The biggest issue with 4.0 PVP

[loreleidiangelo]

I think the biggest issue of 4.0 PVP can be easily summarized by a single statement: Square Enix is determined to make it appealing to a majority of players who are not interested in the mode for anything beyond superficial rewards. That's it. There's no greater agenda or hidden depth of meaning. The simplification, the no-chat, the increasing focus on PVE elements/objectives - these are all designed to cater to a group of people who will only continue to do PVP as long as it's their fastest avenue to glamours, mounts, and PVE exp.

I've kind of given up caring about bads, or casuals, or whatever you want to call them. I never flame, I don't care if people are new and struggling and seemingly dumber than a box of rocks. But I DO start to care when that starts creeping over into game design, and that's what's been happening to PVP in this game for about the past year and a half now.

[BloodRubyXII]

SNIP

I agree with you, but you can't change the appeal without it affecting the game design. You might not care for casuals (a demographic I more or less fall under) - but they do. We're the majority.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

You may be the majority, and the majority of the game has largely til now had more attention and support, but why must that bleed over into something a small community of the game has enjoyed however imperfect it was til now? Especially when it was shunned and scorned and ignored otherwise?

[loreleidiangelo]

I agree with you, but you can't change the appeal without it affecting the game design. You might not care for casuals (a demographic I more or less fall under) - but they do. We're the majority.

Perhaps my point got a little lost in my second paragraph. What I was trying to say wasn't that casuals are necessarily influencing PVP design, but that people who aren't interested in PVP beyond collecting their superficial PVE rewards are. It's the latter I take issue with, not the former. A PVP casual SHOULD be able to jump in with their full kit at level 30 and not worry about farming ranks or collecting Morale gear. But a casual PVPer would also look at their CC, their abilities, and their displacement moves and work on using them, because abilities like that are fundamental to solid PVP design. To be honest, XIV's combo system and certain job mechanics DIDN'T work well in PVP; I agree. But I can't help but feel like they're throwing the baby out with the bathwater by trying to condense gameplay down into the most monotonous of thought processes possible, just to try to win over a subset of people who aren't going to keep playing once they get all jobs to 70 and finishing collecting the glamour gear anyway.

[BloodRubyXII]

SNIP

Because they don't want your community to be restricted to the hardcore/those who can be bothered to put the time into learning it. It's not sustainable. They want everyone to see all the content they put into this game.

SNIP

And I understand and agree with you. I PvP at 70 because it's fun, I queued it at 60 for the titles and jewellery, but also it was fun. 8v8 brings zero joy to me long-term, there's no sense of progression to me playing anything other than a ranked mode and frankly, progress is fun. Whether you like it or not, PvP has had a really good reception to the changes, it's obvious whatever SE are aiming for is doing the job. Especially with "casuals" like me playing it, I probably care a bit more than most people you might be trying to stereotype under that demographic, but generally, they aren't going to have all their jobs at 70 anytime soon, and there's a lot of glamours lol (and almost all of them can't be worn without levelling). We'll see how things are a few months down the line, but as it stands, queues for unranked are popping, and therefore I feel that the changes (which by the way, I literally threw all my toys out the pram about; got 10-dayed, came back extremely salty - flamed Koltik and got 10-dayed again for it) whilst detrimental to the competitive nature of the game in my personal opinion (didn't they say they wanted it to be more competitive? Lol.) have delivered exactly what they were put in place to do, and that's make more people queue for PvP. Idk, maybe this entire paragraph is nonsense and trying to argue that complex PvP should never die for such a long time has worn me out.

There's also the fact of course, those who love this kind of PvP generally aren't the type to be involved with discussions like this or post in this section. The last time they did they got upvoted to the heavens for lauding the changes.


Sorry if there's a point you've made that I've missed again, I've been awake too long ok?