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

[Atreus]

Large scale's fine... the way Secure did it. 8v8 skirmishes all over, winning GC was both the team that had better players AND better mid-lategame strat.

[Februs]

I don't believe they truly understand a PvP mindset at all (and should hire someone that does to run that dev team...)...

Do they even have a PvP dev team? The updates for content are so far and in between that I honestly wonder if they actually have a dev team dedicated to PvP. To my knowledge, there's also never been any updates, hotfixes, or adjustments/improvements that actually addressed some of the more pressing issues that PvP'ers talk about, even the ones we mostly agree on.

[Februs]

I'm not even sure it is a bug. I speculate it may be something to do with rank matching and not fitting the algorithm. I know Wolves Den tries to match teams with a similar average rank level. I vaguely recall SE stating that Frontlines does not have rank matching, but something weird is going on. It's definitely not first come, first serve, which it should be.

I'm not sure what it is, but there's something wrong. I, personally, am suspicious that it's probably a bug, because it's a problem I've found is not exclusive to pvp.

Most people don't realize, because most people play as dps, and que times for dps are crap anyway. I play as a tank, and I can tell you, with CERTAINTY, that the DF gets gummed up. I've waited in a "less than 5 minute que" for 25 minutes, only to have the que pop instantly when I refreshed my que time. It's happened a few times. It's almost like the game is searching for a active duty, but not actually searching. You refresh, and it wakes up suddenly, going "oh, right, you wanted to play."

[Februs]

Personally, I don't really have a problem with the que times currently. Roulette is utterly useless. I hate quing for it for bonus every day, because I know it will take FOREVER (probably because DF is mindlessly trying to slot me into the dead game modes that no one is playing anymore, only grudgingly putting me into Seize after 30+ minutes of nothing), but queing directly for Seize usually only takes about 5-10 min.

That being said, I am greatly concerned with the death of PvP. I literally have 0 matches in Wolves den because lobbies died by the time I got to play it, and I only managed to make it to rank 20 before Frontlines suffered the same fate. That's BS. I want to get to 50 before the same thing happens to Seize, which I'm sure it will, since that seems to be the track record so far. The DF is also broken, getting seriously gummed up in its attempt at matchmaking. It's pretty easy to spot from the discrepancy with the supposed average que time and the actual time it gets in. There's no way that a 7 minute que should be instant, or a less than 5 minute que should take 10 minutes. No matter how you slice it, it doesn't make sense.

I do think that eliminating GC restrictions would solve a lot of this, and, frankly, would be the easiest thing for them to implement given how utterly lazy they seem to be at fixing any problems related to PvP. It might also have the added benefit of easing up some of the cross GC hate which, although is sometimes justified and fun, can potentially ruin matches when one GC seems to have an irrational fixation on another.

One thing that I've seen mentioned elsewhere, though, that I don't think would work is adding party balancing to DF. I know that it's a problem in PvP, but I feel like leaving it in the hands of DF might just make que times worse. What would be better, though it is highly improbable that they will EVER put the effort in to coding it, would be for us to use those utterly useless and OBSCENELY ANNOYING two minutes at the beginning of every match to trade party members in a last ditch effort to balance our teams. That way we could avoid having alliances that are stacked with 4 healers while the other two have ... zero. Nice RnG. Again, it's highly unlikely that they will ever do this, since they don't seem to do anything PvP related in their patches or development plans, but it would be nice. Pre-mades are probably the only real solution at this point.

[JubjubTubs]

Do they even have a PvP dev team? The updates for content are so far and in between that I honestly wonder if they actually have a dev team dedicated to PvP.

Oh I'm sure they don't. Which is why they should simply hire one person that is only there to focus on PvP development. It really only takes one person with a clue to fix a lot of the current problems. SE has enough programmers/coding-monkeys that this person is purely developmental. And given how ARR has saved SE from going bankrupt, is making VII remake possible, and they could actually make MORE money with a good PvP core... they are stupid for not taking this route. No other word for it... flat out stupid. Or pride... maybe someone in charge now has too much pride to admit they don't know what they doing in this area of the game...

[Amiaze]

I play as a tank, and I can tell you, with CERTAINTY, that the DF gets gummed up.

I personally think that there are a lot of algorithms at play in almost everything concerning RNG and DF. For instance, there was most certainly something up with World of Darkness. We noticed that it would *only* drop DRG gear for the longest time, but it seemed to change based not so much on our party composition, but our party history, since we ran with a static. Similarly, the game liked to queue myself and my tank up with brand-new players when farming for tomes early on when we were playing our primary jobs. When we weren't, however, it tended to give us veteran players. I hope I'm remembering that correctly, but we most certainly noted that there were patterns when it came to the randomness of the game.

In the case of Seize, I noticed that I tend to get the same players pretty frequently, no matter what time of day it is. Surely there are more than 40 or so Malestrom players going in, but I think it tries to match people not based on rank, but perhaps how often they play. I've ended up in parties that had just played a round together without partying up beforehand, and knew none of them. Yet when I requeued later on, I ended up with the familiar faces again.

But I digress. On another note, how often does the community receive any acknowledgement from moderators or the development team concerning PvP? They seem pretty active in other areas, which is great, but it seems that this is abysmally low on their priorities list.

[Synestra]

GC imbalance has the biggest impact on que times, atm its very early morning and still i got nearly instant que as an adder while mael and flames are propably having a 1h+ ques. Its kinda hilarious to think that even if adders are losing 80% of time most of them will propably rankup faster than imm or mael due having a 24/7 insta ques.

[Cero0]

GC imbalance has the biggest impact on que times, atm its very early morning and still i got nearly instant que as an adder while mael and flames are propably having a 1h+ ques. Its kinda hilarious to think that even if adders are losing 80% of time most of them will propably rankup faster than imm or mael due having a 24/7 insta ques.

The sad thing is that most of ppl are switching to IF in our data center coz we are wrecking everyone... 2 weeks ago we had really fast Qs and each week it gets worse, everyday i get ppl from mael and adders joining in my LS after they switch to IF.

I dont know why they switch, if your GC dont win just try harder or something, try to lead them, if everyone In chaos data center keep switching to IF the pvp will die.

[Synestra]

I dont know why they switch, if your GC dont win just try harder or something.

Bandwagon jumping is sadly pretty commong thing in mmo's i would lie if i say i havent had same toughts now and then but luckily im too lazy to grind pvp rank from 25 up to 50, i used to be in imm at beginning but changed to adders when my irl friend still played this game.

[Dimitrii]

The grand company allegiance is stupid anyway. It's such an arbitrary decision which one you initially pick. I used to be an adder but had to switch to maelstrom when frontlines first came out so I could team up with friends. Nobody cares about GC allegiance, nor lore in pvp. They should have done away with the GC requirement long ago as well as this ridiculous pseudo 24 vs 24 vs 24 which quite often ends up becoming 24 vs 48 in frontline seize depending on node spawns. Make it 2 teams. 32 vs 32 or even less if you want to but make it ONE team vs ONE team. It's impossible to balance a three way when you have human element involved.