Feedback: Crystalline Conflict (Ranked)

[ValG]

As we near the end of the expansion, it has become apparent in almost every season of Crystalline Conflict that the queues stop popping when people feel comfortable with their ranking on the leaderboards until the last few days of a season. I don't know if this is a problem affecting other data centers, but it is very noticeable on North American servers.

This happens on EU as well, at least on Chaos.

And I somewhat agree with point 4 (altough I have a proposal of my own that I'll detail later). If ranked isn't getting more meaningful and frequent rewards that encourage people to improve and play to win, and to keep playing during the whole season, I'm not sure what justifies its existence. I assume the idea behind the distinction between casual and ranked is that competitive players play for the sake of competition itself, but this has been proved to not be enough to keep ranked alive during the whole season. The rewards added in the form of weapons available through Commendation Crystals have proven to be insufficient too.

-THE PROBLEM-

Right now, my experiencie has been that ranked dies after about two to four weeks of each season, and after that, if you want to play the mode at all, you are forced to play in casual, where matches are incredibly unbalanced given how the matchmaking can pair total newbies against veteran, high-rank players who are either willingly or unwillingly playing on casual too, because qeues on ranked take too long or don't pop at all. And the random nature of the matchmaking averaging your defeats and your victories doesn't make it feel any better, because when you get a good team it might feel good (depending if you enjoy easy victories of if you prefer them hard-earned), but when you get a bad team... it doesn't feel bad, it feels awful, especially when you are paired with absolute newbies to the mode that die to not knowing how to use guard or even recuperate, that completely ignore the crystal and that keep engaging on 1v5s.

-PROPOSED SOLUTION-

As I see it, casual should be a place for people to learn the mode, try new jobs or just play for fun without pressures, and it should give little to no rewards both in terms of currencies and series exp.

Ranked instead should give significant unique (as in otherwise unobtainable) and abundant, both short and long term, rewards, not necessarily tied to your rank or time-gated, but that require winning games and not just participating in order to get them. One way to do this would be add new achiviements for victories or kills only obtainable in ranked mode. Also, the Commendation Crystals reward pool should be heavily expanded.

This, I think, would help to keep casual for the players who want a casual experience, instead of an easy way to get the rewards from playing pvp, and help keep ranked alive longer during the season and not just during a few weeks.

[NarhiFaunlha]

I think the issue is the ranking system itself. I'd be much happier if rewards were based on a number of wins. That way if you want to be at a 'Crystal' level, you need to keep playing to remain on the leaderboards.

I also think one of the problems with Ranked CC, is that it resets far too slowly. If they made Ranked a weekly thing, and lowered the amount of Commendation Crystals awarded, Ranked CC would be a lot more active. People rush at the start to push out of Bronze. If you take too long to get out of the early ranks, you hit a wall because no one over Platinum queues once they've achieved the rank they've wanted.

By having frequent resets, this eliminates the problem.

[Valence]

As I see it, casual should be a place for people to learn the mode, try new jobs or just play for fun without pressures, and it should give little to no rewards both in terms of currencies and series exp.

You'll just kill casual altogether with that kind of changes. It may pop occasionally with enough players wanting to try out a new job at the same time, and it may actually at best turn into a hidden sweaty mode where all the top rankers congregate to try out other jobs (like they do already). Actual casual players don't queue into the mode to try new jobs, they queue to farm their series xp and/or have fun. They also do not want to deal with the stress of ranked. If you remove them the series reward, you'll essentially be sending them the message that CC isn't for them and they should queue instead exclusively for FLs which rewards similarly anyway.

[ValG]

You'll just kill casual altogether with that kind of changes.

Well, if I have to choose between keeping the mode alive for the people who only care about getting easy rewards and keeping it healthy for the people who care about the mode itself... I'd rather keep ranked.

But even if casual is not touched at all, all the ranked stuff I mentioned can still be done to make it more appealing.

[Daralii]

Well, if I have to choose between keeping the mode alive for the people who only care about getting easy rewards and keeping it healthy for the people who care about the mode itself... I'd rather keep ranked.

But even if casual is not touched at all, all the ranked stuff I mentioned can still be done to make it more appealing.

I don't see how removing the gateway mode would keep ranked alive. Playing casual matches and thinking "Hmm, I wonder what ranked is like" is almost a universal constant in PvP regardless of game. People getting bored and leaving(the game or the mode) is inevitable, so there needs to be something to get fresh blood in.

[Eastwall]

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-PROPOSED SOLUTION-
Ranked instead should give significant unique (as in otherwise unobtainable) and abundant, both short and long term, rewards, not necessarily tied to your rank or time-gated, but that require winning games and not just participating in order to get them. One way to do this would be add new achiviements for victories or kills only obtainable in ranked mode. Also, the Commendation Crystals reward pool should be heavily expanded.

.

Well... I know this is getting old, but l think Se should use Guild wars 2's approach. There is a unique reward track i gw2's arena that you have to play ranked to progress, and its reward is pretty good. So l would say that keep the current reward in casual, but add in that new ranked only series, and make it that the reward is not locked behind certain rank but you have to win to progress it. So can remove some stress factor while encourage people to get better.

[Igono]

Well... I know this is getting old, but l think Se should use Guild wars 2's approach. There is a unique reward track i gw2's arena that you have to play ranked to progress, and its reward is pretty good. So l would say that keep the current reward in casual, but add in that new ranked only series, and make it that the reward is not locked behind certain rank but you have to win to progress it. So can remove some stress factor while encourage people to get better.

Can you elaborate a bit more on the differences between how rank is handled in terms of who can queue against as well as how the reward structures make it more appealing for the playerbase? I read the wiki on the PvP Leagues and their rewards but having a hard time translating the meaning of some of the stuff you get from chests into their FFXIV equivalencies.

Some questions I have if you know the answer:
1. How "alive" are queues throughout the days/seasons? Are their periods of extreme drought after the initial grind of a new season?
2. What is unique about the ranked rewards compared to the normal casual rewards? Is it cosmetics? Gil? Minions/Mounts? etc etc
3. Using the ranked reward structure from GW2 as a baseline, what would the ranked reward structure for FFXIV look like?