PvP in FFXIV and it's Future

[Anhra]

Here is a image from back then when they adressed the "main issues" of PvP back then, just before they turned it into what it is today.

[Kiurai]

When were these slides from 2017? This is the precursor to the Stormblood changes correct?

[Cidel]

A big problem with XIV's PvP is there aren't enough desirable rewards- or even if there are, you can queue Frontlines non-stop all day or a few times daily and you'll likely have near everything you want from it by the weekend (Wolves Marks). They also have seemingly slowed-down adding new armor/extras to the vendors to twice an entire expansion cycle, making Wolves Marks largely worthless aside from buying dark matter or squadron rationing manuals. Probably doesn't help that Wolves Marks are handed out like candy as participation rewards just for queueing Frontlines with a pulse (for now). Therefore everything Wolves Marks-related has incredibly brief retention.

The achievement rewards from wins on their own sort of help retain players (and aren't simply handed-out, so it encourages you to actually try to win), but once you obtain those rewards I think many players stop queueing out of exasperation or at least take a long break from Frontlines. You can only herd cats for so long before you need to step away from it.

Feast has a bunch of accessibility issues, but I find Feast's biggest problem is the timing of their active ranking seasons. It's already a given that you have a brief window of activity for a few weeks once the season starts to reasonably queue and climb to a particular rank to keep seeing any activity; but what exacerbates the problem is when they release new seasons alongside other anticipated PvE content patches. As a result, by the time many players might decide to start participating in the Feast season after playing the new PvE content (and let's not kid ourselves, the vast majority of players are here for PvE content, not PvP), their queues are already usually ridiculously long to get a match (if you're not at gold, apparently) and it turns people off and away. When the devs release a new Feast season alongside a big PvE content patch, attention gets taken away from it and perpetuates its niche status. To be fair, this has always seemed like a problem with XIV's content cycle where several different newly released content compete with each other for participation (do you grind out the new Frontlines mode while it has insta-queue participation or do you level BLU to the new cap and find parties quickly for the new spells before they disappear from the PF two weeks later?). But alas, that's for another topic. Starting/ending Feast seasons between patches during lulls could probably go a long way to seeing better participation.

And as a side note, they haven't done or added anything new with Wolf Collars in the however-many seasons since it was implemented (except give GNB and DNC weapons, surprisingly), so there's also even less motivation for players to participate if they can't rank.

[Gallus]

Frontline problems - once people starts getting their hands on the rewards, this gradually dies over time.

The Feast problems - rigged top 100 ladders with 50% of the spots taken by alts (both from the same data center and other data centers). I don't know what on earth square's thinking by allowing this (for 17 seasons no less).

Couple the above with everybody left out of top 100 getting wolf collars...which are FF7'S tissue's consolation prize, and you get where we are now.

The Feast's fatal blow is FFXIV having one of the most chill and laidback communities combined with the heart attack inducing nature of The Feast mode. These two don't get along well either.

What I would (personally) do or, rather, have done (because I'm afraid it's a little late being S17 and all):

Frontlines - Better rewards over time + keep updating them. Maybe even remove them somewhere later and add new ones so that people have a reason to keep queueing. Job EXP is the incentive that should be avoided like the plague here. Rewards should always be attached to doing positive active things like killing X people, taking X points or winning X matches, definitely no to things like "participate in X matches" for more than obvious reasons.

The Feast - If people want to play with alts, let them, but the same account should never take more than 1 spot in the Top 100.

Wolf collars. Personally, I would have cycled the rewards attainable with the wolf collars every 3-4 seasons, allowing for different things to be exchanged for them, and I would've locked them away later, so that these remain "fairly" exclusive too, albeit a lot less exclusive than the top 1-100 goodies. That would've been, in my book, a much better way to treat everybody who attempts the PVP mode and puts in a certain amount of effort.

Just my 2 cents, others may think differently.

[Nanne]

Feast has a bunch of accessibility issues, but I find Feast's biggest problem is the timing of their active ranking seasons. It's already a given that you have a brief window of activity for a few weeks once the season starts to reasonably queue and climb to a particular rank to keep seeing any activity

We constantly have back to back seasons that last for months so I wouldnt call it a brief window. Feast only needs 8 players to have a match pop but there are barely over 100 players playing each season so that is why it dies out. Biggest problem of Feast is that nobody wants to play it. Frontlines get easily 72 players in a single match during prime time but Feast cannot even get 8 players into the queue within 3 ranking brackets at the same time 2 weeks into the season...

[Cidel]

We constantly have back to back seasons that last for months so I wouldnt call it a brief window. Feast only needs 8 players to have a match pop but there are barely over 100 players playing each season so that is why it dies out. Biggest problem of Feast is that nobody wants to play it. Frontlines get easily 72 players in a single match during prime time but Feast cannot even get 8 players into the queue within 3 ranking brackets at the same time 2 weeks into the season...

And there's your brief window I was referring to. Two weeks at the start of the season. You ended up reiterating my point.

[Araxes]

Id simply revert all changes made in Stormblood (including the removal of 8v8v8) and add seasonal Frontline rewards. Achieve 100 Wins within 3 Months to receive this or That Mount/Glamour. But yeah, i do not think rewards alone will help get more Players in the Gamemode. I tend to describe the current "PvP" as a pot of soup where the cook forgot Salt and Spices. I know a certain someone who legit managed to fall asleep in Shatter...... <.<

Right now, i don't want any new rewards added to Frontlines because if there is anything half decent, i have to suffer through hours of Boredom. (They tend to make new Rewards extremely expensive cause they know most long Term PvP Players have their Wolfmarks capped for weeks or even months.) I remember when they added the Chopperlike thingy, it was, and still is, 20k Wolfmarks, so i had to farm some more for the Other stuff after i spend the marks i had capped for i do not know how long.

So yeah, Rewards Alone will NOT fix the long Term problem: It is boring as hell, has no Agenda, no meaning anymore since it is forced mercenary (Kinda funny that you are FORCED to betray your Grand Company) and the outcome of the Games has no effect at all to the Gameworld.

[SuperZay]

The major turnoff for new players in the ranked Feast is always a bad mood and anxiety (wether they win or not, and new players mostly lose because get farmed by veterans). That's why there's always the same people in tops for many seasons, they just got used to it but still not having fun, and stop as soon as they secure a 'safe' spot. Rehashed rewards do not help the situation. Multiple alts from other datacenters taking spots of native datacenter characters do not help the situation. The most fun (imo), casual, and popular 8vs8 mode was taken out. Between seasons The Feast is dead so no practice or anything. This leads to a slow but sure decay.
Rival Wings never pops outside of community efforts (who have to advertise it in PF for the whole week to get 5 or less pops in Saturday) and Moogle Tomes events.
Frontline is just a mess with 72 players where no matter your best effort your contribution is not enough to achieve anything among so many disorganized people who mostly que for daily XP but hate PvP in general.

Solution: bring 8vs8 back for practice and FUN. Bring 8vs8vs8 Frontlines (forbid premade if you think it makes it unbalanced). Change The Feast matchmaking to win rates rather than rating because now it means nothing, just the amount of matches spam. Make 1 daily feast match where you can't lose a rating if you lose, it'll keep ques active for the whole season. Make leaderboards for every job like in Ishgard restoration, but that's too much to ask for at this point.

[Mistress_Irika]

There are 2 things that I'm very concerned about.

The first is how pvp feels restricted. I disagree with some of the changes like not being able to choose a frontline map when you feel like it and not being able to play the old feast maps in training, but I ended up shrugging it off over time because of how important the changes was. It was SE just trying to help solve problems. After the recent update with some dungeons being able to be explored with no enemies around I can't stop to wonder why pvp doesn't have many options to control and manipulate at this point. That sort of update would help with creating tutorials and what not. I wouldn't mind if 24 man frontlines were locked behind having to set a few premades like they did with the old feast maps. SE doesn't have to touch that if they don't want to. Alas, it's just another small wish lumped with the many that's on the forums like a bunch of stars.

The more important issue is the lack of content that's currently presented. It's not that we don't have enough. Every time something new is added something else is taken away. We get a training mode for feast, while we lost the 8v8 mode with the maps being locked behind party finder. We get Hidden Gorge while Astragalos gets locked. The map has been locked since Hidden Gorge's release. We get an awesome frontline map that's very popular while 24 man gets taken away. The sad part is that out of what remains it's not a guaranteed that people will be playing depending on the type of game mode and the type of day, and that usually creates the false illusion that pvp is dead.

It's something that I have been slowly seeing over the 3 years that I've been playing. Despite the changes that was happening back then it didn't really hit me until 5.1. I preferred full party team fights on smaller maps which was why I was grinding every day just because, but after 5.1 I lost my satisfaction and my willingness to play all day. After forced freelancer being a thing I found it harder to create new friends and see an overall growth from myself. Trying to get new players to try out pvp has also become difficult. Things were lost, and even if I keep quiet about it some players will eventually figure out that something's not right. New player's experience with starting the feast journey is a great example of this.

I don't see myself quitting pvp anytime soon, but I do have to seriously worry about the future if this sort of trend continues. I don't want to lose anything else or be told when I can play a certain mode.