Wolves Den !

[Nalien]

Stop me if this sounds crazy;

• Split Wolves' Den into several iLevel capped brackets, related to the iLevel of PvP gear (so i55, i70, i90, i100, and i110 for now).
• Revert Morale back to how it used to function, perhaps with some tweaks (i55 Morale should be a very slight advantage over i55 PvE, for example).
• Add a Wolves' Den Roulette with daily bonuses and in need bonuses in order to put i100s into the i55 bracket, for example (there's an iLevel cap, so this shouldn't be a major issue).
• Add a merchant at Wolves' Den Pier who'll sell i55 Wolf gear (NQ) for a novel amount of Gil to let players get started.

With these kind of changes in place, you work your way up the brackets as you obtain gear. The iLevel cap prevents gear overpowering, with the exception of Morale causing PvP gear to overpower PvE gear (instead of the current "You have i100 PvP gear? Wow, that's just as useful as i110 PvE gear in PvP!"). So you do i55 while purchasing i70 until you move onto doing i70 while purchasing i90, etc. etc., and the Roulette system prevents the i55 and other low brackets from ever running out of competitors. PvP retains its own progression system and (hopefully) functions.

The alternative is just out right removing Morale and making PvP Rank and Gear into vanity pieces, the only issue I then see with that is Wolves' Den becomes an unpredictable battleground that can match people in i70 PvE against people in i130. The whole point of PvP having its own progression system with Ranks and gear was to ensure players of similar iLevels get matched against each other. Right now that simply doesn't work, since Morale is now just an iLevel boost, Ranks 1 to 40 are all effectively the same as long as people have i110 PvE gear. If they did away with Morale, they'd almost certainly have to give Wolves' Den an easily achieved iLevel cap like Frontlines has.

Only other issue is how to fit Frontlines into all this. If Wolves' Den becomes popular again, Frontlines queues will suffer as a result. If you add Frontlines to the Wolves' Den Roulette, it'll never be done (filling 8 people in for Wolves' Den will occur before it fills 24 in for the lowest Frontlines match). To go back to an old suggestion I love making; Make victory or defeat in Frontlines matter. You lose a Frontlines match, you return to your server, your server logs your failure. Every weak the success/failure of individuals on each server is tallied up to rank each Grand Company 1st, 2nd, or 3rd, with bonuses for the entire server based on the outcome (eg. Twin Adder comes 1st on Excalibur, 10% off all Serpent Seal purchases, Maelstrom came 2nd, 5% off all Storm Seal purchases). This way, Frontlines becomes something everyone does each week in order to "win" each week, while Wolves' Den is simply an activity which can speed you through the Ranks.

I'd also quite like to see some more long term goals for PvP like the Frontlines Pony, though that's fairly off topic. I'm thinking PvP Relic weapons? New achievements based on PvPing as individual Class/Jobs. Either straight up "Win X matches as <Job>" or make it a bit more specific to the Jobs role (eg. "Heal X amount of HP as White Mage", "Take X amount of damage as Paladin"), or even a combination.