Will the new Wolve's Den divide the PvP community like FL Slaughter did?

[myahele]

I ask because I am liking Seal Rock, but I am worried that - depending on how they handle the new Wolve's Den- that Seal Rock will be forgotten in favor of the new PvP arena.

What do you guys think?

[Astryoneus]

Nah, it won't. The new Wolve's Den renovation's focus is (most likely) on ranked/rated play with seasons. That's basically your hardcore PvP. Not everyone's going to get into it, and not everyone's going to like it. I know lots of people that like FL better than arena-style PvP, and vice versa.
I personally think it will only add more variety to the different type of PvP we can take part in, and that will definitely draw in more people and more people = bigger pool of players to draw from for both FL and Wolve's Den. The more variety we have, the better.
Besides, I highly doubt the ranked Wolve's Den will reward Esoterics if even Law. Calm your tits bruh. It's for the better.

[myahele]

That's kinda what I'm thinking, perhaps morale will actually play are role in the new wolve's den, although that'll pretty much limit it to rank 50s if they want to stand a chance

[Blubbers]

Den and Frontlines definitely complement each other. The den is pretty unforgiving for new players and isn't a great way to rank or gear up. When the Den first came out, it was brutally difficult for many new players and a lot of people quit after only a few matches.

Frontlines is much more forgiving and is an environment where you can learn what all your pvp moves do and gear and rank up. Once people get the base skill level and gear from frontlines, they can transition to the wolves den and will most likely have a much better experience than if they went straight there.

[kisada]

Honestly I have a lot of misgivings on WD2. I think too many things have to go right for it to be successful. But based on their current track record, I don't see how you can trust SE when it comes to PVP.

One thing that sticks out to me is SE's insistence on restrictions. For example, I think most people can agree that GC restrictions are a gigantic problem when it comes to creating efficient queues. A more direct restriction when it comes to WD is the matchmaking system, which takes ridiculous amounts of time to match players up against each other for the sake of balance. Another restriction is class restriction: in WD you can only have a party that includes one tank, one melee, one ranged, and one healer.


Consider this scenario, and let's say WD2 is 8v8. A single team of 8 players queues up. And let's say WD2 doesn't allow teams to have duplicate jobs. So say two drks, two drgs, two smns, and two asts queue up. Then let's say nobody else queues up. All 16 players are going to be waiting forever for the game to roll out. Not only that, nobody can actually see which jobs are needed in order to get the game going.

Furthermore, it'll be extremely likely that SE continues with ranked matchmaking in order to "ensure" balance, so the system might not even put a distinct 8 man team together in a reasonable time because they are waiting for other, higher ranked players to sync up.

You see where this is going? And these are the kinds of issues on the table. Going further back and looking at how WD1 died out completely, not being able to get any games rolling out essentially killed WD: Because you had to wait 5+ minutes for a 1 minute match, less people would want to play. The hardcore players liked it, but the casual ones wouldn't wait that long just to get killed by more experienced players. That is not an effective or fun queue to play time ratio. As time went on, those 5+ minutes went to 10, then 15, then into virtual infinity. I have multiple screenshots of waiting for 300+ minute queues for a 2 minute match.

The problem is that SE seems to think that throwing numbers at a faulty matchmaking/queue system will fix everything. That was their approach to frontlines, and no matter how much everyone complains about it, they REFUSE to do anything about it, and after years of FL being out have they only just acknowledged it. It's unbelievable.

This is really the tip of the iceberg. I want WD2 to work out, I really do. But there are so many fundamental issues with how they approach queues, matchmaking, ranks, and pvp overall that I just don't see how it can do anything but follow in the footsteps of WD1. And the thing that bothers me the most is that some of the fixes are so crystal clear and simple, yet they won't put the effort into these simplest of fixes. They will go to workarounds (if that) but what happens when people stop playing?

They are going to need to make clear, sweeping changes to everything otherwise it'll essentially be a mode that's DOA.

[nickx]

snip

I agree, SE does not have the best track record when it comes to PvP or foreseeing problems. I brought up some of those issues here - hopefully they looked at it (it should be 3.2 now, not 3.1): http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/254007-Rated-Wolves-Den-in-3.1-%28Possible-Issues-Solutions%29

To answer OP and what others have mentioned, I really don't think Seal Rock will be forgotten. Like all new content, I think most people will jump into the new Wolves' Den at first, and then after a couple weeks, we'll likely (hopefully) see a good balance of players doing both Seal Rock and Den.

Seal Rock might always be the best way to gear/practice alt jobs as well to then use in Wolves' Den.