New Series pass...

[Towa-Musa]

...for a Season to be more than an initial farce it needs player retention to be successful. Having the player population for 2-3 weeks out of maybe 8-9 is not a good thing.

This is done by incentivising players of all skill levels to continue either by improving the rewards of individual skill tiers (bronze, silver, gold, plat, etc) with a reward that is unique to Ranked (i.e. a currency that isn't trophy crystals), which enables many skill tiers to continue playing rather than dying off due to lack of incentivisation.

Like come on Towa, you can't be "this" ignorant about what the mode needs from the developer's side to stay successful? You are saying it is a community problem - we are literally organising times for everyone to queue up and have hosted events in the past to encourage queue pops.

Dude if it aint fun nobody will play it, if a new series pass every 2 months instead of 4 is not enough then maybe its the community just not being interested.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Dude if it aint fun nobody will play it, if a new series pass every 2 months instead of 4 is not enough then maybe its the community just not being interested.

Dude how high on glue are you?

The mode is objectively speaking fun, the frequency of Casual queue is a massive testament to this. If it isn't fun for you, tough I guess but the speed of queues speak for themselves.

Ranked is literally Casual but supposedly with better rewards for the effort you put in, if information like this doesn't reach you when served on a silver platter then nothing will.

[Towa-Musa]

Dude how high on glue are you?

The mode is objectively speaking fun, the frequency of Casual queue is a massive testament to this. If it isn't fun for you, tough I guess but the speed of queues speak for themselves.

Ranked is literally Casual but supposedly with better rewards for the effort you put in, if information like this doesn't reach you when served on a silver platter then nothing will.

How high on glue are YOU?!

1. Fun is subjective and not everybody will enjoy ranked like you do.

2. If nobody wants to bother with ranked without there being incentive then its just not worth playing

3. they still have yet to bring rival wings to roulettes so we will continue to suffer.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

How high on glue are YOU?!

1. Fun is subjective and not everybody will enjoy ranked like you do.

2. If nobody wants to bother with ranked without there being incentive then its just not worth playing

3. they still have yet to bring rival wings to roulettes so we will continue to suffer.

1.) specifically BECAUSE fun is subjective and casual queue being highly frequented even during off hours it gains to say that Crystalline Conflict is not a mode that suffers from how it is played, it is Ranked that has completely meaningless incentive and therefore struggles to justify the existence past the initial rush, like why even have seasons at this point if you get nothing meaningful out of it?

2.) "If nobody wants to do and invest time in X because there is nothing to gain from it people won't do it because it is not worth their time" - holy shoot, you finally got it! It's almost like the identical mode with less restrictions and same relevant rewards (Trophy Crystals via Battle Pass) outshines the mode with increased restrictions, same boring currency and mediocre-to-terrible Framer Kits is not enough for people to do ranked!

3.) Off-topic, but 100% agree, Rival Wings Daily Challenge is massively needed.

[NellMoshroca]

I know the elitist gatekeeping PvPers will hate it but the punishment for losing ranked matches needs to be removed if you want to stay popular past the first week.

It's the only content in the game where losing punishes you by actively pushing back potentially hours of progress, making you feel like you're wasting your time. The only thing that comes close is dying in Eureka/Bozja and we all know how popular that was.

[Nezerius]

You.... literally did nothing to disprove my point...

Your point being the implication that the surge in activity is solely due to the start of a new Series. My point being that this surge of activity exists with the start of every PvP season, regardless of a new Series being released.

Dude if it aint fun nobody will play it, if a new series pass every 2 months instead of 4 is not enough then maybe its the community just not being interested.

Once more, I'd like to point out that doubling the amount of Series doesn't mean SE will double the amount of resources spent on designing rewards. You would just end up with more Series that have simple recolours, or very basic mounts.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

I know the elitist gatekeeping PvPers will hate it but the punishment for losing ranked matches needs to be removed if you want to stay popular past the first week.

It's the only content in the game where losing punishes you by actively pushing back potentially hours of progress, making you feel like you're wasting your time. The only thing that comes close is dying in Eureka/Bozja and we all know how popular that was.

To be fair - the previous Rating system we had was a bit like this.

It still let you derank if you played "exceptionally" bad or had exceptionally bad luck with your team, but generally speaking:

Win was on average +25 rating.
Loss in Bronze was -5.
Loss in Silver was -10.
Loss in Gold was -15.
Loss in Plat was -20.
Loss in Diamond was -25.

So you had to have like a sub 17% winrate to stay hardstuck in Bronze. It still let you de-rank, but it wasn't as brutal and linear as the Riser + star system and scaled with your current tier. It also was significantly better at matching players together.

[ThaCa]

I know the elitist gatekeeping PvPers will hate it but the punishment for losing ranked matches needs to be removed if you want to stay popular past the first week.

It's the only content in the game where losing punishes you by actively pushing back potentially hours of progress, making you feel like you're wasting your time. The only thing that comes close is dying in Eureka/Bozja and we all know how popular that was.

If there's absolutely no penalty for losses, then the top competition simply becomes who can play the most while retaining somewhat reasonable winrate (It already is a bit like that until the highest skill tier or two). I do agree that the current system below the top 100 contesting would greatly benefit from major overhaul on top of adding worthwhile rewards. I don't mind people getting Crystal if they put in the hours, even if they aren't the strongest players, we had some of that in the first Season or two.

There's so many things they could do with PvP and there's been plenty of good suggestions from potential item rewards based on existing stuff (glowy Hellhound weapons as simple example) among other things, but I'm not sure if any of the feedback gets recieved from here.

As for progress lost, pushing Deep Dungeons Solo is probably even more time and soul draining than PvP as you have to go through massive amount of tedium before you even get to the meaty part. Still the current system could be a lot better.

[Valence]

To address once more the same elephant in the room, why does ranked need incentives to push players to play it? If fun and competition to similar skill levels is not enough of a factor, where are we going with this?

Food for thought.

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

To address once more the same elephant in the room, why does ranked need incentives to push players to play it? If fun and competition to similar skill levels is not enough of a factor, where are we going with this?

Food for thought.

Valence, we've been over this a dozen times and the answers have been the same every time.

1.) The quality of games and the frequency of the queue in Ranked drastically drops beyond initial rushes.
2.) If nothing is at stake, nobody has reason to compete and try their best at higher levels, which is not what Ranked / Competitive should be like.
3.) Casual exists without any of the restrictions and basically the exact same rewards minus frame kits. The Tier rewards are hot garbage (crystal tier, diamond tier, etc.) and give no incentive over any other PvP mode.
4.) We are playing FFXIV, the game where people will sooner break their necks and have hissy fits than do content without rewards worth their time investment. Ranked time investment needs to be incentivised like anything else in the game.
5.) Everything else in the game is somehow allowed to have rewards unique to their respective content and whenever rewards are insufficient, the community is allowed to have an outbreak (example: Criterion rewards), except PvP Ranked somehow.

Note that I am not even talking about Top X Rank or Top X % rewards at this point, but rather the reward structure in general being paltry. Despite the rhetoric recited Ad Nauseam that FFXIV "is not a pvp-focused game", People invested into getting good at PvP should be rewarded for being good and investing their time into it. Right now, it doesn't do that.