A simple fix to PVP Queue times

[Kosmos992k]

A large part of why it isn't popular is the grand company restriction though. You can't play with your friends or FC mates effectively and nobody wants to leave out half of their friends when there is a ton of other content that you can do with them.

I literally never PvP in this game because I would rather do things with people I know than a bunch of random people I meet after a 20-30 minute DF queue. There is no room to make a pre-made team and actually practice as a team, which to me is the essence of what pvp should be.

My personal experience of PvP is this, no one I know plays it, or wants to. I understand that player experience varies, but the truth is that PvP in FFXIV is something that only a tiny minority of the playerbase is interested in doing.

[Edellis]

My personal experience of PvP is this, no one I know plays it, or wants to. I understand that player experience varies, but the truth is that PvP in FFXIV is something that only a tiny minority of the playerbase is interested in doing.

So they should just give up and let all that development time go to waste?

[DoctorPepper]

My personal experience of PvP is this, no one I know plays it, or wants to. I understand that player experience varies, but the truth is that PvP in FFXIV is something that only a tiny minority of the playerbase is interested in doing.

That's just your personal experience though, the majority of people I know want to pvp but don't because they can't do it with friends and don't want to sit in a queue for a group with randoms that suck.

I'm sorry to say it but your personal experience with pvp doesn't account for the majority of the playerbase no matter how you slice it so I don't know how you can make the assumption that pvp is something only a tiny minority is interested in. I get it that not a lot of people are participating right now but PvP is currently too restricted to be fun in my opinion and I think a lot more people would show interest if it were less restricted by things such as grand company.

At the end of the day, my personal experience is that people want to play this game with their friends, so any content that doesn't allow you to do that is going to lack interest from the playerbase.

[Kosmos992k]

At the end of the day, my personal experience is that people want to play this game with their friends, so any content that doesn't allow you to do that is going to lack interest from the playerbase.

Except you are arguing that this applies specifically to PvP, and let's be honest, in FFXIV, PvP is not popular, is it? I already agreed that personal experience varies, but that does not alter the fact that only a small minority of players who have tried PvP, have done more than dip a toe into PvP. I'm not even willing to believe that the majority of players have even tried PvP, simply because they don't want to do PvP.

The lack of interest in PvP has less to do with whether you can play with friends than it does a general apathy for PvP among FFXIV players.

anyone who is serious about PvP would want to do it whenever they wanted and as many times as they could. Pigeon-holing everyone into set times with only so many occurrences in a given amount of time is more of a band-aid than a fix to a problem that won't be solved with "making players plan when they want to fight other players".

I personally don't want to play PvP, but I can agree with what you are saying here. I can see that if people really want PvP - are serious about it as you say, then a sanitized, pigeon holed experience is not what they want. The issue I have there though is that this isn't a PvP game, and I do not think that unstructured, open world PvP would fit FFXIV.

Your language suggests you really don't like pvp.

That would be an accurate assessment. I find PvP to be grossly unfair to anyone who either does not often partake, or who lacks sufficient levels/gear to compete. There are several other reasons for my personal dislike of PvP, you could correctly conclude it is a deep seated aversion to PvP.

[Edellis]

Except you are arguing that this applies specifically to PvP, and let's be honest, in FFXIV, PvP is not popular, is it? I already agreed that personal experience varies, but that does not alter the fact that only a small minority of players who have tried PvP, have done more than dip a toe into PvP. I'm not even willing to believe that the majority of players have even tried PvP, simply because they don't want to do PvP.

The lack of interest in PvP has less to do with whether you can play with friends than it does a general apathy for PvP among FFXIV players.

Your language suggests you really don't like pvp.


Anyway, there are a couple reasons why people don't queue for PvP. As it stands currently, the queue times are terrible because people aren't queuing, which has a negative feedback loop, because now even people who WOULD occasionally like to PvP (me) don't queue...because the queue times are terrible. The GC restriction probably has alot to do with it, the team size too. Lack of incentives could have something to do with it.

They should just shoehorn some players into PvP by adding modes that incorporate some PvE elements to it, like having powerful monsters on your team, or maybe a dungeon with multiple paths where you encounter players in hallways or something. It'd be neat.

That would be an accurate assessment. I find PvP to be grossly unfair to anyone who either does not often partake, or who lacks sufficient levels/gear to compete. There are several other reasons for my personal dislike of PvP, you could correctly conclude it is a deep seated aversion to PvP.

Probably from a history of encountering players like me, who will gladly murder people in open fields on a slow day (if the game allows me to) because i find it piercingly hilarious.

However, XIV will likely never have open world PvP. And the biggest PvP modes at the moment don't even really allow for gear to make a difference. There's no way PvP as it currently exists will ever bleed into PvE. And if it does, similar to how factions work in WoW or something, i'm pretty sure it'll be in specifically designated areas or something. XIV isn't in any way designed around extremes.

[JayCommon]

I personally don't want to play PvP, but I can agree with what you are saying here. I can see that if people really want PvP - are serious about it as you say, then a sanitized, pigeon holed experience is not what they want. The issue I have there though is that this isn't a PvP game, and I do not think that unstructured, open world PvP would fit FFXIV.

I agree as well, and as long as a "Final Fantasy" moniker is attached to the beginning of this game I don't think it ever will be a PvP-friendly game. Open world PvP would absolutely not work, it would be used for griefing more than competition.

While we are throwing out some personal experiences, here is mine. Goblin server used to be pretty populated and involved in PvP compared to other servers. Not to the level that Balmung was, but much more than other servers. Right when WD came out, I had a 4 man and we hit it hard. There were more than enough other's hanging around the WD Pier for us to start a linkshell to discuss PvP tactics and form pre-mades. It was awesome for maybe 2-3 weeks! Then, queue times starting getting outrageous. The ranking system had something to do with that, because the DF purposely avoided matching a premade of level 20s against 4 random people that were all less than level 5, because of the obvious Morale stat advantage. People started getting discouraged.

The weeks rolled by, and people left the linkshell, or stopped logging in altogether. The "I was waiting for PvP in this game and it didn't deliver" crowd largely left. We actually had one of the best Warriors on our server at one point named Master Warrage. He would 1v3 teams, and made videos of him wrecking full wolves den teams by himself. SE took those videos down. He left the game. So the linkshell devolved into a group of people who were setting up full pre-mades. Two teams of 4 to queue on a French server for an insta-pop to just fight each other. This kept most of us occupied for another few weeks.

Then it got old only fighting against the same 7 people all....the.....time. The linkshell largely disbanded after a month or two, because the interest simply just wasn't there. I hit rank 29 with Twin Adder just playing Wolves Den. I switched to Flames with like 10 other people for Frontlines when it came out. Almost identical situation copy/pasted. Super popular for a week or two, then queue times just went to complete shit, and not worth devoting that much of your day's play time waiting in a queue.



tl;dr : I completely agree that FFXIV does not have the right type of playerbase to ever make PvP popular. Many people playing this game grew up on single-player fantasy experiences, not shooting each other in CoD. A very vocal minority won't change the fact that queues wouldn't need fixing, if the interest was just there at all.



Edit response:

Even in the best scenario you can only fit in 3 matches an hour.

I'm aware of what your idea was. I did read it. However, you are just wrong. I have been in FL (Secure) matches where we completely dominated both other teams and won in 8-9 minutes. I would go do something else and not PvP any longer if that happened and I literally had to wait another 10mins for the next window. Like I said, your idea would band-aid the problem. Lack of interest in general can't be fixed with coordinating, it just makes it seem like the problem isn't there.

And this idea would force people to avoid instances they might rather do, just to be there for the window. That window won't keep me out of running WoD with my friends. Some of us have level 20 chocobos. What if I don't want to do a beast tribe quest?

I think your idea would be better than what we currently have, but it isn't fixing the problem. That's all I meant by what I said.

[SirTaint]

I'm aware of what your idea was. I did read it. However, you are just wrong. I have been in FL (Secure) matches where we completely dominated both other teams and won in 8-9 minutes. I would go do something else and not PvP any longer if that happened and I literally had to wait another 10mins for the next window. Like I said, your idea would band-aid the problem. Lack of interest in general can't be fixed with coordinating, it just makes it seem like the problem isn't there.

And this idea would force people to avoid instances they might rather do, just to be there for the window. That window won't keep me out of running WoD with my friends. Some of us have level 20 chocobos. What if I don't want to do a beast tribe quest?

I think your idea would be better than what we currently have, but it isn't fixing the problem. That's all I meant by what I said.

Right but then you are sitting in the Queue again after the 10 minute match. Even in the fixed 20 minute intervals you'd only have an 8 minute max wait after a quick match. 8 minute wait is still 3-4 times better then the current average.

Yes there is that extremely rare Saturday night where you get 4 matches in an hour but that is extremely rare.


FUCK the 100 character limit, this forum acts like its 1997

[Kosmos992k]

I agree as well, and as long as a "Final Fantasy" moniker is attached to the beginning of this game I don't think it ever will be a PvP-friendly game. Open world PvP would absolutely not work, it would be used for griefing more than competition.
**snip of very cool experience - wish I had seen that warrior in action....**
Then it got old only fighting against the same 7 people all....the.....time. The linkshell largely disbanded after a month or two, because the interest simply just wasn't there. I hit rank 29 with Twin Adder just playing Wolves Den. I switched to Flames with like 10 other people for Frontlines when it came out. Almost identical situation copy/pasted. Super popular for a week or two, then queue times just went to complete shit, and not worth devoting that much of your day's play time waiting in a queue.

The drastic drop in popularity soon after WD arrived did confuse me a little, because I figured that for people that enjoy PvP, it would provide something they want. But then I read about the pretty widespread abuse of win trading, and realized that for many WD was essentially a broken system about nothing more than a cynical grind for PvP vanity gear. I can only imagine how annoying this was for PvP players who enjoy PvP for what it is rather than simply another grind. I can well imagine many more serious players losing interest due to the win trading aspect of things.

I completely agree that FFXIV does not have the right type of playerbase to ever make PvP popular. Many people playing this game grew up on single-player fantasy experiences, not shooting each other in CoD. A very vocal minority won't change the fact that queues wouldn't need fixing, if the interest was just there at all.

This is pretty much where I am coming from with respect to this.

[DoctorPepper]

But then I read about the pretty widespread abuse of win trading, and realized that for many WD was essentially a broken system about nothing more than a cynical grind for PvP vanity gear. I can only imagine how annoying this was for PvP players who enjoy PvP for what it is rather than simply another grind. I can well imagine many more serious players losing interest due to the win trading aspect of things.

This is exactly why nobody had any interest in Wolve's Den as far as I am concerned. The fact that in order to get a set of vanity gear you had to grind the same bland 4v4 matches with job restrictions for literally hundreds of hours in order to get it legitimately really turned me off. People shouldn't have to resort to things such as win trading because the grind is too long and the fact that people were exploiting the system that way really turned me off from the Wolve's Den pretty much completely.

PvP has been implemented very poorly in this game from every aspect. Wolve's Den had restrictions, gave terrible rewards and had tons of exploiters. Frontlines had GC restrictions which did nothing but increase the queue times and not allow people to play with friends, thereby making players less interested.

For PvP to work at all they really need to drop these types of restrictions and give more incentive, otherwise nobody is ever going to participate and in that case I would agree with you 100% that PvP is a waste of time for the devs.

[JayCommon]

PvP has been implemented very poorly in this game from every aspect. Wolve's Den had restrictions, gave terrible rewards and had tons of exploiters. Frontlines had GC restrictions which did nothing but increase the queue times and not allow people to play with friends, thereby making players less interested.

I can level with you. The restrictions suck. But the restrictions being spoken of that apply to Wolves' Den were not there at its inception. They were put there literally because they had to be put there, for balancing in an already unbalanced aspect of the game.

1PLD +2DRG = multiple stun locking on healers/other DPS to allow quick dismantling of teams. INSANELY quick.

Any + 2BLM = same deal, except with sleep.

Stacking SMN = Baned DoTs + Tri-disasters everywhere.

Monks with lots of Morale? Watch your HP go bye-bye.

It was literally impossible to beat some of these set-ups for random teams. Anyone who coordinated a premade already had a clear advanatge which was exponentially compounded by the lack of restrictions to the 2DPS you could bring. Getting completely owned with no chance of survival drove more people, who might have given it a chance, away when they felt like they had no control over the match.

Just for the record, the only incentive I ever needed to PvP was the satisfaction I get from beating other players. I don't buy any of the outfits or gear any longer. I did when Morale was a thing, but only because they made gear a competitive edge in PvP. That is something that shouldn't ever be done, because people without the Morale gear had no chance of beating a team who did. I didn't grind out 200 FL wins for that mount because there are things I would rather do that don't take an hour each time I want to do them. The fact that the majority of players in the game need some kind of incentive to PvP, only proves what I've been trying to say this whole time....


There just isn't enough interest in the FFXIV community to ever make PvP relevant, no matter how much I would love for it to be so ;-;