Ideas and Feedback to enhance the current PvP situation

[Black_Rose]

I have been following the Forumfor a while and i think it's time to give my feedback on the current state of PvP
and also add some feedback as i think it's important to further improve the PvP since there are actually more players that start to enjoy it with the addition of Seal Rock (Seize)

First of all, looking at the GCs and the way Seal Rock (Seize) is built it instantly remembered me of another game, which is called Fantasy Earth Zero.
You might have heared of it, you might have played it and probably you loved it as much as i did.
I think it was a great PvP game that had Kingdoms fight for Territories similar to how the GCs fight for the Territory of Carteneau in a civilized conflict by sending Adventurers of each Grand Company.

Let's start by tackling the first issue, which in my opinion is the Queue times to actually join a PvP match.
Currently all the players from all grand companies have to queue up to join 1 single battle,
which can lead to long wait times depending on the size of each grand company and how many players of each GC actually queue up for PvP.
Of course that leads to alot of frustraition, since sometimes this can take way past 30 minutes if you're unlucky.
here is my idea how to improve on that~
In FEZ (let's use the abbreviation for now FEZ=Fantasy Earth Zero) you had 5 Kingdoms to choose from as a beginning player.
Each Kingdom had its own homeland map to defend with one extra neutral map (Ecetia) where each kingdom fought to gain additional territory.




Much like how the 3 GCs fight for Carteneau which is located somewhat in the middle of each GCs home nation.



My idea to lessen the Queue times is, create more territories that can be fought over, with different maps on each territory much like how it works in FEZ.
Also make it possible to have 2 GCs fight each other instead of always GCvGCvGC, especially on bordering territory.
Carteneau isn't just one small territory that should be fought over, it should be split up into many smaller ones which depending on direction should have more invluence by each bordering Nations GC.
Once the GCs go further towards the middle there should also be bigger battles going on, which would be GCvGCvGC.

How should this work exactly?
In FEZ you had to visit the territory you wanted to attack and have atleast 5 players wait at the keep.this way you were able to declare a war on enemy territory.
Once you declare war on another nations territory, messages are sent out to the players of the two warring nations.FEZ was a max 50v50 players KvK PvP game.
So considering group size and balance, in FFXIVs case it should probably be possible to start a war with minimum 4 players.
Once a war has started you're still able to join in, but there should be a balance blockade built in so one nations alliance size can't be bigger than the others.
Also, attacking other territories is only possible aslong as it connects to territories that currently are under control of your nation, so you can't randomly pick out a zone that you want to attack.

With such a system in place, players could be able to either pick territories themself they want to attack/defend or have the duty finder pick out the next best for them.

In FEZ a territory that was currently not under War was in a State of peace, so players were able to go into the zone and do quests or fight monsters to level their class,
this isn't really necessary for FFXIV tho, since we got plenty of PvE zones to do so.


Let's go on with my next idea which focuses on the current mode of seal rock "seize"

Currently the 3 GCs win points by holding allagan tomeliths or defeating players or lose them by losing players.
This concept also remembered me strongly of FEZ, the way how it worked there was a little different although, let me elaborate on this further.

Each Nation starts at their Keep or Base, however you want to call it.There are 2 ways to win a fight,
either do enough damage to the base by destroying enemy buidings or push the enemies morale to 0 and after that be able to directly attack the enemy base.
In FEZ you had crystals scattered around the map you were fighting in, those crystals could be farmed by players to be able to build various towers.

there are 2 types of towers, obelisks & eclipse towers.obelisks are only able to be built in your own territory while eclipse towers could be built in enemy territory.
Much like the Tomeliths, obelisks & eclipse towers deal damage to the enemy base, the longer they were up the more they did damage the enemy base & morale.
You could see obelisks as towers that are much like tomeliths that would level up themself over time like B Rank > A Rank > S Rank.

Destroying a tower would also cause a lose in morale and dmg to the base.
The higher the Obelisks rank, the higher the base damage.

Only building Towers wasn't enough to get a sure win tho.there was a maximum amount of dmg that could be done by only towers, which was capped at 56%.
So the rest of the work had to be done by players defeating other players or buildings.
this way overly defensive groups weren't able to rely on just their towers, but also attack.

So as you can see FEZ & FFXIV, while different in the process, have some strong similarities.
In FEZ you build your way up to the enemy while also defending/destroying enemy towers,
in FFXIV you try to capture towers and defend them or attack enemies to take over their towers.

additionally FEZ also had various towers to support the defense of your line, although if destroyed some of them also caused dmg to your base.
Arrow Tower - it's in the name, a tower that fires arrows at nearby enemies, if destroyed your base took dmg.
Scafolds - a basic blockade to hold of enemies from easily advancing.could be destroyed without dmg being taken.
Bulwark - a bigger blockade hindering enemies from advancing.when destoryed the base takes dmg.
Canon Tower - like the arrow tower, higher range, more dmg to base.

The maps in FEZ had various obstacles like bridges or hills that had to be traveled to reach the enemy line faster.
Building defensive towers there was the easiest way to hinder enemy movement, but not completely stop them.

Each tower required a certain amount of crystals that had to be farmed, while there was also a limit to how many things each player can build and how many towers in total could be on the field.
Players also aren't able to farm endless amounts of crystals themself, they had to trade with each other to reach higher amounts of crystals to build bigger things,
so communication was very important on the battlefield.

The idea behind PvP zones is similar, although FFXIVs method is to have quick battles with constantly moving objects.
In FEZ you had to build up a defensive line and start building into the enemies territory to suck on their points.

i think it wouldn't be bad to build a 2nd mode into seal rock that is similar to how FEZ works.
Building towers, Buildign a defense line, destroying enemy towers, killing the enemy.there's a bit more to it than just run, capture, defend or attack.

i think the possibilities are endless with the new seal rock pvp mode, i'm really in love with it, although sometimes i wish there was more depth to it (see ideas above )
And since SE was also the developer of Fantasy Earth, i can see them actually turning this new PvP mode into something very big.

How about you, how would you like to see SE handle PvP from here on?

[Gooner_iBluAirJGR]

Damn son. . . there's no TL;DR. I'll be back when I get some coffee to read this.

[Dyvid]

It's a good long time idea but short term it doesn't really help since creating something epic like this takes time.

The best ways to make queue faster is removing GC restriction after a set time has passed, skirmish so to speak where is just fills in the ranks with anyone. Next is to find some way where any level and just pvp with everyone else; either level sync to 60 and new abilities won't matter since 52-60 are quest abilities. Lastly is make rank and un-ranked matching system. Rank requires a certain Morale level and un-ranked is where morale doesn't matter.

On a side note we need better pvp map games. Currently it feels like everything is just defend from other player. I know mentioning SWTOR makes people cringe but it's pvp system was fun, the maps where unique and different from each other.

[Black_Rose]

It's a good long time idea but short term it doesn't really help since creating something epic like this takes time.

The best ways to make queue faster is removing GC restriction after a set time has passed, skirmish so to speak where is just fills in the ranks with anyone. Next is to find some way where any level and just pvp with everyone else; either level sync to 60 and new abilities won't matter since 52-60 are quest abilities. Lastly is make rank and un-ranked matching system. Rank requires a certain Morale level and un-ranked is where morale doesn't matter.

On a side note we need better pvp map games. Currently it feels like everything is just defend from other player. I know mentioning SWTOR makes people cringe but it's pvp system was fun, the maps where unique and different from each other.

yea, i didn't expect my idea to be implemented anytime soon, but seeing how similar those 2 games are in idea and execution, i thought it wouldn't be too hard for them to implement, aswell as them actually being the former developer and publisher of FEZ ^^.

but i can agree on the current GC restriction.i wouldn't mind GCs playing a deeper role like the kingdoms in FEZ, but not under the current circumstances.long queue times will just drive away players.
i like the idea of ranked and un-ranked matches, but then again i would like to see those with more maps in the game, and more than just defending.

as stated in my OP, there should be a limit to how many points you can totally make by "just" defending the lith towers.
it happens alot that 2 GCs are fighting each other while 1 GC is going for 3 towers.
some might blame it on the communication, i blame the lame towers and their too big influence on the outcome of the battle.

i didn't play swtor, but i had a friend who did.i guess i'll ask him how pvp was over there.

[Risvertasashi]

It's an interesting idea and it sounds pretty cool, but I don't have the experience with the setup it identify what the potential issues might be. But as another said... this sounds like something that would be pretty long term. In a PvE focused game, I'm not sure we'd get something this in depth (but suggesting it doesn't do any harm, of course).

I really hope SE would do something to address the queues in the short term. Then if we see something like FZE's system in the next expac or sometime, well, awesome.

[Februs]

This would be a huge overhaul that SE just isn't capable of doing. FFXIV was not built with PvP in mind, so they'd have to do some serious coding for something that probably wouldn't work.
Honestly, there just isn't a big enough pvp following. Splitting the action up between multiple maps would only hurt que times, and leaving it up to the players to declare/accept wars would probably just kill it. DF would have to sort it all out instead.
You're idea for tower defense is cool too, but, from what I've seen of the FFXIV pvp community, they don't have the patience or attention span to spend time building/defending. In favour of the simpler game mode, everyone would que for that. People who like the more intensive strategy would find emptier lobbies and be forced to que for the simple one instead. The same thing happened with Capture/Slaughter in Frontlines. If you wanted to que for PvP, you had to go for slaughter. Que times were shorter.

[Februs]

The two things I would endorse in this thread is more game modes and more MAPS, but they'd have to keep it simple. Give some variety, but don't scare people off the que line. Start with maps, to build a stronger following, and once you have the players open up some new game types.
Also, they should increase the rewards for playing pvp. If you want to add depth to pvp, start with the simple in-match changes you can make to improve the experience. Offer exp bonuses for playing well (Ie. capping points, fighting in proximity to nodes in seize, or killing in slaughter only), Then give us depth to what we can use our wolf marks on. There should be pvp rewards that extend outside of pvp. Lastly, overhaul the pvp leveling system. The points system is broken, and you're constantly re-adjusting every time you swap classes. I should be able to see ALL my choices regardless of class, and customize PvP loadouts for different jobs without pulling my hair out over how messy the menus are.

[Arkune]

I would be totally for a PvP System like FEZ had!

My personal mind about PvP in FFXIV is, there is no real "reward" behind it. Sure we have "now" some Glamour Items People aiming for (like the ilvl 100/110 Gear), but SE treat PvP like its "stepchild".

Seal Rock Seize itself is a pretty solid designed but it has his flaws. Just to win a Battle by having Luck on RNG spawns and defending it all the time doesnt make any fun.

Wolfs Den is fine, its an Arena battle, nothing Special just for People they want to compete with others.

My personal wishes:

.) Get rid about the GC restriction

.) New PvP Modes:

Capture the Flag - 8vs8vs8 / 16vs16vs16 / 24v24vs24
(i think everyone knows how this works right ;D)

Outpost/Castle Siege - 8vs8vs16 / 16vs16vs32
2 Attacker Teams (8 or 16 Players each Team) - 1 Defending Team (16 or 32 Players)

Goal (Attacker): The Attacker Team which over take the defending Base first, will win
Goal (Defender): Holding the Outpost until the Time runs out will lead to the win.

Rule Set: Time Limit 15 Minutes

Map (example):


.) New PvP mechanics

Adding a Morale Bar (Group only), upon reaching the max. Morale u can call Avatars/troops to assist you in battle.

Adding more Features on different maps, vehicles like Magitek Armor and stuff
Seal Rock (Seize) changes:

S rank spawns maybe get invaded and defended by the Imperial (PvE)

Imperial Troops may attack the strongest Alliance first. (Defending imperial troops/Boss Encounters may grant you extra Points)

Random Boss Encounters spawns for extra Morale/Points

Setting a Maximum on Points can be obtained via. Defending only.

.) Attribute "Morale" Changes
Morale may now add additional dmg to PvE Encounters during PvP
Morale now enhance the chargespeed of your adrenaline Rush and the Group Morale bar

.) New Rewards:
New PvP Mounts and Minions via Achievments (Tank/Healer/DD Mounts)
Adding New TT Cards as a rewards for winning/losing Matches.

Adding Unknown Materia for 5.000 Wolfmarks of every kind (after buying a "unknown" Vit Materia from the NPC, it will automatical identify and it can turn into any Level Materia either 1,2,3,4 or 5)

Wolfmarks can now be used for purchasing new Glamour items/TT Cards/unknown Materia.

.) Duty roulette: Frontline changes:

After completing the daily roulette Bonus (400EXP / 600WM) there will be still a Bonus for going in random over the Duty Roulette: Frontline (100EXP / 100WM)

Borderlands Ruins (Slaughter/Secure) will be now Level 60 aswell.