SE, can we please have some open dialogue on the PVP queue issue?

[Turin]

To preface this, I've been an avid PVPer in nearly every MMO beyond the past decade. I've played PVP to rank 14 in vanilla WoW, exalted in many battlegrounds, and led a siege legion/guild to world and server firsts in Aion, Warhammer, and Age of Conan.

Simply put, FFXIV has a great PVP system and fun gameplay but it suffers from a major queue issue. I don't believe this queue issue is because FFXIV players don't like PVP. I believe it is because the queue system is flawed. The core feature of a functional PVP system is availability. Imagine an FPS with a lobby that took 30 minutes between matches. It would fail miserably even if it was the greatest FPS gameplay of all time. At all costs, to keep PVP relevant you have to aim for reliable queues under 10 minutes. Ideally, even faster. Last night, my queue popped at 57 minutes, today it is currently 65 minutes and counting. For PVP to flourish, that is unacceptable. Open dialogue with the PVP community will help.

Here are the current speculations concerning PVP in FFXIV and why the queues are so bad:

1. GC requirements cause the queues to be at the mercy of the least queuing faction.
2. There is speculation that only a limited number of instances can open at the same time.
3. The queues have a bug that cause people to get stuck in limbo (reset queue if you go beyond 30 minutes).
4. Rank matching slows the queue - some people get two queues under the same criteria before someone else gets one.

Here are a few things that I hope SE is considering when evaluating their data:

1. Average queue time per player, rank, and grand company
2. Queue abandon rate and elapsed time at which this occurs
3. Number of players queuing per faction per data center
4. Number of concurrent games per data center

Something is wrong with the queues. Please let us help you. We are passionate and while Seal Rock proved you are listening to some requests (randomizing start location) the queue issue remains.

Whether it is removing the GC restrictions, allowing people to queue as mercenaries for other GC, not resetting PVP rank when switching GCs, providing a smaller scale map for two GCs (or GC agnostic - flames can battle other flames), or something else, an open dialogue will help you find a solution. Because, as it remains, Seal Rock (and PVP in general) is going to slowly fizzle due to the queues being so long.