PvP Rewards; 6.1 and beyond.

[rofland]

all t100 rewards "earned" by primal players in prior seasons should be stripped and redistributed evenly across all other data centers

[brancinaed]

You keep using words like "many, high numbering, outnumbering, etc." in previous posts, but this isn't true at all [...] Perhaps because you are from Primal where it is probably the worst comparably to the rest of the data centers you may be more correct, but choosing to neglect the achievement of everyone else who rightfully made it is unjust. If you want to fight this fight, how about instead of stripping away the accomplishments of those who rightfully achieved their rewards, you make more fervent demands for SE to actually moderate the leaderboards? It's their job to do so, they are not, go after them and leave those who are not at fault be.

I have hundreds of games into Diamond outside Primal. I cannot speak for anybody other than myself but it was freaking everywhere!
Moderating a very competitive environment takes a lot of expensive time and effort so instead of that route I propose removing the competition for items. It's not removing the tier achievements or item rewards from anybody. We will still have anything earned, so I still strongly believe making these items available to anybody new willing to invest time in PvP will do a lot to improve the game in that area. Titles and other small rewards that take an artist or developer so little time compared to unique items or mounts you will never see me complaining about those things.

I know there are cheaters and they are even dares to provoke people on discord to duel in Wolf's Den, however, that do not serve as an excuse to take away exclusivity away from exclusive item.
No one is entitled to access to everything inside the game.
There will be always an item player is unable to access to, for example, legacy tatoo.
It is unique and only Character from 1.00 allows to have and it is exclusive item from SE for players to support this game at its toughest time.
Can you claim legacy tatoo should be allow to be access by every players?

If you knew how many there were I pray your mind may be swayed. Legacy tattoo, and other real money items, are basically an exchange with Square Enix. I think these are great and support the game! The key distinction is that money is being given to Square Enix or an official Square Enix sponsor.
Imagine if today a player could pay a random third party website to teach them how to break the rules to add the legacy tattoo to their account then so many people did so they began to outnumber legitimate players with the legacy tattoo. If that happened there would be a negative association with wearing the tattoo and I theorize many players would complain. Right now wearing exclusive PvP rewards can cast a bad light onto any player, so much so I think it sort of ruins any enjoyment of the exclusivity. PvP in this game would be better if we could just all enjoy this old content plus I don't think it'd make the game worse.

[Divinemights]

If you knew how many there were I pray your mind may be swayed. Legacy tattoo, and other real money items, are basically an exchange with Square Enix. I think these are great and support the game! The key distinction is that money is being given to Square Enix or an official Square Enix sponsor.
Imagine if today a player could pay a random third party website to teach them how to break the rules to add the legacy tattoo to their account then so many people did so they began to outnumber legitimate players with the legacy tattoo. If that happened there would be a negative association with wearing the tattoo and I theorize many players would complain. Right now wearing exclusive PvP rewards can cast a bad light onto any player, so much so I think it sort of ruins any enjoyment of the exclusivity. PvP in this game would be better if we could just all enjoy this old content plus I don't think it'd make the game worse.

I am sorry, you really lost me here.
Not mentioning your counter example on legacy tattoo
How is wearing exclusive PvP rewards cast a bad light onto any player?

[Ixon]

I have hundreds of games into Diamond outside Primal. I cannot speak for anybody other than myself but it was freaking everywhere!
Moderating a very competitive environment takes a lot of expensive time and effort so instead of that route I propose removing the competition for items. It's not removing the tier achievements or item rewards from anybody. We will still have anything earned, so I still strongly believe making these items available to anybody new willing to invest time in PvP will do a lot to improve the game in that area. Titles and other small rewards that take an artist or developer so little time compared to unique items or mounts you will never see me complaining about those things.

While I only play Aether, I cannot speak to the vast quantities of either cheating or wintrading that you are implying. Does it happen? Absolutely. Though I can only think of a sparse handful. Though some data centers have it way worse than others for sure, I do not believe moderating this issue is as hard as you make it out to be. It's so easily noticeable by other players, I doubt it's harder from a GM perspective. If it's too hard for them, they need to improve their reporting mechanism and then actually be held accountable. I have seen forum posts, twitter posts, reddit threads, youtube videos, all about someone actively speed hacking the game(which is supposed to be easily detectable compared to other third party tools) and have absolutely no action taken. In my opinion, instead of cheapening the rewards for those who want to put forth the effort in a competitive game mode, how about SE actually do what they are supposed to do.

I don't think people really understand what happens when they low-ball rewards in PVP. Whenever you make something easy to obtain, you get an influx of players. This is a good thing, however, if it is easy enough you will also get an influx of players who do not care in the slightest. Take right now as a good example. People have MANY jobs to level, and the Frontline roulette gives a large chunk of exp. This has caused it to be popping quite frequently, but has also degraded the quality of matches. The end goal is to do the match, not necessarily win, so most do not put forth even the most miniscule amount of effort needed to even have a decent match. This isn't people that are simply "new", these are those who do not care because there is no reason to. You saw this with Garo, you see it during Moogle tomes. Sure, you get a few more people now and then who discover they enjoy the PVP, but it pales in comparison to the wave of people who afk run into the enemy.

Remember when they dropped the new Frontlines map? Yes queue syncing was an issue for solo queue-ers in the beginning, but at that time you could only get the mount from WINS. Because of this, people actually tried, the majority of matches were decent(not all of course) because most queueing up at that time had the goal of trying to win. Imagine if right now frontlines gave 10mil exp from the roulette only IF you win. Imagine how much more close and exciting those games would be. Mark my words, if they make this new "battle pass" system in a way that you can afk queue into Frontlines for 100 games and get a mount from it, that will be a miserable experience.

[brancinaed]

[...]
I don't think people really understand what happens when they low-ball rewards in PVP. Whenever you make something easy to obtain, you get an influx of players. This is a good thing, however, if it is easy enough you will also get an influx of players who do not care in the slightest. Take right now as a good example. People have MANY jobs to level, and the Frontline roulette gives a large chunk of exp. This has caused it to be popping quite frequently, but has also degraded the quality of matches. The end goal is to do the match, not necessarily win, so most do not put forth even the most miniscule amount of effort needed to even have a decent match. This isn't people that are simply "new", these are those who do not care because there is no reason to. You saw this with Garo, you see it during Moogle tomes. Sure, you get a few more people now and then who discover they enjoy the PVP, but it pales in comparison to the wave of people who afk run into the enemy.[...]

What about ranked game mode? If we're playing ranked, especially at the top of the ladder, we wouldn't be dealing with brand new players at all. I'm more irked with everybody breaking the rules for the items; it ruined the supposed competitiveness of the ranking system, few were playing the game mode for competition or fun anymore. I do not blame Square Enix for this just the actions of individuals. I'm not going to ask for bans here, but I will beg for the game to be better. The PvP game would be dramatically improved if this large lot of items became obtainable PvP rewards.

For normal mode achievements adding all the PvP items to achievements based on "X games played" is a good idea. Truly the most important thing is just for there to be games played. For ranked mode achievements I believe "X wins" is a better idea. I may be wrong, though, because I can see pro and cons in both cases.

I am sorry, you really lost me here.
Not mentioning your counter example on legacy tattoo
How is wearing exclusive PvP rewards cast a bad light onto any player?

Because it got to the point where so many players were breaking T.O.S. for exclusive PvP rewards that word got out. Then people who didn't even PvP have heard the word. It sucks for legit players. Even the earliest season items get this negative attribution, though it used to be better, because people just hear the stories and can't know every individual player. Wearing the items that are top rank PVP rewards recently is like introducing yourself "assume I'm a cheater" because it's sadly a safe assumption in recent seasons.

[Zsolen]

What about ranked game mode? If we're playing ranked, especially at the top of the ladder, we wouldn't be dealing with brand new players at all. I'm more irked with everybody breaking the rules for the items; it ruined the supposed competitiveness of the ranking system, few were playing the game mode for competition or fun anymore. I do not blame Square Enix for this just the actions of individuals. I'm not going to ask for bans here, but I will beg for the game to be better. The PvP game would be dramatically improved if this large lot of items became obtainable PvP rewards.

Ranked players, including the majority of top 100 in most Data centers, want cheaters perma-banned. We want SE to draw the hard line. We have begged them to do so in the past. We deal with cheaters far more than anyone else. We reported them all of the time. While I have certainly not been hard-lined to make rewards exclusive, you posts are actually counter-productive. I'm starting to think they should be exclusive now.

For normal mode achievements adding all the PvP items to achievements based on "X games played" is a good idea. Truly the most important thing is just for there to be games played. For ranked mode achievements I believe "X wins" is a better idea. I may be wrong, though, because I can see pro and cons in both cases.

X games played is the worst metric imaginable. Do you try to clear dungeons and raids or do you simply queue for them, fail, and get a reward?

Because it got to the point where so many players were breaking T.O.S. for exclusive PvP rewards that word got out. Then people who didn't even PvP have heard the word. It sucks for legit players. Even the earliest season items get this negative attribution, though it used to be better, because people just hear the stories and can't know every individual player. Wearing the items that are top rank PVP rewards recently is like introducing yourself "assume I'm a cheater" because it's sadly a safe assumption in recent seasons.

Most people don't even know where the rewards come from. I have to tell them. They certainly never assume I cheated. I get asked often, even in FL matches. Thank God most players have an open mind, when it comes to this.

[Araxes]

Most people don't even know where the rewards come from. I have to tell them.

Same here, i get asked almost daily where my Eaglebeak set is from. Most of the people that played at the time are not playing anymore. At least when it comes to my old datacenter. When i look up their characters, they are still at 70 max, some never started Stormblood. There was a mass exodus of the old guard when the simplification of pvp happened.

[Anhra]

As long as Frontline Roulette exists mainly for PvE reasons, nothing will ever improve for anything the Mode. PvP needs to exist for the sake of PvP, and its simply amazing that Squeenix hasnt thought of this. Also, Frontline has way too many People for it to be anything but a Zerg fest.

And while were at it, as current Job design on ALL Jobs stands, even Crystal Conflict wont improve PvP much at all, simply because 7 out of 18 Jobs are unkillable in a 1vs1 scenario, and 5 of the remaining 11 have a big stat advantage over the rest. Unless all of the Jobs get a complete rework from scratch, the new Mode will simply end up like Rival Wings during Moogle Tomestone Event.

[Ixon]

As long as Frontline Roulette exists mainly for PvE reasons, nothing will ever improve for anything the Mode. PvP needs to exist for the sake of PvP, and its simply amazing that Squeenix hasnt thought of this. Also, Frontline has way too many People for it to be anything but a Zerg fest.

And while were at it, as current Job design on ALL Jobs stands, even Crystal Conflict wont improve PvP much at all, simply because 7 out of 18 Jobs are unkillable in a 1vs1 scenario, and 5 of the remaining 11 have a big stat advantage over the rest. Unless all of the Jobs get a complete rework from scratch, the new Mode will simply end up like Rival Wings during Moogle Tomestone Event.

They have already mentioned in the last Live Letter that with the overall adjustment to the jobs(probably in 6.1), the way they play specifically in Crystal Conflict will be different from FL or RW for the sake of balance.

[Anhra]

They have already mentioned in the last Live Letter that with the overall adjustment to the jobs(probably in 6.1), the way they play specifically in Crystal Conflict will be different from FL or RW for the sake of balance.

And the word "adjustments" is exactly why i doubt its success so much. I genuinely believe that Squeenix is unable to properly design any PvP Content from the way they have been overall designing Jobs for both PvE and PvP during my entire stay in FFXIV.