Dear Squeenix: Instead of using FOMO to promote PVP...

[anw]

Series rank 25 requires an individual to acquire a total of 108,000 Series Rank EXP

Frontlines, being a mode where there are 3 different outcomes, is a bit difficult to average per say, but generally speaking if you were to get a perfectly even amount of games where you come in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd an equal number of times, this would be equate out to roughly 108 games. FL games run, on average, 15 mins from my experience so this would roughly take, on average, 27 hours to complete assuming the average.

Crystalline Conflict on the other hand is a bit easier to math out correctly since there are two possible outcomes. Assuming the average, this would be 137 rounds of Crystalline Conflict. The shorter match timer does speed things up, but a single overtime where a stalemate occurs can easily cause the match to run as long as two or three matches since overtime's time limit is theoretically infinite. As such, the average time used will be equal to the duration of a match, being 5 mins. Using this metric, the average time required for CC is about 11.4~ hours total.

This is about right, my own calculations made for somewhere else came out at 118,000 S EXP but it could be 108k. I calculated for 118 and came out with 148 games and used an average time of 6 minutes per game (accounts for setup & post game) flat and looking at adding in the queue times, overtime etc separately. It works out with setup to be around 13.5 > 14 hours based on your 137 games figure and almost 15 hours on 148.
As you said there was no time taken for queue timers etc, so if we give an extremely swift & generous queue time of 45 seconds we're looking at a little over an hour but there's going to be natural downtime in there.
Time to dump tomes, dump wolf marks, stretch, tend to your body and accept life exists. For a grind that's around 14-15 hours you're looking at something more like somewhere between 2-5 hours of downtime.
Overall it works out as a little under a day but definitely in the range of 15-18 hours when you account for variables and downtime.

tl;dr you can do it in a day via CC but you will hate yourself at the end of it due to imbalanced and unfun game design

You certainly could, but I don't think any health professional would recommend even your lower 11.4 hours estimate in one day. We only have 24 hours in a day, if someone is extremely efficient and sleeps for 4 cycles lasting 6 hours & 15 minutes either way for waking/sleeping then you have 17.5 hours to get your XIV PVP wins in. That's not a lot of time for health, the downtime or queueing.
Players learned during this season that grinding CC isn't so easy as knocking out a swift 15 hour session and that leads us onto the next point.

[anw]

I lost the post so this poor rewrite will have to do:

To get to lvl 25 you're putting in upwards of 12h, but why is it 12h? Because of the length of a season & patch cycle? Is that a good enough reason? Is it to bolster player numbers? To remind me to knock out a quick PVP game when I get a chance? 12-20 hours in raw game time is a lot of time. It's not a reward for winning matches, it's only there to show you put time in.

If it's 12h+ to bolster player numbers then there's more important questions like why is this required, why aren't players playing PVP already and why are we bribing people who don't want to be in PVP with mounts? That cheapens the PVP modes.
Could the PVP modes be changed? Mess with the formats? More than 1 frontline map a day, a true roulette? a playlist/roulette that drops people in CC, RW & FL, maybe game modes that aren't so netcode reliant and turn based like the series' was known for.

Why is the reward currently FOMO? Could they be put into alternative unlock systems that don't require PVP and aren't time gated? True evergreen content to unlock. That would solve the problem of players who don't want to be there and this

I don't really think I'll ever be interested in the current PVP system, don't get me wrong it's pretty decent but I rather just play a more PVP team based game... I think the only thing that would motivate me to play ff14 PVP is good glams or something. Currently I have no real reason to feel rewarded for playing it with a lot of the rewards being Job gear that doesn't really appeal to me or mounts which I don't really collect.

I guess if they also made PVP more fun somehow? idk it's decently fun but nothing that will get me wanting to play it a lot.

This really gets to the heart of the problem with rewards. Players are in it for the glam or mount if there is one and they're not there for the PVP. There's something missing and that needs to be looked at, not a reward if you sink 4/5ths of a day into PVP every few months

[anw]

This couldn't fit in the last post where it was most suited so it can be padded out with some of the extra stuff

Good question, I keep seeing the notion something being not fun, but generally when asked about it they often fail to identify their actual issue and just keep going in circles, leading ultimately to no changes at all or to changes that may lead to "see you guys did the thing and it is still bad, just remove it".

Players are good at identifying that there is a problem for them to begin with.
They are really bad at identifying what the real issue for them is let alone what solution would even work.

I agree, It's not really up to the players to come up with solutions and when you look at forums anywhere you'll see that everyone has differing ideas on what to fix, like the rewards above.
Jeff Kaplan for the disaster he was as a game director did have one thing right: tell them how the game system makes you feel and what you think is wrong with it.
Hopefully then the developers can try and find a way to change, improve and refine systems in ways that don't negatively impact other players.
I would say if you look at some of the replies you'll see some elitist views and some views which are dismissive too. That makes it harder to get to that root cause of how they feel. Forums by their nature are a very poor avenue for feedback due to their public nature.

How about not being screamed at by someone who fancies themselves the world's greatest shotcaller but is just being a jerk in alliance chat?

Honestly, I have more fun playing Mahjong than I do trying to unravel the nightmare that is FFXIV PvP.

Unfotunately that is the way of Frontlines and my best advice would be to toggle off alliance chat before you enter. Some may balk at the suggestion but if you don't like obnoxious sound effect macro spam, seeing people argue or giving out wrong commands then there's really no better solution.
I personally toggle it before I play FL and I miss out on some of the fun but I also gain a +10 in sanity by not hearing macro spam constantly.

I am also tired of losing. Very, very, very, VERY tired of losing.

It's hard to toggle that mental state but if losing a game makes you feel bad and you're only there for the rewards then I'd suggest you don't force yourself to play for the piece of FOMO gear. You love mahjong and that's okay. Mahjong takes far, far more skill than FL or CC even with CC's focus on macro. You can rest comfortable knowing you're having fun with tiles (:

[anw]

Fomo is alright as concept for Ranked imo. But not for this casual Series structure, it doesn't need to be that restrictive.

The other part of your post I won't comment on because it relates to a FOMO schedule and I'm against battlepasses in general but I do say that I absolutely disagree with this statement.
FOMO is not a great concept for ranked, it promotes people playing just for rewards and while that sounds great in principal it does mean you have people who will play only to grind out a reward like you see even with the current battlepass. The purpose of ranked modes are generall the following:
-Aim for & achieve personal goals
-Grow as a player by learning from your mistakes
-Play on an even playing field with people at the same skill level with the same objectives
While that doesn't always necessarily happen (applies to almost all ranked games) it is significantly diluted when you attract people to play a mode and bolster numbers for a reward only. You have no guarantee that the people going into it will have the same goals as you.
In every competitive gaming community there's one incredibly hard to swallow pill and that is that ranked modes are their own reward. Games you should be able to count on being consistent and pushing you as a player to improve.

That does bring us onto player motivation, who is in the matches and bring us onto the meaty beast below:

Purposely throwing a match is a ToS violation, so I think that some people just do the bare minimum, even if it's just getting KO'ed and running back ad nauseam. They are technically making an attempt, just not a good one. But I do think that a lot of people just don't understand that FF XIV PvP isn't just player vs player.

This is the one that says it best and it said it 11 pages in. Not only is it against what's listed in the prohibited activities but it's an example of unsportsmanship like conduct.
Sandbagging, autopiloting, running it down. Whatever degree you want to look at or what you want to call it: it's lethargic behaviour and it goes against the spirit of PVP, you are aiding the enemy.

It's not just you. In a CC lobby there's 9 others, 4 are directly on your team and 5 of them on the other team might be expecting a good match if they aren't losing it at the prospect of being rewarded quickly like they've been trained.
Going back to those statistics from earlier 137 games. If you are sandbagging/throwing 137 games that's not just 137 instances of you griefing, because you're impacting 4 players in a lobby each time at a minimum. That's 548 others who are dragged down with you because you're in a PVP mode you don't want to be in solely for a reward.

(cont...)

[anw]

You take the figure for 148 games, that's 592 people you will be dragging down with you.
You don't want to be in PVP, you may even be in ranked if such rewards were implemented and you're disrupting every game because you're sandbagging for a mount you can't get through other means.
When I want to play a PVP title I do it because I want to have fun, to work together, to be challenged.
If I load in and see someone running it down on my team then I will feel demotivated. If we win I will feel angry that the victory was tougher than it could have been because someone was trying to exit the lobby ASAP for some quick series EXP.
If I'm on the opposing team and I see someone running it down and it's a stomp that snowballs then I won't feel satisfied, I won't feel challenged and I won't feel a sense of accomplishment. The victory will be hollow.
So when you account for around half the other team feeling that you're looking at 962 others who are now having a poor PVP experience and if everyone in the lobby is disappointed that's up to 1332 people who have been impacted and all because they need to put in their 12+ hours and 140-150 games average to unlock a mount which is timegated and unavailable through other means where they will not be griefing others.

The poster I quoted was correct when they said it's not just player vs player. These are team based modes and you are expected to play them as such. You want people in that game mode who are there to play as a team and win, not because they have some mount or armour set dangled over their head for making it through a rough day or two's heavy grinding.


There are things that are at odds with this battlepass system. The time required to complete it is unfriendly to those who take breaks from the game or have limited time due to the fomo nature of rewards and it breeds an environment where people are playing a mode they don't want to play. The last few days of CC this season and the meltdowns all over attest to that problem.
Some real work needs to go into questioning why the reward system is setup the way it is and finding ways to have rewards that PVPers may want to keep them invested and looking at other non-time gated means to unlock the rewards down the line in an alternative mode.

I get the sense of achievement and prestige these are supposed to give but none of this makes sense when put together. It seems to me as if it's a system for the sake of a system and it chased the current battlepass trend in gaming to get there.

Apologies for the length & multiposts: the character limit does not work well for someone so verbose with quotes.

[Vahlnir]

Holy wall of text

As far as the battle pass goes, this one is very tame when compared to everywhere else. And it can be grinded out with ease. I've been at it pretty regularly since yesterday and I'm well into rank 11. My goal is 25 by next reset, and that will be easily doable.

[anw]

As far as the battle pass goes, this one is very tame when compared to everywhere else. And it can be grinded out with ease. I've been at it pretty regularly since yesterday and I'm well into rank 11. My goal is 25 by next reset, and that will be easily doable.

That's very good for you!

[ZavosEsperian]

You certainly could, but I don't think any health professional would recommend even your lower 11.4 hours estimate in one day. We only have 24 hours in a day, if someone is extremely efficient and sleeps for 4 cycles lasting 6 hours & 15 minutes either way for waking/sleeping then you have 17.5 hours to get your XIV PVP wins in. That's not a lot of time for health, the downtime or queueing.
Players learned during this season that grinding CC isn't so easy as knocking out a swift 15 hour session and that leads us onto the next point.

Admittedly, the character limit got the better of me because I had to cut a portion of my explanation short to keep it inside the limit. The times I listed were mainly related to overall match times and not all of the extra time involving queues and the 1 minute of setup time. It would likely come out closer to the time you gave if adjusted for that but even then it is somewhat variable where the time can be as short as 15 hours but the upper bound limit can be extremely high for some players due to when they can play the game not lining up with primetime.

No sane person would, or should, grind everything out in a day for a multitude of reasons however people will likely do it because of the rewards since they, until an alternative method is given to acquire them, are affected by FOMO. This type of content does not fit in with the rest of the game's content philosophy in my view.

[Commander_Justitia]

FOMO is not a great concept for ranked, it promotes people playing just for rewards and while that sounds great in principal it does mean you have people who will play only to grind out a reward like you see even with the current battlepass. The purpose of ranked modes are generall the following:
-Aim for & achieve personal goals
-Grow as a player by learning from your mistakes
-Play on an even playing field with people at the same skill level with the same objectives
Games you should be able to count on being consistent and pushing you as a player to improve.

That does bring us onto player motivation, who is in the matches and bring us onto the meaty beast below:

This is the one that says it best and it said it 11 pages in. Not only is it against what's listed in the prohibited activities but it's an example of unsportsmanship like conduct.
Sandbagging, autopiloting, running it down. Whatever degree you want to look at or what you want to call it: it's lethargic behaviour and it goes against the spirit of PVP, you are aiding the enemy.

Thing is, people try harder if there is a carrot on the stick, you get people who care to win and care if they lose. If losing doesn't matter in Ranked, well no1cares, then why should they try to play super well? It is wishful thinking. You need consequences if you aren't playing well enough for the tier you are in, every other game does it too, it creates incentives to play well. And because everyone plays well, you won't be able to grind it by spamming matches as u suggested. And a frame kit for your portrait isn't really that big incentive to players.

Regarding TOS stuff, yeah try to find the guy who plays bad on purpose, try to convince the GM's that somebody is cheating. Often it took dozens if not over hundred reports until something happened a week or two later(not always before the reward was sent out by mogmail). People don't get caught automatically in this game, there is no anti cheat. Having ranked PvP and supervising it properly would take a lot of human resources. Its the question what road SE wants to go with PvP, they chose to release a fun not so tryhard mode which is fine too, but this won't work for Ranked. They treat their players a bit too much like babies the last years if you ask me.. A lot of things only get easier, while staying very grindy, it is a recipe for boredom.

[AnotherPerson]

You want more things to buy with the Trophy Crystals? Here's a completely radical idea...

Make all the Series level rewards Trophy Crystals, then put all the past ranking armor, weapon and mount rewards from before the big EW PvP revamp into the Trophy Crystal store, and stuff like the armor sets, mounts, emotes and framer kits that have been in Series Rewards also straight into the Trophy Crystal shop.

I'm more confused why this isn't a thing yet. It's been over 4 seasons. Surely someone would realize they should add back in season 1 items by now?

I'm honestly fine if they lock some glamour + emotes into PvP ranks and then only after acquiring the rank at any season, does it become unlocked in the Trophy store. Rewards from previous seasons will also be unlocked if you reach the same required rank this season to prevent FOMO. All these changes do is just make Ranked PvP have similar reward structure to what EX and Savage does currently - a required skill level check to gain your rewards. And then overtime, the rank requirements for those rewards can drop for newer ones. It would make sense too, since rank PvP is more of a "high-end" mode. Not everyone can obtain EX and Savage rewards, and that's perfectly acceptable in those types of content. That kind of content can also be done unsynced once enough time passes with each expansion - with increasing ILVL and Skills. Not sure why they haven't done something similar in the current PvP reward list. No one can then complain about FOMO or lack of time because they can always spend time on another season to get the rewards.