hope they adjust Wolves Den to provide more variety... Frontlines is meant to be large scale, faction based PvP, but as an instanced activity it's anything but... It's a large map with potentially large numbers of players, but it's ultimately the same scale as any other instance (except it it grates on and on... again, I prefer Feast for this style of gameplay because its quick and snappy), and the factions are completely redundant in this game, as I've bemoaned countless times before... I want to like the Grand Companies in this game, and to justify that stupid restriction, but they're just lacking in every possible way... I'd rather get frustrated at Twin Adder constantly losing, than just not care about Grand Companies at all... 3.4 is meant to have some PvE Grand Company additions though, so maybe they'll at least fix them on the PvE side of things and I'll care less about the PvP representation, which might as well be the sole representation of Grand Companies at this point...