The Feast/PVP is dying, what needs to happen in the next couple of patches.

[Aviars]

As it was last season before a major patch, The Feast is starting to slow down before the final weeks preceding 3.4, however this time we won't even have a single diamond let alone have platinum break 5 players on any server in contrast to the 30-40 platinum players we had last season. It is a disgrace and really highlights the failure of SE in trying to make The Feast and PVP as a mode that encourages people to play on a regular basis. The complete lack of rewards really gives no reason to play PVP while playing PVE and doing your weekly run in Weeping City, Daily Roulette and CRAFTING are given every single incentive to be played.


It is really sad that a mode that provides a very unique experience every single game, challenges peoples skills and encourages communication between players is so visibly put on the sideline in contrast to PVE like weeping city that is literally the same every single week with little to no variation.

Now I'm not saying PVP should be put ahead of PVE. I' am just saying that if SE wants to make PVP in this game successful and have actual longevity to it that they need to treat it with the same kind of love that PVE gets in regards to weekly rewards. Obvious fixes include:

1. Create viable PVP armor sets with a decent Item level that encourages people to play even for PVE reasons. For example this season could have had 225 gear to complement the 230 gear Lore Tomes provide.

2. Create a new currency similar to Lore tomes to buy said gear. Make this currency and other currency obtainable from winning in The Feast to prevent match throwing. Losses can provide severely reduced compensation of currency. Currency can also be obtained in front lines but at a lower rate regardless of win or loss.

3. Ensure that a new armor set for each class appears every new season of The Feast. As of now PVP armor has not been updated for several patches which is contributing to lack of interest.

Doing the above puts PVP on a equal playing field in regards to rewards in PVE. A lot of people are not playing PVP because it simply does not provide enough in progressing their characters like PVE is guaranteed to do.

Additional changes I would argue for is the following:

4. Make diamond actually achievable. I find it strange that Top 10 is overshadowed by a flat rating that is so far not going to be reached this season. The Chaos Datacenter actually came extremely close to not have a diamond ranked player in Season 1 even! I sincerely believe that achievements should be, achievable, especially when it's based on how active the ladder is.

5. Fix the Matchmaking. I don't believe people in gold should be match with unranked players, period. The lowest tier of player in any team should only be 1 tier lower than the highest rated player on any team. I have already seen many people simply stop playing due to the fact they are placed with people much lower on the skill spectrum compared to them. It makes the game feel more like baby sitting than actually playing a competitive game. It's as if you are forcing people to mentor new players rather than actually play and it is visibly killing participation of even the most hardcore PVPers.

6. Merge Datacenters. There is no real reason to separate a already small player base.

7. Abolish Grand Company requirements in frontlines. It just needs to happen. Every single reason in regards to win trading and 'spying' can already happen to a certain degree in the current system. Removing GC requirements also broadens the frontline modes that can be made. Previously Capture the Flag type play was impossible with a 3 way free for all, now that option is open when you can match people in two teams rather than three since there are no GC requirements.

I do not post this to just bash on SE. I really do like this game and I just want to see it gain players rather than constantly bleed them out due to SE seemingly not giving PVP the love it deserves. Hopefully SE takes my these suggestions to heart.

Thank you for reading.

[Praesul]

If you check Aether, 60% of the top players don't even play anymore. They just grind up until they're top 10 and stop playing. Once you're that high up, with these matchmaking changes, there's no reason to continue playing. They have nothing to gain and everything to lose. Why risk a top spot when a bad string of losses from unranked parties could cost you a top spot? It's not even about playing for fun anymore, because these changes make it a headache and not an enjoyable activity.

[TiaHariberux3]

Its not the lack of rewards its all about that terrible matchmaking and rating. There is no individual rating gained/lost its just either win (gain rating) or lose (lose rating in higher tiers even more rating loss than gained by wins). I think I can say this for every none healer who is doing feast if you q up you get this weird feeling if it pops since its a roulette about who you get. There are healers who are 100% a loss which makes people to q less.Thats the problem imo I think there are plenty of people who would even play it for 0 rewards if the matches you get were actually worth it. No one has a problem with a loss if it was close but if you lose just because you were unlucky to get a unranked healer who let his team die in 2 mins its 0 fun. PvE rewards will just bait another amount of new players in there to make the matchmaking worse (if they dont fix it). I really dont like the idea of datacentre merge every datacentre has their own playstyle and has enough pvpers also it would make the rewards for some ppl out of reach even more and dont give them a reason to try. Oh and btw chaos had problems to get diamonds well thats because on chaos DC there are not many healers and the ones who can heal + veterans got the top spots pretty early so they decided on discord to go back to seal rock. You need to think about it chaos has alot of servers who arent that long out with a good amount of new players which means we dont have all those healers who can heal pvp ( played on chaos and NA there is a big difference) so you're more likely to lose if a vet healer is qing than win since most healers simply cant heal. Also the active pvper on chaos play just against each other most of the time so they dont really move up tier wise. First thing I like to see is removing the party ranked queue its just completely useless

[Caitlyn]

A few days ago, I had to play with the same 7 people all over again. For hours.

I joined as WHM (no rank, but I want to give it a try) with a silver, gold and bronze player in my team. The opposite team was quite the same (no rank, gold, silver, bronze), but their healer was a gold AST (and one of the TOP 20). It was quite frustrating to play (and lose) against the same healer all over again.

The problem with FEAST is, that many people getting blamed very quickly (especially healers). Things like "You re unranked, stop playing ranked" (hahaha, sure) or "well, we lost. Their healer is good" (thats great) or "You suck. You got PvE gear" (which doesnt matter at all) are just the tip of the iceberg.

And even when you re doing a great job, you still lose because someone else didnt listen to your group or left the party during the fight.

I still like FEAST. Its one of the last challenging content in FFXIV and each situation is different. But FEAST is flooded with toxic behaviors, which let new players stay away from PvP.

What MUST be changed:

• Fix Matchmaking (like OP said)
• Remove GC restrictions (like OP said)
• Add 4v4 Solo Feast to Unranked (Training)
• Penalty for leaving
• Reward should be based on your performance, not only your wins
• Implement Frontlines with 2 teams (32vs32)

[Ultimatecalibur]

1. Create viable PVP armor sets with a decent Item level that encourages people to play even for PVE reasons. For example this season could have had 225 gear to complement the 230 gear Lore Tomes provide.

This runs into a devil's choice problem you do this and players who do not like PvP start complaining that they are forced to PvP in order to be properly geared for the content they do want to do.

2. Create a new currency similar to Lore tomes to buy said gear. Make this currency and other currency obtainable from winning in The Feast to prevent match throwing. Losses can provide severely reduced compensation of currency. Currency can also be obtained in front lines but at a lower rate regardless of win or loss.

The tricky thing with this is one of the same problems the weekly locked Tomestones suffer from. What do you do to keep players queuing once they've reached their weekly cap.

3. Ensure that a new armor set for each class appears every new season of The Feast. As of now PVP armor has not been updated for several patches which is contributing to lack of interest.

Doing the above puts PVP on a equal playing field in regards to rewards in PVE. A lot of people are not playing PVP because it simply does not provide enough in progressing their characters like PVE is guaranteed to do.

Uhm... the last PvP armor set (Armor of the 12) came out in 3.2 (one patch ago in the same gear cycle as 3.3) and is a i205/i240 set. People already complain about the gear treadmill in PvE content and I suspect they would complain even more if another set per cycle was added.

That said PvP could use more rewards. The Wind-up Cheerleader Minion and recolor of an existing PvP mount added in 3.3 does not really inspire people to continue PvPing.

4. Make diamond actually achievable. I find it strange that Top 10 is overshadowed by a flat rating that is so far not going to be reached this season. The Chaos Datacenter actually came extremely close to not have a diamond ranked player in Season 1 even! I sincerely believe that achievements should be, achievable, especially when it's based on how active the ladder is.

Diamond rank is the equivalent of the Grandmaster rank in chess. Can you honestly say that there is an actual Grandmaster level player?

5. Fix the Matchmaking. I don't believe people in gold should be match with unranked players, period. The lowest tier of player in any team should only be 1 tier lower than the highest rated player on any team. I have already seen many people simply stop playing due to the fact they are placed with people much lower on the skill spectrum compared to them. It makes the game feel more like baby sitting than actually playing a competitive game. It's as if you are forcing people to mentor new players rather than actually play and it is visibly killing participation of even the most hardcore PVPers.

This is the fault of the queuing population and not the matchmaking system. You can not have an all silver+ match unless there are at the least 2 silver+ tanks, 2 silver+ healers, 2 silver+ melee dps and 2 silver+ ranged dps queuing.

Consider this: every time you end up with an unranked player in your party it means that there was at least one role without two silver+ players queuing.

6. Merge Datacenters. There is no real reason to separate a already small player base.

I believe that is far more difficult than it sounds. The Aether and Primal data centers are separate for a reason and bridging them just for PvP is likely a very tricky task.

7. Abolish Grand Company requirements in frontlines. It just needs to happen. Every single reason in regards to win trading and 'spying' can already happen to a certain degree in the current system. Removing GC requirements also broadens the frontline modes that can be made. Previously Capture the Flag type play was impossible with a 3 way free for all, now that option is open when you can match people in two teams rather than three since there are no GC requirements.

...No. I extremely disagree with this. This would be throwing the baby out with the bathwater and should only be used as the final option. There are several other things that should be tried first before doing such a thing. I would prefer that instead of just having the duty finder listing time queued and average time, that they also show the current number of slots filled (like how dungeons, trials and raids show X/2 Tanks X/2 Healers X/4 DpS) by GC.

Also a 3 team Capture the Flag mode is not impossible to create and the Free for All mess in Slaughter, Sealed rock and Shatter is more the result of how badly designed the modes' objectives are.

[TiaHariberux3]

The problem with FEAST is, that many people getting blamed very quickly (especially healers). [/LIST]

There is already a penalty if you leave thats why its very rare if someone leaves (unless you are toxic). Also dunno how you came up with 36vs36 you cant do teams of 36 players since 1 party is always 8players I think you mean like in the old modes 24vs24 (48 players in total). Dont blame the community a competitive environment is always toxic wherever u go in any sports blame the matchmaking. If you are new or a old player you have to deal with such stuff thats another part of this whole ranked/competitive thing if you cant deal with that its not your thing. Of course you get blamed if people who are gold etc. lose after 1-2 mins in because they got a new healer thats just emotions. You can always play another mode if you really want to learn healing then bring effort to get into other modes to learn it. Its like a football player who plays for the first time in champions league of course people expect this player to atleast play his position well enough to compete/learn.

[TiaHariberux3]

This is the fault of the queuing population and not the matchmaking system. You can not have an all silver+ match unless there are at the least 2 silver+ tanks, 2 silver+ healers, 2 silver+ melee dps and 2 silver+ ranged dps queuing.

Consider this: every time you end up with an unranked player in your party it means that there was at least one role without two silver+ players queuing.
.

I dont know do you even pvp or just read the patchnotes? I sure can tell you that even when 2 gold healers 2 gold melees 2 gold ranged dps and 2 gold tanks q at the same time that a match of full gold or nearly full gold wont happen and you still get unranked players.The active PvPer base know who is in q etc. just because you get match with unranked doesnt mean there arent enough people seems like you never bothered really with pvp and just read what patch notes said which sounds good on paper but in reality it isnt. The matchmaking is balancing the teams wrong lets say you are a diamond melee dps you most likely get lower ranked players or even unranked players to make it fair meanwhile the enemy team gets a silver/gold team that win easily cause the game expect the diamond to carry the unranked/bronze healer and bad dps instead of matching him with the highest tiers that is currently available.

[Caitlyn]

snip

Sorry, I mean 32 vs 32.

Doing something competitive/ranked is not an excuse of rude behavior. The thing is:
1. Even when you re not completely new in FEAST, you still have to start with no rank in ranked matches
2. You have no other alternative for ranked solo, because there is no unranked Solo-mode for 4v4 FEAST
3. Its not the fault of the player who joined a team with different tiers

[TiaHariberux3]

Sorry, I mean 32 vs 32.

Doing something competitive/ranked is not an excuse of rude behavior. The thing is:
1. Even when you re not completely new in FEAST, you still have to start with no rank in ranked matches
2. You have no other alternative for ranked solo, because there is no unranked Solo-mode for 4v4 FEAST
3. Its not the fault of the player who joined a team with different tiers

Of course its no excuse of rude behaviour but competitive environment is most likely this way no matter what you do and if this stuff keeps you away then its maybe not your thing (which is okay) (and like I said 24vs24 it is not 32vs32 since 4 parties for each alliance are a pain to heal and not possible since you cant have 3 alliance party lists + your own partylist and even if you had it would to much space of your hud lol).

1. This is true but if you never saw the name of your healer as active pvper its pretty obvious that you are new and if they repeat to get you in your team and you give them a loss all the time due getting rekt in few secs then ofc they will be rude.

2. This may be true but if like I said "effort" is the key word you could always trying to get another 7people and practice in wolves den ( yes its lv50 but if you practice there at lv 50 etc. its a huge difference and easier to start with the feast) and play a bit frontlines to get a feeling for pvp skills. Also you could start as dps/tank may be a bit easier but even then research the basic of feast etc. When do adrenaline boxes/atk buff boxes spawn? Who to attack? What would be the best moment to stunlock? Should I purify my healer now or not? Can I take those medals? How many stacks are okay for the different roles? How many stacks do I get for this amount of medals? Who gets buffs? How do I not fail my lb? etc. if you know stuff like this and know how to burst etc. it will be a much better experience for all.

3. True but those people joined with a class that they know how to play and didnt just jumped in on one of the most important roles. You know alot of people have experience with people who q as heal for the faster q just to get the minion and such stuff.

Just to remind 2. is really important alot of people dont even know the basic of the mode which ends up in healers and dps take alot of stacks or tank more than 4 stacks. No one takes medals and let enemy team retrieve it/no one take adrenaline/buffs. Then there are the melees who dont pick up adrenaline and always fail lb/lb people at full hp.

The lack of actually asking for improvement etc. is what people are annoyed of. You tell people to attack someone they dont listen you tell them to take medals cause you cant take more stacks and they simply dont. Most new players simply dont care no one stops you from asking people who are experienced (here on forum or on your server). Experienced pvper expect a bit of knowledge and that atleast new players listen to them nothing more. I can tell you its no fun getting people who have alot of accuracy or expecting ilvl 145-150 nq /dungeon gear is enough or using ilvl 100/110 pvp lv 50 gear because of idk reasons those things take people less than a minute to look up but they dont care. So why should those PvPers care what they say to you if you dont come with minimal efforts. Same with dps who dont know how to do dmg if someone can do only 70k damage after 8min in feast its just meh.

I dont talk about you just in general what experience people have with new people. Its as rude as joining a kill/farm party in pve without knowing the strat.

[Kai_Lee]

Im pretty sure its RNG but RNG is broken in the matchmaking system, I once got the same healer 7 times in a row? The system need to mix it up so you do not fall into this trap of getting match up with the same players on your team over and over or match up against the same players on the other team over and over. Plus im seen some really unbalance teams. Which does not make a fair fight.