Problems I'd like to see addressed in PvP

[Archeron]

That being said, I don't think the fundamental problem with PVP in FFXIV is individual balancing of abilities. I think that there's a bigger issue with just responsiveness and timing of when things occur. You can tweak individual potencies for days and not make the game feel any better to play.

The fundamental problem with PvP is this; Square Enix Doesn't care about the PvP community, its opinions, or the competitive scenes integrity. They're never going to give us the fast responsive servers people have been begging them for years to have. You can just scroll through these forums for proof of that, Or even the JP forums since thats all their team seems to take feedback from.

Job balancing is left as the second biggest issue with PvP. Salted/Shatter combo in frontlines is completely, and utterly broken. Games with a lot of DRK/DRG feel almost unplayable, completely boring, and not fun to play. But if you nerf or change the abilities it will render them broken, or unplayable in CC. This is why they NEED to balance these game modes seperately.

The last biggest issue FFXIV PvP has, at least as far as frontlines is concerned is the maps in general. Seal rock is completely unbalanced, especially for the North spawn. Borderland Ruins played too much like a PvE map, and didn't incentivize people to play defensive. Seal Rock, and Onsal are too RNG heavy. Don't get me wrong I absolutely love Onsal out of all of our maps, but the spawning of the end game nodes is absolutely ridiculous. The winning team should be the team that played the best by holding objectives and killing the other teams, not by whoever got the random 3 lucky S nodes in their spawn area in the last 3 minutes of the game.

And yes I'm aware they're rebalancing shatter, (The changes sound like it'll make it worse than it currently is. We'll see about that in 6.4) and Borderland ruins is probably being shot in the back of the head never to be seen again, just like Astralagos. All we can do is throw temper tantrums on their forums, Unsub, and whine at the devs on twitter until they decide its time to implement more nonsensical changes made with our feedback not in mind.

[JamieRose]

The fundamental problem with PvP is this; Square Enix Doesn't care about the PvP community, its opinions, or the competitive scenes integrity. They're never going to give us the fast responsive servers people have been begging them for years to have. You can just scroll through these forums for proof of that, Or even the JP forums since thats all their team seems to take feedback from.

You pretty much hit the nail on the head. The FFXIV team doesn't care about cleaning up PvP and for all of Yoshi P's bluster about "You can go play other games!" they still want you to go in and play PvP by using a battle pass to enforce it.

[IkaraGreydancer]

You pretty much hit the nail on the head. The FFXIV doesn't care about cleaning up PvP and for all of Yoshi P's bluster about "You can go play other games!" they still want you to go in and play PvP by using a battle pass to enforce it.

The battle pass point hold little water especially when you have 4 months to complete it (or get to rank 25 as many do). I took a 3 month break from the game at one point came back and still had 30+ days to finish.

I think it's obvious and has been for years that PVP isn't a main focus in this game. Anyone who thinks otherwise has deluded themselves. Best to go to another game if pvp is your focus/want

[BaroLlyonesse]

The battle pass point hold little water especially when you have 4 months to complete it (or get to rank 25 as many do). I took a 3 month break from the game at one point came back and still had 30+ days to finish.

I think it's obvious and has been for years that PVP isn't a main focus in this game. Anyone who thinks otherwise has deluded themselves. Best to go to another game if pvp is your focus/want

Yeah, I've never understood even calling it a 'Battle Pass'. You can get the reward in a weekend if you are in it for just the reward, and you can do it over the multiple months if you want to be more measured. The idea that purely cosmetic / collectables that have no gameplay effect require you play a mode of the game is not a negative. It's like... if you think it's a Battle Pass to get a mount from a Series, why should I have to do content to get new mounts from Savages? What's the point of locking anything behind accomplishments?

[Rexxus]

The fundamental problem with PvP is this; Square Enix Doesn't care about the PvP community, its opinions, or the competitive scenes integrity.

I think this is a bit defeatist Made the topic in the hopes of actually building some kind of meaningful discussion - even if the powers that be will never actually see it.

Job balancing is left as the second biggest issue with PvP. Salted/Shatter combo in frontlines is completely, and utterly broken. Games with a lot of DRK/DRG feel almost unplayable, completely boring, and not fun to play.

As I mentioned in my initial post, I don't really think the problem with DRK/DRG is a job imbalance, per se. The animation locking of the salted pull is at the crux of the problem. You could probably simulate the same effect with enough SMN's timing their Mountain Busters, or heaven forbid a 4-DNC team. I've actually seen some pretty wacky comps pop up. (The 4-SAM squad was the most terrifying. Would always make sure they were staggering their Chitens so it was *never* safe to AOE on their kill squad)

The last biggest issue FFXIV PvP has, at least as far as frontlines is concerned is the maps in general. Seal rock is completely unbalanced, especially for the North spawn. Borderland Ruins played too much like a PvE map, and didn't incentivize people to play defensive. Seal Rock, and Onsal are too RNG heavy. Don't get me wrong I absolutely love Onsal out of all of our maps, but the spawning of the end game nodes is absolutely ridiculous. The winning team should be the team that played the best by holding objectives and killing the other teams, not by whoever got the random 3 lucky S nodes in their spawn area in the last 3 minutes of the game.

I disagree with a LOT of this. The RNG nature of Seal Rock and Onsal are my favorite elements of those maps. Trying to get 24-people to stay mobile and not get bogged down with conflicts is the #1 appeal of Frontlines as a game mode. The matches are never over. Shatter as it exists right now can be effectively over in the first 5 minutes of the match. Once one team is 400 or so points ahead, you can't really hope to make a comeback at that point. But you'll have to sit in there for another 10 minutes anyway. That feels terrible :/ (The main reason for this is the point distribution on kills/deaths. 10/-5 kill/death means that if you are hoping to 'shave' points from the lead team, you have to kill twice as many of them as you lose in a push just to break even. They aren't actually fixing that issue in 6.4, but they are going to make the ice more randomized in their location so there may be possibilities for come-backs, which is nice.)

I'd take a map where a dominating team has an RNG chance of losing at the end, over a map where a losing team has no chance at recovery at all.

But that may just be me

[Archeron]

I disagree with a LOT of this. The RNG nature of Seal Rock and Onsal are my favorite elements of those maps. Trying to get 24-people to stay mobile and not get bogged down with conflicts is the #1 appeal of Frontlines as a game mode. The matches are never over. Shatter as it exists right now can be effectively over in the first 5 minutes of the match. Once one team is 400 or so points ahead, you can't really hope to make a comeback at that point.

I'd take a map where a dominating team has an RNG chance of losing at the end, over a map where a losing team has no chance at recovery at all.

But that may just be me

I disagree with shatter. There is plenty of oppurtunity for comeback in the last 10 minutes of the game. Keep in mind that getting wiped literally costs your team hundreds of points, and ties your team down and prevents you from attacking nodes. I've had countless games where both teams shut down the dominant DRK heavy premade teams on shatter by just locking them into combat. Of course this doesn't work if both your teams are just feeding them kills, rather then killing them.

The new map for shatter also raises more problems then it does solutions. Nodes will now respawn so they can be captured again. This just sounds like seal rock 2.0 to me, but I leave my judgement until the map is out and we've played it enough to complain on the forums until 6.5 about it.

I'd understand if you said the RNG on Onsal was fun, because sometimes it can be. But most of the time, It's not. Is there anything rewarding about working together as a team, if in the last 3 minutes of the game all of your hardwork is completely invalidated by X team getting all of the S nodes on their doorstep?

Could they fix the RNG so that it *might* be more fun, or give the last place team a fighting chance if they're down a lot of points? Maybe. But in the instances where the 2nd place team, or even the first place team are just handed free wins and S nodes at their doorsteps - That's not fun. That's bad game design, and defeats the purpose of a competitive game mode.

Honestly I want them to put new maps out that prioritize capturing, holding, and defending points. Not PvE "Whack the pinata for points" type nonsense. Turn borderland ruins into a king of the hill map, knock the tower down, and give teams the option of holding the middle, or capturing/holding bases. How about a Battlehigh free pure deathmatch where points are only gained through your team KOing other players - Everyone complains about their team NOT following the objective, so why not?