PVP Rank and PVP Experience Change

[Crim2989]

not sure about everyone else, But I took the pvp grind of ranks for the additional traits and skills...this to me added a sense of progression in PVP, I get SE/
Dev team was to reset everything and make it as basic as it can get with pvp's own skills and such a simple UI an 8 year old can understand it.

That being said, what has taken place of these adjustments? seems they want to address some concerns but are unwilling to have a community presence in an MMO.... kinda odd.

Wouldn't it be interesting to have pvp matches setup like pve raid content? do well, get your rank, get the gear, progress to the next tier. Better you preform the faster you climb, Feast being the pinnacle of the dedicated few.... walking in decked out to the 9's... a huge understanding of different pvp strategy's that can be altered to the 8v8 or 4v4 arena. There is your E-Sport.

[Geryth]

Wouldn't it be interesting to have pvp matches setup like pve raid content? do well, get your rank, get the gear, progress to the next tier. Better you preform the faster you climb, Feast being the pinnacle of the dedicated few.... walking in decked out to the 9's... a huge understanding of different pvp strategy's that can be altered to the 8v8 or 4v4 arena. There is your E-Sport.

Progression systems don't work for PvP, because the skilled players get the gear quicker and now that they out-gear AND out-skill newer players, the bar of entry becomes seemingly impossible for most players. That's how you end up with a dead system that no on participates in.

[Wintersandman]

Progression systems don't work for PvP, because the skilled players get the gear quicker and now that they out-gear AND out-skill newer players, the bar of entry becomes seemingly impossible for most players.

I remember progression gear in WoW. It was amazing and you would be queued up with people with equal rank. In FFXIV the matching system is horrific. I was trying to do team feast in season 4 and 3 diamond players would go and recruit one bronze player just to get queues against bronze players to boost their win rate. That is demotivating not a progression gear system. Frontlines would still be chaos but it already is.

[Geryth]

I remember progression gear in WoW. It was amazing and you would be queued up with people with equal rank. In FFXIV the matching system is horrific. I was trying to do team feast in season 4 and 3 diamond players would go and recruit one bronze player just to get queues against bronze players to boost their win rate. That is demotivating not a progression gear system. Frontlines would still be chaos but it already is.

Vanilla WoW PvP gear progression was fine - the PvP gear was the same as PvE gear, except with a tad more weight and stats put into vitality (hit points). You could gear for PvP by getting PvE gear, and to a lesser extent vice versa.

When Arena came later and a solid separation of PvE gear and PvP gear by adding new stats like "resilience" and later "PvP power" you could no longer gear for PvP with PvE and vice versa. PvP became its own progression system to get the latest and greatest PvP purples. That really causes issues, but in the context of WoW they weren't as prevalent as they are in FFXIV for a couple of reasons.

1) WoW has never had a participation issue. Like, ever.
2) Along with point 1 I think WoW also had better match making algorithms.

With participation and better matching, new players were playing against new players. If you were as skilled as the other players then you would fall into a group of players similarly geared as you, and your matches were still competitive. I think it's dumb that someone who has simply been playing longer or got the gear first gets to win with skill level being equal, but at least the road to getting that gear and following the progression path was doable and maybe even fun since the matches on the way up were competitive.

In FFXIV, there's just not enough participation to alleviate the flaws of a PvP gear progression design. Even if there was, I still prefer the way they've normalized all the stats. I don't lose to someone just because they have better gear and are further along in the progression game. If I lose it's because I got outplayed. That's really the way it should be.

But it's extremely demoralizing to be a new player trying to get into PvP and not only is there a learning curve to PvP where you are out-skilled, by also being terribly out-geared really makes the prospect of winning any games an unlikely venture. And not winning games means getting the new gear comes painfully slow. That's where a lot of players nope out, feeding into the participation problem making other new players more likely to match up against veterans. And that's where we are now, without progression gear feeding into the problem. New players can't get into games and the games they get into are against higher ranked players or some high ranked player playing on a low ranked alt.

[Wintersandman]

But it's extremely demoralizing to be a new player trying to get into PvP and not only is there a learning curve to PvP where you are out-skilled, by also being terribly out-geared really makes the prospect of winning any games an unlikely venture. And not winning games means getting the new gear comes painfully slow. That's where a lot of players nope out, feeding into the participation problem making other new players more likely to match up against veterans. And that's where we are now, without progression gear feeding into the problem. New players can't get into games and the games they get into are against higher ranked players or some high ranked player playing on a low ranked alt.

Now the problem is there is no point investing the time into PvP. There is no motivation to continue like there is for PvE which is where gear progression is beneficial. It's like great I can spend all this time pvp'ing and there is no real reward for my time spent. There should be something that shows for investing time in either PvE or PvP. I am behind gear wise for PvE and if I tank I know I will be getting hate ripped off me. I have to invest the time and it will be frustrating just as it is for the new person starting off in PvP. Your demoralization argument applies to PvE as well but you don't see SE changing how that works. How long did it take groups to say Clear needed on new Ex fights and won't take anyone new in PF? I see it within a week.

So there should be something to show that you spend the time. PVE gets it all. Mounts, gear and titles.

[RiyahArp]

You get unique mounts for a certain number of wins in feast and each frontline modes, you get to buy five sets of gear from wolf marks, with another set that you could get from seal rock, and the recent frontline and feast modes all have a mount available for so many wins. There are several unique minions and orchestrion rolls you can only get from pvping. It's not like there are no rewards.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

You get unique mounts for a certain number of wins in feast and each frontline modes, you get to buy five sets of gear from wolf marks, with another set that you could get from seal rock, and the recent frontline and feast modes all have a mount available for so many wins. There are several unique minions and orchestrion rolls you can only get from pvping. It's not like there are no rewards.

It's less an issue of no rewards, but an issue of lengthy amounts of time without any new rewards.

The Original ADS mount has been around since Secure was new, requires 200 wins with the same GC, and the achievement tells it wrong: If you were to get 199 wins with the Flames then switch to Adders, your next win counts as 1/200. You don't lose progress on the Flames, but the number doesn't go up til you go back.

The Field Commander's Set is a nice reward to show how much you've won in Seal Rock. . . if only people were more apt to play it.

The materia vendor at the Wolves' Den Pier STILL had the useless materia from the original Wolves' Den arena (The Fold) until 4.0. He still currently only has 2 songs and the cheerleader minion, which is untradable, thus once you have one, you'll never buy one again.

It's been almost a year and a half, and Shatter is STILL the newest mode in Frontlines. Slaughter was just unceremoniously removed, and Secure sat through all of Heavensward, abandoned at level 50. So long in fact, only veteran PvPers even know what it is or how to play it.

As far as PvP gear goes, we got new sets in 3.0, then 3.25, then finally Garo in 3.5, always below the current endgame PvE item levels (so they couldn't even serve as filler gear), and all of it still with the dead Morale stat. With gear being purely glamour now, you'd think they'd be more willing to add more with major update patches.

It goes without saying if PvE content had this kind of sporadic support, players would be quite enraged. SE's terrible double standard rears its ugly head again.

[Geryth]

Now the problem is there is no point investing the time into PvP. There is no motivation to continue like there is for PvE which is where gear progression is beneficial. It's like great I can spend all this time pvp'ing and there is no real reward for my time spent. There should be something that shows for investing time in either PvE or PvP. I am behind gear wise for PvE and if I tank I know I will be getting hate ripped off me. I have to invest the time and it will be frustrating just as it is for the new person starting off in PvP. Your demoralization argument applies to PvE as well but you don't see SE changing how that works. How long did it take groups to say Clear needed on new Ex fights and won't take anyone new in PF? I see it within a week.

So there should be something to show that you spend the time. PVE gets it all. Mounts, gear and titles.

PvE is still quite different than PvP though. SE designs PvE to be completed at a certain item level, and all that does for you as a player is restrict the mistakes you can make to clear that content if you meet the bare minimum to participate. So while yes, latest and greatest PvE has the same challenge where it's hard to clear when you first run into it, all you need to do is make less mistakes and then you'll win and get the gear. In PvP it depends on how geared AND good your opponents are. You can play flawlessly and not make a single mistake, but because your opponent didn't either, they win because they out-gear you - or in some cases they out-gear you so much they can make mistakes and still win.

But yeah, a disadvantage of a normalized gear design is that the rewards don't feel as good. Your power level doesn't go up, so what's the point? Right now it's all just mounts and titles. Which is enough to keep people interested until they attain those mounts and titles. I just got The Hand of Mercy so I won't be seen in Frontlines for a while. That's a challenging problem - find rewards that make it worth doing and in a way that gives it replayability. This is where things like crafting mats or Housing can help, but the main driving force of completing content in an RPG is to get stronger and when you take that away - it's a hard problem to solve. Because like you said - PvE also gets the mounts and titles AND the reward of getting stronger.

I guess I could get behind a progression PvP system if I was confident that SE could attract players into the mode and provide good match making, and plugging exploit holes (like smurfing or win trading). I think with the lack of resources they are putting into PvP it's about as good as it can be right now.

[Wintersandman]

Snip.

What makes it worse is PvE receives new rewards almost every patch cycle. We haven't had new rewards for PvP in almost a year. Garo came out in January if my research shows it correctly. Yes you can do feast but that has a lockout on who can properly attain it. I attempted to invest time into PvP when there was a gear progression system but the queue times were so long and I was more PvE focused during ARR.

I think it is part of the FFXIV culture to be PvE focused. I am hoping Wings changes it. The GC system caused so many pains and the freelancer should have been implemented way sooner. I am positive they could introduce morale for today's FL and it would actually work. Queue times are way better than they were.