PLEASE do something drastic about PVP

[reality_check]

Despite what most people will say on these forums, I believe that PVP is an integral part of MMORPG success. After the basis of the system is developed, it provides COUNTLESS hours of replayable content, basically a goldmine for MMORPG developers.

I have never been a huge PVP enthusiast, but it still fulfilled an important part of my prolonged stay in other MMORPGS.4

FFXIV does not have a good replayable factor compared to many other MMORPGs I've played. A solid PVP system would give players something to do when they're between content of patches, or burnt out on the current grind.

Reasons (in my opinion) why PVP has failed in FFIXV:

Grand company vs Grand company vs Grand company
We hate this. Please change it. My heart sunk when you announced that it was staying. It makes no sense. It divides friends. FFA style (1v1v1) PVP is awful. It is acceptable for a quirky side-style pvp system, but serves as a pitiful core base of large scale PVP.

Poor PVP balance
Despite numerous PVP balances -- the system just does not feel like it works. Quirky secondary "pvp" actions and questionable balance features (auto interruption on casters) feel like an afterthought to mitigate the massive pvp imbalances.

Perhaps consider adding a third "disciples" category, whose function is solely for PVP content?

Arenas suck
The forced healer, tank, DPS DPS requirement is an afterthought used to make sure tanks have a spot in the fray. Win trading undermined arenas integrity from the get-go and it has never recovered. Combined with this next point, arenas are dead.

PVP equipment
For glamour only? The only actual decent use this equipment serves is for the wolves den which is dead content beyond revival. To combat the complexity of gear balance in PVP, the imposed ilevel 80 cap makes no sense and is a complete contradiction to morale.

Large queue times
Self explanatory. Seemingly unmitigated by the bribery of soldiery and poetics in the daily roulette.

Questionable objectives in Frontlines
Capping objectives (flags) through outnumbering the amount of defending players currently there led to boring repetitive strategies adopted by pick up groups.

Individually, a player is unable to defend or assault a node, even if just for a few moments to call for back up.


All in all, the Final Fantasy crowd has always been a hard crowd to get onto the PVP train. I am not surprised that PVP has failed up to now. It feels as though PVP has been implemented with 0 foresight.

Please, I implore you to take a hard look at FFXIV PVP again and make some drastic changes. The fundamentals are there -- an action based combat system with gorgeous visuals and decisive moments that can make out break an outcome of a skirmish. But, the execution has been poor since the beginning and doesn't look like it will change any time soon.

[KisaiTenshi]

All in all, the Final Fantasy crowd has always been a hard crowd to get onto the PVP train. I am not surprised that PVP has failed up to now. It feels as though PVP has been implemented with 0 foresight.

Please, I implore you to take a hard look at FFXIV PVP again and make some drastic changes. The fundamentals are there -- an action based combat system with gorgeous visuals and decisive moments that can make out break an outcome of a skirmish. But, the execution has been poor since the beginning and doesn't look like it will change any time soon.

PvP is generally awful in every MMORPG.This stems from gear and skills designed for fast-paced dungeon crawls get used against players who aren't on an even playing field. Want to run over every PvP player, pick tank and steamroll over every DPS. Want to be an annoying pest, pick healer and throw loads of DoT's at your target so they will never be able to self-heal from them. PvP also encourages hacking, and FFXIV has no anti-cheat check. These anti-cheat programs tend to make the game sluggish and horrible to play.

A game designed from the very beginning to have PvP as part of the game (see Archeage's Piracy mechanics) tends to fail in the long run because griefers chase casuals out of the game on purpose because PvP games attract sociopaths, even when there is no reward in doing it. I gave up on that game because it just wasn't fun once you get to level 50.

I've stayed out of FFXIV's PvP system because similar systems in other games have been full of cheats, and whoever has the lowest latency wins.

If you want to get more people into PvP in FFXIV, there needs to be something more storyline-relevant to do so. As far as I know the existing PvP content isn't storyline relevant other than what unlocks it. Open-world PvP would not work in FFXIV, because the game just doesn't have lore to back that up.

[Darra]

Blah blah.

O_O So many bad assumptions. People stay away from PVP because they just don't like it or because they think it's badly implemented. Making it storyline relevant does nothing to this, all you achieve is having players forced into a pvp encounter for the sake of a quest, at worst, at best, it'll make no difference.

As for your sociopath comment, that's just complete ignorance on so many levels.

[Chiramu]

I love the 3-way PVP battles, OP please don't assume to speak for everyone in your whining.

[Lemuria]

I love the 3-way PVP battles, OP please don't assume to speak for everyone in your whining.

To be fair, the OP obviously speaks for a majority. That's clear in that PvP has ridiculous queue times now. Frontlines was quite popular in the first couple of weeks, but it dwindled quickly and has been on life support ever since. While I'm sure the actual results differ between data centers, there has been more than enough discussion between players on a wide variety of servers having the same issues.

Long queue times means that it's obviously struggling to find enough players. When it finally does, I never get a full alliance and it tends to be single parties rushing in. By all accounts, arena PvP is even worse and you're more likely to get bored waiting for a group and quit than to actually play.

PvP was clearly an afterthought in FFXIV. I had high hopes for Frontlines, but they just made it into a bigger version of the arena battles. It needs some serious therapy to get back off life support and stand as its own event.

[AsahinaMyLove]

PVP is for Ego booster and drama lovers/makers. <.< (only has negative expierence about PVP)

[ruskie]

Had fun in PvP at times. But it's only really fun when you avoid the hardcore pvp crowd sadly.

[Aeyis]

Despite what most people will say on these forums, I believe that PVP is an integral part of MMORPG success.

We have PvP in FFXIV?