CC Casual is already meta'd out, so it's no longer casual/fun

[Risvertasashi]

Yeah I think they are in a tough spot. If they add exclusive rewards to ranked, it will create so much stress because there's way more than 100 people per data center playing and it would bring a lot of the more casual players, making the problem even worse and hurting casual queues. If they do nothing, people might lose interest because they don't see the point if it's just new portraits with a different number on it. Kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.

Not even close to 100, really, but T100 is always packed with alts. (I don't disagree with your points, just wanted to add)

[AshaStardust]

At least on Light the matches are full of clueless people playing whatever with occasionaly Crystals playing off-Jobs.

When you can top team damage as PLD it should tell you the level of play in Casual matches.

Come to Crystal and that is the case for ranked. As a dancer, I somehow have more damage taken than the tank with more time on the Crystal. But hey, at least the Warrior sure harassed that Summoner on the back line for a while until they were nuked down by the other team focusing them down. I mean, I know dancer should never be played that way, but when all your other teammates have less than a minute on the Crystal combined- do you just play your way and get ripped through every game? I don’t even know anymore

[Lacrimas]

Make minions for each job in the crystal currency armor with the collar weapons by playing however many games they want people to do. That would be a way to entice people to stick around while they make more things so people can keep the system working and hopefully implement a better mmr/sr system so new casual players aren't expected to fight against crystal players which will cannibalize the mode like the more competitive modes in any shooter.

They really just need to crank out more aesthetics or glams as eventually garo is going to run its course and the battle pass has very little to offer for how quick it can be to reach the level 30+ mark. They can also add separate rankings for each role or job to help get players to run ranked more and that way people who are one tricks and take a different job into ranked aren't going to throw games at their tier. Also let us sell wolf collars or more things to sell in the crystal shop so there is another way to make gil.

[drtasteyummy]

Of course they don't because the truth is that a lot of CC is less about doing cool shit and more about standing like a rtard in a crystal while managing cleanse, heal and your mana. It's a boring concept and an absolute crap design for casuals. Furthermore, the rewards are absolute dogshit and the meta which is Ninja LB 50% instant kill bootleg darius and PLD perma guard or cancer 20 seconds crystal afk godmode. Neglecting the shit map designs, tickrate, fixed crystal pulse wincheck, and garbage purify implementation because some 0 iq dev thought that an initial cleanse into status immunity without perma purge is gonna work well with their 2 tickrate monkey half life 1 server.

[Gserpent]

Yeah I think they are in a tough spot. If they add exclusive rewards to ranked, it will create so much stress because there's way more than 100 people per data center playing and it would bring a lot of the more casual players, making the problem even worse and hurting casual queues. If they do nothing, people might lose interest because they don't see the point if it's just new portraits with a different number on it. Kind of a damned if you do, damned if you don't situation.

Add mounts or item sets to top 100. Introduce those mounts and item sets (likely with different/less vibrant color schemes or no particle effects) as series rank 25 rewards in the next series or as some big 100+ wolf collars (100k crystals) purchase or something. This should already be the case for existing Feast mounts and armor sets - change the color scheme so that the original mounts and sets remain exclusive, but introduce them as rewards.

Then continue to do the Virtu thing for other, old AF sets. I know some folks don't like getting "old gear" as rewards, but the Virtu sets are substantially higher quality than the originals, which in a game where "glam is the end game," is significant in a lot of ways.

They have plenty of design space to work with here. The question is, will they do it? I don't know. Before 6.1's massive PvP rework I'd say no. But who knows? Maybe someone on SE's team actually has the stones to make PvP stop being a clown show and become "legitimate" side content. But doing so will require continued effort. Every new series needs to include a pile of new rewards (not just progression rewards, but new items available for purchase as well) or the whole thing falls apart.

I don't have a solution for the issue of "season 2 is pointless," though. That's a different can of worms.

And FWIW, I think the best solution to win trading etc in ranked is to get rid of solo queue ranked. Make ranked PvP Teams only. The lure of Top 100 awards with shiny effects or whatever will ensure there's some draw there. It's a lot easier to determine if teams are trading wins as opposed to individuals, and the very nature of Team Ranked makes skill based matchmaking a lot simpler - though they really should just use modified Elo, TrueSkill, etc like everyone else does. I'd also recommend making Team Ranked reward more tomes, XP, marks, etc than Casual queue to help ensure there's always even low-skill teams participating. As long as you have large trophies/wolf marks grinds for old mounts and item sets, the lure of better marks/hr should keep even casual players invested in playing games.

Especially if you add some Challenge Log rewards (rewards Series XP, PvP XP, and a small number of Crystal Trophies) for playing X games and winning X games of Team Ranked. Say play 20 games and win 10 games? You can address top 100's refusing to play by simply adding in rank decay. Everyone in top 100 loses some percentage of their rating per day, with people in 2-30 losing more than 31-100, and top 1 losing more than 2-30. Keep playing and winning games or risk losing your rewards.

[Vatom]

the meta which is Ninja LB 50% instant kill bootleg darius

And here I saw NIN as more of a master Yi or juggernaut dairus though?

[GordonGeeko]

How exactly would it be easier to determine if teams are trading wins ? The very nature of it makes it very easy to sync up with another team to ensure there are no other players who could report. It's already pretty hard to spot wintraders in solo queues with randoms, team queues would make them literally undetectable.

If you queue up with another team and you decide to win 10 times and lose 3 times. All you'll see is +700 with 10 victories, a win rate of 77%, which is possible and is no proof of wintrading by itself. You'd need to be pretty stupid to have a +3000 rating with 30 victories.

Of course, that's not even mentioning that the ranked PvP player base, already small enough as it is, would need to all find at least 4 other friends to play with, who are always available at the same time, are able to play different jobs from each other, have good class synergy and be able to switch jobs if need be. Yes, I'm sure all teams would be super balanced and it would be a fair and fun competition. No drama of any kind. Queues active for 2 months straight from noon to 2 am.

Team-based PVP is a disaster. Keep it in a tournament format, at least they don't last long.

[Iscah]

Not sure what the fix are but it sucks that a new system is left to rot for a handful of players gatekeeping people out of the system.

Casual is casual; there's nothing to be gatekept out of.

You just turn up and hack at it until you have enough points for whatever prize you were after. Winning or losing doesn't really matter, besides getting there slightly faster.

[Sigma860]

Of course they don't because the truth is that a lot of CC is less about doing cool shit and more about standing like a rtard in a crystal while managing cleanse, heal and your mana. It's a boring concept and an absolute crap design for casuals. Furthermore, the rewards are absolute dogshit and the meta which is Ninja LB 50% instant kill bootleg darius and PLD perma guard or cancer 20 seconds crystal afk godmode. Neglecting the shit map designs, tickrate, fixed crystal pulse wincheck, and garbage purify implementation because some 0 iq dev thought that an initial cleanse into status immunity without perma purge is gonna work well with their 2 tickrate monkey half life 1 server.

Don't get mad at the game, get mad at yourself, lol.

[Absurdity]

Don't get mad at the game, get mad at yourself, lol.

While the way it's written sounds just like a case of "u mad bro?" there is some truth to it, with the amount of crowd control effects and the very low kill times the implementation is Purify is quite bad. Because almost everything in this game has a delay you regularly get situations where you die in the second or so that it takes the server to recognize that you pressed Purify. Or your Purify is completely wasted because the stun ran out before it activated and now you just get immediately cc'd again with no way to counter it.