De-ranking in Crystal Conflict is a horrible idea

[AlanJust]

1)

Don't think your remember Bronze/Diamond hell, getting out of those ranks was tedious and insane, your win rate is much more likely determined by who you get, not how good you are.

2)

Not going to argue that the top 100 players aren't skilled, but tell me. If one of those players kept getting crappy teammates, would they reach the top 100? I really doubt it

3)

I got Crystal within the first few days of patch 6.1, I don't really care about getting on the leaderboard, what is concerning to me is the feeling of regressing despite giving it your all. Also, don't worship the top 100 people on the leaderboard, luck was a big factor in how they got where they are.

4) You might still get some fooling around. If some players got high enough that they think their new Crystal rating high is unlikely to move from the top 100, they might play around on other classes. But the highest rank of a competitive PVP mode is not where you are supposed to learn to play classes.

Absolutely, disagree. Fooling around is much less likely the higher you go. Top 100 will fight tooth and nail to keep their spot on the leaderboard and avoid losing points. Deranking is not even targeted at those players, it is targeted towards everyone at Platinum, trying to get to Crystal

It's always a trade-off. If you let too many people in, sure you will have more games, but their quality will drop. So, do you want more games with all kinds of players or less games with people who deserve and want to be there ? I think the highest rank of a competitive game mode should only have the latter. There should be enough people playing PVP for it, it's never been too much of an issue in the past if the rewards are worth it.

PvP was the most dead feature in FFXIV until Crystal Conflict, and why? as FFXIV is primarily a PvE game. PvE players enjoy winning at the end of the day through determination. De-ranking a PvE player is a bad idea, no one likes regression, especially unfair regressions. Filtering people for 'quality' will have you sit through 30+ mins of queue times. Rewards are just a temporary bait for people to play the mode, those who keep it alive are those who play it for fun.

The de-ranking + changes to matchmaking + penalties for withdrawing matches should lead to a better competitive PVP scene. I'm waiting on the rewards and hoping it's not just another set of portraits with "III" on them.

Aside from deranking, I definitely agree with the above.

[GordonGeeko]

Absolutely, disagree. Fooling around is much less likely the higher you go. Top 100 will fight tooth and nail to keep their spot on the leaderboard and avoid losing points. Deranking is not even targeted at those players, it is targeted towards everyone at Platinum, trying to get to Crystal

Not anymore. The new system implemented in 6.2 will use the highest rating you had for the leaderboards. Let's say you reached 3000 points once and you are now down all the way to Crystal 0. The system will consider you as a score of 3000 for the leaderboards. So you would have nothing to lose anymore and could play on different classes.

What was dead about PVP exactly ? If you mean Feast Training Matches, then sure, there was no reason to play those. But Feast high-rank was popping every night on most data centers with somewhat decent queue times (unless you were a tank). It had de-ranking and if you didn't make it high enough in time you could not play anymore (which is what is currently happening with Crystalline Conflict). But if you were Diamond, you'd get pops very frequently. You could find streamers on Aether or Primal having games non-stop every night. There is a competitive PVP community on all data centers.

It's not about worshipping the Top 100, it's knowing who is on there and having played against most of them and talked to them on Discord. They are way better than your average player and didn't get there by chance or by cheating (with a few exceptions, which are reported by the community because it's in everyone's interests to have them gone so you can have competitive matches). That's why some cheaters lost their Rank 1 spots.

[tsuchii]

100% this. I am giving up reaching crystal this season and will just settle to get all the rewards. The RNG for teammates is just beyond frustrating.