RIP Minion Collectors :(

[Bourne_Endeavor]

So basically top players will never get good rewards because people will whine that they can't have what others have. Instead we'll just go back to being capped on wolf marks 24/7 because we own all the pvp gear that requires zero skill to acquire.

Top players earn titles, achievements and rank high on leaderboards. From a developer perspective, you have to look for ways to incentive people who aren't playing. This is why The Creator's difficult was scaled back. I wager participation has drastically increased, if only based on the weekly PFs I see. People already PVPing aren't going to abruptly quit because they aren't getting a minion. But hesitation PVPers might give it a try because that minion scratches their itch. If they wound up liking it, they'll stick around even after obtaining said minion. That's one way of building the PvP community.

[Kaitoo]

Top players earn titles, achievements and rank high on leaderboards. From a developer perspective, you have to look for ways to incentive people who aren't playing. This is why The Creator's difficult was scaled back. I wager participation has drastically increased, if only based on the weekly PFs I see. People already PVPing aren't going to abruptly quit because they aren't getting a minion. But hesitation PVPers might give it a try because that minion scratches their itch. If they wound up liking it, they'll stick around even after obtaining said minion. That's one way of building the PvP community.

From a devoleper perspective, you should also look that the skill of the playerbase dont hit rock bottom because you give all the big rewards to the lowest common determinator which will be always gonna lower and you reach a point where the whole game is a joke

[jameseoakes]

From a devoleper perspective, you should also look that the skill of the playerbase dont hit rock bottom because you give all the big rewards to the lowest common determinator which will be always gonna lower and you reach a point where the whole game is a joke

Where does this even come from?

[TiaHariberux3]

"I'll never rank in the top 100. So why bother?" It's these people you need to incentive, not the existing PVPers.

There are already rewards for people to pvp but you need those exclusive rewards to keep top players motivated too. We already have not many options what to do and wolfmarks are useless for most pvpers we need incentive to TRY to get better and being on the top. There is really no point having alot of ppl into pvp when everyone is playing bad and gets everything. Also you know why they kept top100 rewards exclusive? Because it is possible if you have a brain and got practice its not out of reach. Ppl who saying "Ill never rank in top100" also showing that they dont want to get better. We dont need players who dont want to get better whats the point of a ranking if u dont get rewards that are tied to it? Feast is incentive to get ppl being better. You know what those "grinds" for that minion will look like? PF "win farming for minion" then just wintrade in lightparty. DO YOU actually think bad ppl would play solo ranked for the minion it would take them so long cause unlike frontlines you cant get carried that much. This always happens in every pvp mode back in frontlines pvpers hated pver cause they just afk for tomes etc. Locking the good rewards behind top100/top10/top1 is nice because you either have the will to get better or you dont and if u dont you are that kind of player who drops after receiving the reward anyways.

[Welsper59]

Top players earn titles, achievements and rank high on leaderboards. From a developer perspective, you have to look for ways to incentive people who aren't playing. This is why The Creator's difficult was scaled back. I wager participation has drastically increased, if only based on the weekly PFs I see. People already PVPing aren't going to abruptly quit because they aren't getting a minion. But hesitation PVPers might give it a try because that minion scratches their itch. If they wound up liking it, they'll stick around even after obtaining said minion. That's one way of building the PvP community.

While that's true, there's more to it than that. If the goal is simply to focus on the current state, then yeah... carrot on a stick is generally the best way. If the goal is to make a certain type of content be a prevalent and uniquely memorable thing (PvP in this case), it actually works against it. Why should anyone care about PvP when it just becomes another PvE-esque grind? Why should anyone care about any form of content when it quickly just becomes a dull addition to what already exists and often does the job better? Diadem was a pretty damn good example of that.

If all you do is literally hang that carrot in front of people, that's all they'll see. We've already been trained into that mentality with things like tome grinding and the normality that speed running has reached. The latter of that not even deserving to be identified as "speed run", in hindsight, since that has literally become the expected norm from moment content goes live for a lot of this game. It's direction like that that makes the games content stale in the long run.

Then again, a lot of this depends on the achievement requirements. In the very low likelihood that it is an absurdly difficult achievement, as opposed to simple "queued for (or won) 100 matches", then such concerns I expressed are ill founded. If it's just another faceroll thing though, then the mere fact that they think the earring is a good compromise to the effort needed to rank for some servers is evidence enough of either:

- Their half-assed actions in likely thinking "earrings are slightly more noticeable than rings, but significantly less than other gear, so I doubt people will feel jealous". I'd wager there's a ridiculously small number of people that actually give a damn about the look of most (if any) earrings in the game.

or

- the intentional outlook they have for player mentality. Carrot on a stick for pretty much everything in the game, with practically no possibility to ever expect otherwise. This is fine, to be honest, but an extremely shallow approach to game philosophy. It's along the lines of F2P mentality.

[Kaitoo]

Where does this even come from?

Common sense. If you need empiric evidence, look at other mmos which done this

[Bourne_Endeavor]

From a devoleper perspective, you should also look that the skill of the playerbase dont hit rock bottom because you give all the big rewards to the lowest common determinator which will be always gonna lower and you reach a point where the whole game is a joke

Hence titles, achievements and leaderboards. The majority of hardcore raiders and PvPers play because they aim to be the best at their chosen form of entertainment. Look at the highly competitive FPS and MOBA markets. Most everything can be unlocked just by playing yet you'll see thousands of players striving to be top x in the game or unlock all of that content. There's some exclusive rewards in MOBAs but they're fleeting. An example of catering to the hardcore was Gordias and Midas Savage. What happened? Barely anyone touched it-- to the point we saw less than 1% clears. Developers cannot focus on the hardcore over others, especially in a case like FFXIV, where they need to build the PvP community first. As it stands, PvP is on life support. You won't get people into it by putting a reward most won't be able to obtain. You have to incentivize them first, then fuel that competitive urge.

King Stefan does have some great examples for rewards unique to PvP though: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...ve-PVP-Rewards

While that's true, there's more to it than that. If the goal is simply to focus on the current state, then yeah... carrot on a stick is generally the best way. If the goal is to make a certain type of content be a prevalent and uniquely memorable thing (PvP in this case), it actually works against it. Why should anyone care about PvP when it just becomes another PvE-esque grind? Why should anyone care about any form of content when it quickly just becomes a dull addition to what already exists and often does the job better? Diadem was a pretty damn good example of that.

Honestly, that should be the primary goal at the moment. As I noted above, PvP desperately needs something to incentivize the playerbase at large. The devs have been going about it backwards, either by making new rewards for each new map-- effectively killing any previous map/mode or through rewarding a select few. The latter only works once you have an established community, though not always. Overwatch, for example, has very few exclusive rewards. Instead, you simply earn a currency and unlock stuff. This helps keep everyone satisfied because less skilled players still have plenty to strive for, even if it may take them longer to achieve. A bigger issue for FFXIV is the lack of a rank depreciation, which only encourages top ranked players to stop PvPing just to maintain their position.

Keep in mind, the vast majority of players in FFXIV are PvE centric. A PvE grind is what they anticipate, and why many actually play. Therefore, you do need to focus some of that same grind into PvP, otherwise they won't do it.

- the intentional outlook they have for player mentality. Carrot on a stick for pretty much everything in the game, with practically no possibility to ever expect otherwise. This is fine, to be honest, but an extremely shallow approach to game philosophy. It's along the lines of F2P mentality.

Yes and no. I used to play FPS competitively. Unless you're in the Twitch bracket (years after I quit the genre), you'll actually get very little. Games like Halo, Call of Duty and Battlefield mostly reward achievements and cosmetic things for bragging rights, like custom tags or painting your gun. Few of those are exclusive. The playerbase in FPS plays primarily for fun or to outrank other players. You don't have to incentivize them because the game itself is incentive enough. FFXIV doesn't have that luxury because its audience isn't PvP oriented. So you need to nudge them towards it in the hopes they'll find it fun. Basically, you start with a carrot, then gradually move away from it.

[Kaitoo]

snip

Thats true but i delibritly said "big rewards", i mean would there be as much as complaint if the title would be exclusiv only and not the minion? I would say rather not, so the minion is percieved as the "Better" reward. And the best vanity reward is that what is percived as the best, because ofc vanity doesnt give gameplay advantage. So i dont know how incentivising it is to reward only with "minor rewards".


Also, even when its a bit of off topic:
Yeah i also dont think that only focus on one player group in a mmo which is a as big as FFXIV is not a good thing, however this go for all player groups really. If you center your whole game and reward structure arround midcore, or even lowcore, players, games got boring as hell, then maybe you have clearrates of 99 % but you have also saturation and resignattion. I think there should be always a reward structure on the top end of an MMO where the player at least have the aspiration to pursue higher level content, and reading the last Yoshida interview he thinks on that line as well. I also dont agree that this being a PVE heavy game justfices as you say there is no challange in pve just grind. There is challenging pve content out there and actually i think alot of the problem with the relic weapons came from that people want the best rewards, doesnt want to the hardest content, but also dont want a tedious long grind which seems unreasonable for the most people if i look at the criticisim. So essentialy there is a group of people who want rewards for being not good in the game, and doesnt want even have secondary progression path which is the only reward path that exist beside the Skillcheck path in mmos, timesink. I dont see how this game, or any other game as we seen example of this in the other MMOs, suceed because of that. This only results in the already mentioned saturation and resignation and then top player base leaves and then there is also nothing to aspire for.


That said the post you linked has good ideas tho, and i also agreeing that this game has a problem with PVP playerbase, i would suggest the idea to derank people overall who dont play in a specific amount of time.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

-snip

It's the less the reward itself and more the exclusivity. No one touches LoV, yet no one's complained about the minions gated behind it. Why? You can still get them.

I think you may be misinterpreting me. There should absolutely be a challenge, hence achievements and whatnot. But the current PvP structure isn't really rewarding challenge, it's rewarding whoever gets there first. This why most competitive circuits avoid having many (or any) exclusive rewards-- instead making them difficult to obtain, but always obtainable. It assures even inexperienced players have plenty to strive towards even if they're late to the party. I wager the Fenrir Pup did far more to incentivize players than most other methods FFXIV's attempted, though their misstep was making it sellable. Like I mentioned, Overwatch keeps people playing because if you want everything, you have to. The only exclusive content they've offered is promotional stuff, and even then, player backlash after the Olympic packs prompted Blizzard to let people buy the unique Halloween skins, albeit at a higher cost. It's undoubtedly a grind, but it's effective in keeping their playerbase active.

[Lexia]

e already have not many options what to do and wolfmarks are useless for most pvpers we need incentive to TRY to get better and being on the top.

Well a better way would to like every 30 days the top 10 players get the special reward not 10 people total ever and no one else. This not some groundbreaking world competition or anything.