SE - Increase PVP participation

[Rogatum]

I'd consider myself to be one of the people lured a bit by the mount, but after thinking about it long and hard, I don't think I'm going to bother trying. I see the lowest possible rank to aquire the mount going up slowly and the amount of effort I'd have to put in to get it is absolutely not worth it to me. I'd rather go do POTD solo and keep dying on floor 183 than deal with the stress, pressure and ultimate dissppointment that will eventually come of it. At least doing POTD solo I may one day luck out and be RNG blessed with steel every 2 floors.

This is how you go about getting what you want from SE. If players really want ranked rewards without putting any extra effort give them a reason to add reward incentives to help with the queue time. A few of my FC mates complain about the mount being locked behind top 100 yet they queue for the feast in an attempt to earn the reward. Which boggles my mind since if queue times suffer enough SE will be forced to do something to incentive players to queue. The nature behind rewards has always been to act as an incentive. Though I will never understand why someone will want something for nothing, but that is the world current live in and the nature of attaching exclusive rewards in to a game mode that overall the community seems to care very little about. While in PvE you can get away with adding exclusive rewards since that is content everyone can strive for. PvP on the other hand asking players to try a game mode that differs from the core game as to how classes play providing no real frame of reference for new players it is understandable why players are turned off by the very notion of PvP.

[Zojha]

Which boggles my mind since if queue times suffer enough SE will be forced to do something to incentive players to queue.

Well queues have kinda been suffering for what now, 6 seasons? It's usually only at the start of the season that they get lively, as everyone rushes for the rewards, then they typically die down fairly quickly.
It's why they keep adjusting the matchmaking width every other season, (ban chat I suppose?), add stuff like wolf collars, make ranked more forgiving by only taking your highest rating, making it easier to rank up by skewing gains/losses, making it available from 30, simplifying skills to lower the skill floor and likely more I'm currently forgetting about.

I personally think it's futile. This game's PvP struggles at the very foundation with bad netcode, clumsy animation times and a limiting tab target combat system. Trying to create a good gameplay experience with that is difficult all by itself. And I doubt there are many people who consider syncing simplified burst rotations to try and bypass ridiculous healers all that compelling gameplay. But hey, people like to think it's fine as is and everything including the neighbor's cat is at fault, just not that, so whatever.

[Aivi_lo]

I would love the mount, but I know i would never be good enough, so why try/waste my time when I know I won't get what I want from it? If it was obtainable by participation, then I would go in.

[Rogatum]

I personally think it's futile. This game's PvP struggles at the very foundation with bad netcode, clumsy animation times and a limiting tab target combat system. Trying to create a good gameplay experience with that is difficult all by itself. And I doubt there are many people who consider syncing simplified burst rotations to try and bypass ridiculous healers all that compelling gameplay. But hey, people like to think it's fine as is and everything including the neighbor's cat is at fault, just not that, so whatever.

Thing is people who have no real interest in PvP buy into the PR lip service when it comes to the exclusive rewards, I am sure players like my FC mates are not the only ones who go in and try to "earn" the rewards despite on a fundamental level not enjoying the content at all. If more people stopped with the initial rush at the start of the season SE would be put into a position to either do a complete overhaul (which I doubt) or admit it has failed and put it in maintenance mode.

I do not think anyone truly believes the PvP in FFXIV is anywhere near functional, they might say it but deep down I doubt they believe it. As you said each season they try to adjust it, but in the end only way to keep pvping active in this game is attach obtainable rewards to act as incentives for people to queue. Short from a rework from the ground up, I do not see how they can save PvP since let us be real the game play is not fun. Which only further exacerbates the the issue some have, why would they tie exclusive rewards to game a mode that objectively is flawed. They will never make feast an Esport, and I am not even sure who on the FFXIV team thought feast had any chance of ever becoming a Esport.

[Divinemights]

You guys are making Aether datacentre sounds like a hell for PvP players.

[FelipePF]

Right? It has a lot of flaws, but it's not the worse thing in the world

[Wintersandman]

I really only play PvP so I believe that it is functional even though I hate the new system. Feast gets my adrenaline pumping too much that I don't enjoy it. Frontlines I thoroughly enjoy especially Seal Rock as it leans towards the most confrontational. I dislike Astragalos because it is mainly "Get ROBOT, Destroy PvE Objective". No real benefit for killing people in it.

[Zojha]

I really only play PvP so I believe that it is functional even though I hate the new system.

I would imagine that most people who regularly play this PvP will like (and defend) it to some degree, because if you don't like it, you're not going to keep playing it. That's just natural selection, it pertains not just to PvP, but products in general. It's why many subscription services give you a survey when you unsubscribe to find out why, because once people are gone, their input is lost and the remaining people won't take much issue with things, or else they'd leave as well. And then you have swathes of people leaving, nobody knows why, and the only feedback you get is like:"It's mostly fine, people just have bad taste."

I personally see this PvP as "functional" in the same way a car with flat tires, no seats, no built-in suspension and no windshield is functional. You can drive with it - Slowly. It's not a great or satisfying experience.

[Wintersandman]

because if you don't like it, you're not going to keep playing it.

Either that or there is nothing better that has come along. There is a catch and I think that is the ultimate problem. As players we are exposed to an MMO (any game really) our very first and we build up memories of that first experience. Everything after that has to meet or exceed that first experience. I started off with FFXI as my first and I still have incredibly nostalgia and wanting to relive aspects of the game. Same with WoW during Vanilla, Burning Crusade, and WotlK. I cancelled my WoW subscription when CATA was about to come out and then when I realized it took me 2 weeks to get geared for Lich King after I had been gone several patch cycles. I was blown away by how dumb downed it became. There was a point to raiding and working towards those gear pieces. I thrived on the PvP in WoW as well with Arathi Basin and Warsong Gulch. Premades being the same annoyance that they are in FFXIV but it was also fun when two premades went up against each other. Sure I dabbled in other games but none had the community that I felt FFXI had and all the others felt like clones of WoW.

So with all that being said, I may be drinking nostalgia from the 3.0 days which had its challenges but I can't also say that the PvP in 4.0 is not satisfying. I believe I am also waiting for that something better that proves that this is as broken as everyone makes it out to be.

[maestroanth]

I really only play PvP so I believe that it is functional even though I hate the new system. Feast gets my adrenaline pumping too much that I don't enjoy it. Frontlines I thoroughly enjoy especially Seal Rock as it leans towards the most confrontational. I dislike Astragalos because it is mainly "Get ROBOT, Destroy PvE Objective". No real benefit for killing people in it.

I just tried some of the pvp which was "Feast" and I found it to be very fun and some people really enjoy that adrenaline pump. In someways I even liked it better than a WoW bg, but probably not because it was actually better, but just was not WoW.

Based on my first impressions, I think this game can have awesome pvp if they keep working on it.