The Feast - 4.3 Updates!

[Kisama]

Heavy metal becomes literally heavy and lowers your movement speed. Calling it now, and you know that this is something they'd consider.

[FPZ]

The update post doesn't really contain anything that we've already known or been told about before in regards to Feast. At the very least there's some minor information about kiting, which doesn't really warrant a whole new thread to tell us about.

It would've be more beneficial to have updates on the actual community feedback in regards to the most popular issues that currently exist. Show us that you're collecting data and from what sources (forums, questionnaire, feedback forms) and who you are sampling from. The founder and admin of a PVP discord with hundreds of players across multiple data centers is about to become one of your community managers, why not utilise this as apart of your feedback process and have something to send through to the discord in order to gain feedback that samples a lot of the top 100 players all in one place and combine it with other methods of feedback collection.

If you're going down this route of forum updates, it's best make sure it's unified and mentions multiple issues as opposed to just one or two singular issues such as 'kiting' and 'map balance', which doesn't send off the best message in regards to if the development team even knows about the issue of class balance with paladin and warrior (and obviously other classes which other player's could tell you about).

An example from the last update (from a tank perspective):

• Devolpment team introduced light medals
• Removed upheaval from warrior and 're-added' the previously removed skill 'inner-release'
• Buffed paladin further
• Removed map rotation / push and pull

The above examples created a design where teams who get ahead early in medal count become harshly disadvantaged, this has also resulted in paladin being overpowered and warrior being almost useless. One map was added, others were removed, push and pull was removed, the list goes on with various elements. A fair share of the Feast community didn't understand why changes such as the above examples were implemented in the first place, which loops back to my original statement of needing more transparency when it comes to development updates for Feast.

[Ill_Matic]

I'm trying to get into PvP, Currently I'm not ranked and I can't even que for a ranked game. It's always 30+ minute wait. Last night I left the que on for over an hour and nothing popped. How do I get involved in PvP? Lol is it completely dead?

[BloodRubyXII]

I'm trying to get into PvP, Currently I'm not ranked and I can't even que for a ranked game. It's always 30+ minute wait. Last night I left the que on for over an hour and nothing popped. How do I get involved in PvP? Lol is it completely dead?

Late season dies out, for a catalogue of reasons, here are some of them in the hope they actually read this section.
- The queues are long. A player distribution issue as opposed to game design. The problem, which is game design related is the wait is so long for so little. I played 6 games last week and won 5, all in the same day. I stopped, getting +100 as Diamond is hard and takes a couple hours of queueing as ranged due to length. Even when I was Plat id log out some days at +80-100 because I thought it was good enough progress before I start losing, go on a tilt and play badly.


-In reference to point 1, you have to win almost twice as many games as lost to progress. Again, when your queues are 12-22 minutes, this is an issue. 30 minutes later you've lost 27 points. 30 minutes after that you lose another 27.. That's an hour already gone out of maybe the 2-3 hours you have to play a day and you now need around 3 wins at 23ish points each to break even. Assuming you win 3 in a row, which is entirely down to what team you have in a lot of cases (inb4 "nature of solo queue" - it is, but it doesn't make it less painful) that's already another hour. Let's say you play your third hour, you get 3 games in that hour and lose 1 and win 2. 3 hours to get 7 rating. You can now see why when I got +100, I took it and ran. It's not about having nothing to lose, at 2161 I'm safe, even if there was decay I'd literally just play the bare minimum, in the time I spend queueing on this game I could be actively enjoying ANYTHING else, including offline. But when people have nothing to lose as well, when they tilt, no queues are safe. Commence job rouletting and game throwing. They'll get banned for it eventually, but the damage has already been done.

-Referencing point 2; like any ranked game, safe ratings exist. I sat on WoW at 3k in S22 because it was guaranteed R1. An hour of games could put it out of permanent reach for the last couple of weeks, why risk it. That risk doesn't apply here, I played Feast because I enjoyed it, but as more and more good players stop playing, your games become endless frustration, which synergizes with the other issues that you can be left deep in a hole that you can't get out of, pointswise. If training had an incentive for people to play it, I'd be there. Atm we play customs on Chaos and we enjoy them, because we have fun, equal games (some not so equal, but because rating isn't on the line, we're happy to leave our lobbies open for newbies to give it a try as they're the future for our queues, the earlier they learn the better especially since low ranked queues and training are dead). If I had the opportunity to play Healer outside of ranked more often, I'd still be queueing in Diamond as AST just for something different and because the queues aren't as bad. However I'm not good enough to simply jump in, I'm not going to wreck other peoples' already minimal stunted progress by attempting it.

-The foundations are there for new players to try feast, but encouragement and incentives are not. The top 100 is looked upon as a place they won't reach (despite the fact people like Ardo [correct me if I'm wrong, but it's his first season and he's top 10] and Piush are pretty much in safe range). The rewards at lower tiers are a joke and aside from tomes you are not proactively rewarded sufficiently for how you progress in a season.

-Light Medals are a frustrating new mechanic. Again, why queue to deal with the frustration of having an amazing game where we kill ranged and melee in the first minute, and subsequently suffer either trying to kill them with LM stacks, tunnelling their healer or killing near invincible stanced tanks (outside of culling) - only to lose in the last couple of minutes because they LB all our medals off us during culling and we couldn't respond effectively due to their reduced damage taken. We're forced to play defensive at the end of games because it's' easier than trying to kill anything, they've said they're going to address this but I don't have high hopes for it being changed for the better. LM should just be removed. If a team is dominating, let them win - they've earned it. Never ever played a game that punishes you so harshly for being ahead.

-Some of the most fun jobs are also almost the most useless. Starting with SMN (I know Feves is going to chew me for this later). SMN is balanced on the assumption that they can Bahamut burst after DWT. Bahamut functions badly enough in PvE, it''s even worse in feast. You have no guarantee you will land an Akh Morn when you want it to land, let alone it actually landing at all. As a result in some games SMN is either extremely strong with great quick burst phases or performs extremely poorly. Furthermore, the fact that Aetherflow CD doesn't reset when a SMN dies is just ridiculous. It was the same weakness SMN/SCH had in HW, if I see SMN aetherflow idc if he's got LM stacks if we're close to a burst I'm calling him next, because he'll be useless for like half a minute after.

-Finally, as this is class balance related. Paladin is simply too strong and also another reason I've avoided queues on occasion. They aren't fun to play against, a team with a Paladin vs team without one can make so many more mistakes and have an extremely easy game. The other has to play mindgames and pull off crazy hard switches to make good ground, or wait for the PLD to make a mistake. CC is so short in this game that simply binding the PLD when he runs for a stun on healer is not frequently feasible. Giving a tank a ranged silence and allowing them to split damage in a game mode where the only way to do anything is to burst single targets (as pressure does absolutely nothing, hence why SMN is not nearly as strong as it should be as a dot job) is simply obscene.

I like the new combat system, but for frontlines it's truly boring. There's no reason to do them too boring to even cap tomes in them. Once you're rank 50 that's all folks. I've been sitting on 20k wolf marks for a couple of years now, I spent a few once in a while on random glams but I get capped within an hour again. I was so bored late season I resubbed to RuneScape.

As it stands, this game is currently better off without a ranked mode, unless they can resurrect Light Party, because I don't think I can be bothered with S8 (and won't bother if the reward is an S7 mount reskin) and feel it isn't worth the stress.

If you want to get involved mate, come to Wolf Pups Den discord and join the custom games we make, literally only chance you have.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

-Finally, as this is class balance related. Paladin is simply too strong and also another reason I've avoided queues on occasion. They aren't fun to play against, a team with a Paladin vs team without one can make so many more mistakes and have an extremely easy game. The other has to play mindgames and pull off crazy hard switches to make good ground, or wait for the PLD to make a mistake. CC is so short in this game that simply binding the PLD when he runs for a stun on healer is not frequently feasible. Giving a tank a ranged silence and allowing them to split damage in a game mode where the only way to do anything is to burst single targets (as pressure does absolutely nothing, hence why SMN is not nearly as strong as it should be as a dot job) is simply obscene.

I can clearly see why it is frustrating to fight good Covers.

Going by the idea that this form of PvP since 4.x will persist, how about swapping Cover for Intervention? Instead of soaking damage make it act in a way like Protect does on WHM or simply put, like the PvE counterpart works at 40-50 gauge cost.

That way PLD remains true to its lore to shield their allies in need and gets closer to WAR and DRK regarding the tank utilities (Thrill; TBN).

Sidenote: Yes I know I barely pvped until now but I can clearly see why people dislike fighting Paladin setups, so I felt like contributing with an idea.

[snipski]

The problem is that they can use Cover so often putting a small cooldown on it would fix the issue.. Also hallowed ground might need a longer cooldown because right now its really hard to even get a kill on Paladin compared to War/Drk
Astro and Paladin are the two best jobs in feast right now and needs some kind of nerfs.

[BloodRubyXII]

I can clearly see why it is frustrating to fight good Covers.

Going by the idea that this form of PvP since 4.x will persist, how about swapping Cover for Intervention? Instead of soaking damage make it act in a way like Protect does on WHM or simply put, like the PvE counterpart works at 40-50 gauge cost.

That way PLD remains true to its lore to shield their allies in need and gets closer to WAR and DRK regarding the tank utilities (Thrill; TBN).

Sidenote: Yes I know I barely pvped until now but I can clearly see why people dislike fighting Paladin setups, so I felt like contributing with an idea.

If you're against a good PLD like Tomba, Ash or Zegram on Chaos, it's almost impossible to win, especially when paired with a good healer.

I agree with Lloyds points too, it's so easy to cover every single burst. and it's almost always obvious where burst is going to go because ranged use things like wildfire, brd/smn needs dots etc. Also HG is a full immunity, it shouldn't be usable so many times in the same game.

[Ill_Matic]

Dang, Sounds just like Overwatch lol. That's a bummer though on que times. I really enjoy PvP in MMOs. I played RuneScape up until last year and PvP'd non stop (RS3), So I know all about the salt and tilt. Sounds like a waste of time really in FF XIV. Thanks for the info though, Maybe I'll give it a few more goes. I'm sitting on a 50 minute que right now.

[Canadane]

Regarding queue times, I've been saying for a while now we need a degrading ranking system. If you don't play at least one match a day, you lose rating. And none of this maximum rank stuff, base it on your real rank. Your real rank going down based on your tier and current placement if you're in the top 100.

Will probably keep the top 100 moving, and perhaps give some hope to those that aren't quite in it a chance to see themselves sneak in if they work hard enough.

[Ill_Matic]

Regarding queue times, I've been saying for a while now we need a degrading ranking system. If you don't play at least one match a day, you lose rating. And none of this maximum rank stuff, base it on your real rank. Your real rank going down based on your tier and current placement if you're in the top 100.

Will probably keep the top 100 moving, and perhaps give some hope to those that aren't quite in it a chance to see themselves sneak in if they work hard enough.

I agree with this.