Abolish 3 way PVP

[Conradus]

The whole 1vs1vs1 ist just imbalanced. Even worse in Slaughter than Secure. And guilds can just have groups in 2 of the GCs and coordinate over team speak, as one example.

Indeed--they did it in Dark Age of Camelot, and look how badly it worked there.

[Buff_Archer]

72 Man Secure mode was GC vs GC vs GC but not nearly as imbalanced as 24 man Secure mode... it actually worked really well, and it's too bad it's gone and will never be back so long as we have this GC Restriction keeping so many people out since a match can't form without 24 people queueing up in the lowest pop GC and even then excluding players who can't fit into one of the 3 parties of 8 that would have formed for their GC even if there could have been room elsewhere.

72 man Secure, it had 3 conflict points like at the points of an equilateral triangle if you were to draw it in the circle of the map. At each point was a 1x1 fight between 2 GC's... Adder/Maelstrom at one, Maelstrom/Flames at another, Flames/Adder at the third. And that left one team from each GC to compete at mid, and in between mid spawns to supplement other teams where needed which made for an interesting, unpredictable dynamic. But 24 man secure basically takes out those 3 balanced points of the triangle and leaves the 1x1x1 teams in the middle, where if 2 parties are fighting then the third can get the objectives that provide major points and win. Had a secure mode match like that recently, Flames and Maelstrom were going at it and I talked most of my team into backing off so they'd be fighting each other when the drones/node popped, we went from being barely in third place to way in first with no way to lose after getting the main node. What it takes to win 24 man secure has not much to do with what that mode of battle was designed for in my opinion, I feel like it was designed around 72 man and 24 man is a stopgap for when there aren't enough players for 72... which now is always the case.

[RobinRethiel]

Indeed--they did it in Dark Age of Camelot, and look how badly it worked there.

Not sure if ment sarcastic, but if yes, you can't compare open world PvP to a battleground. It was a different style. People mention a lot of thing, when they talk about the pro (and contras) od DAoC, but while 3 fractions is one of the plus sides, there are many other points and the composition at the end is what it made good in their eyes, not a single thing on its own.

Big problem in FF PvP is, that slaughter killed every other mode, because people like to "pwn" with their personal LBs.

[Saiyakupo]

1v1v1 is plenty balanced, it's other things that people are already talking about that messes pvp up. I enjoy 1v1v1 it's really exciting and can tend to be different every time.
I really miss the days of 72 man and even 48 man secure.

[Hiruke]

3 way PvP isn't bad for Secure, but it's truly awful in Slaughter. Slaughter does an amazing job of highlighting EVERYTHING that is wrong with PvP, which is pretty terrible right from the core concept/foundation. Just on a basic level, for example, how you play caster in PvP is pretty much nothing like you would in PvE (huge focus on crowd control, which is probably the LEAST fun aspect of PvP ... who wants to sit there bound/slept, exactly?). For a mode that's supposed to be for casuals to just "drop in, play, and have fun" the way it's designed is pretty maddening. If Yoshida thinks casual casters want to get interrupted nonstop, have their targets run away so they can't finish their cast, have their targets run circles around them to interrupt their cast, and blitz them down in 2-3 GCDs because hey, melee can spike down a caster super fast, I think he may need to reconsider how awful the dev team is at designing PvP that actual human beings want to play. Maybe try to cleave a little closer to WoW instead of going straight garbador up in this piece.

[Knoahl]

I think Secure was great for 3 way PvP, I think it'd be fine to stay so long as they fix the gosh darn (lol) queue times!!! >:O xD That is all they have to do, and stop the whole "Alliance A has 6 healers while B and C have 0". It is early in it's life, but PvP could do with a lot of QoL, I don't mean "Please put role restrictions on the FL" I mean "If there is a lot of this role, even them out between the 3, IF". I also would like to farm the PvP gear without having to be on the game and have no life... lol

[Cidel]

3 way PvP isn't bad for Secure, but it's truly awful in Slaughter. Slaughter does an amazing job of highlighting EVERYTHING that is wrong with PvP, which is pretty terrible right from the core concept/foundation.

I agree with this. 48-72-man Slaughter is basically a giant crowd control abuse with everyone pushed into a small arena where the 1st GC to over-extend is likely to get targeted right off the bat; and the team that plays the best PvE (against nodes) actually benefits the most.

However, I don't agree with the idea that casters are the victim in that situation. Sleep and Bind-ga is still ridiculous; with their pitiful diminishing returns which resets after what feels like about a minute anyway (the recast on purify is laughable in light of this), and 7 seconds still being enough time to be ousted from any node killing/ eat several Cometeors. In large groups like that, casters have the luxury to hide within their numbers and do damage from afar, unlike the melee who in the same situation, wait for the 1st thing careless enough to over-extend, or be that person themself, and then you have them having to run to nodes to DPS it where they're nice AoE bait. And then both casters have the tools to eventually dominate with Cometeor spam that to this day, the devs likely don't see as an issue for whatever reason. If anything, Slaughter is a personal gift of love from the devs to casters for how vulnerable they were in Secure without having to actually fix any mechanics.


As for 2v1 scenarios, I think people tend to focus on the times that they are focused on by the other 2 factions, not realizing that it happens to everyone else at different points in time. You take away the 3rd faction, and there becomes a whole lot less "unknown" variables and the match becomes fairly linear. I'm not saying that is a bad thing, but you do have to have a bit of strategy when you decide which enemy GC players needs to be taken out 1st/ saved for last.

Having said that, I still find it very possible for the devs to include 1 nation vs 1 nation matches. FFXI did it. The odd nation out got auto-sorted into the 2 teams. Why can't we have both 3-way conflicts and 1 nation vs 1 nation with the third nation being mercs for both sides in those scenarios? There's something for everyone that way.

[StrejdaTom]

I believe if devs tried a bit, they would find a way to implement 2 side PVP. The biggest problem here is the lore. There must be reason to have 2 sides/ factions whatever and a reason for characters to switch the sides as they please.

[RobinRethiel]

Just training. The PvP makes no sense in any way. Lore-wise it is totally stupid, that the alliance is fighting "to the death" for this "something". It would kill the alliance.

As for 2v1 scenarios, I think people tend to focus on the times that they are focused on by the other 2 factions, not realizing that it happens to everyone else at different points in time. You take away the 3rd faction, and there becomes a whole lot less "unknown" variables and the match becomes fairly linear. I'm not saying that is a bad thing, but you do have to have a bit of strategy when you decide which enemy GC players needs to be taken out 1st/ saved for last.

The problem is, even without purpose it's stupid. If teams join up to gank the third one by purpose or just by accident, the problem is the same. And of course, it is an opportunity, certain people WILL abuse. There are always people who every weakness of a system they can find.

[Xenosan]

Like most everyone has said, the 3-way design isn't a problem,

the problem is 72-player Slaughter doesn't augment well with 3-way gameplay. 72 Slaughter needs a different map or different Drone spawning/buff/point-rewards behavior. Such fixes have been being requested since Slaughter was implemented (we're getting the new map, thankfully).

edit: personally I think instead of a single node that all factions DPS-race for kill claim it would be better replaced by 3 small drones, 1 spawning on each factions panel, and your team has to defend yours while DPSing down the other 2 teams'. If your node stays alive for 45 seconds, 90 seconds, 3 minutes, you get the additive buffs.