Thread: 3.2 PvP: Feast Game Mode Discussion Thread.

Originally Posted by Zhexos

[*]4 on 4 - Solo

regarding 4 on 4 - Solo

I'm actually really happy with the 4v4 solo mode. I've been playing den since close to the start and I've watched as dozens if not hundreds of players join the den, get steamrolled by premades, and then quit.
Premades basically killed Wolve's Den back in the day, then the match rankings put the final nail in the coffin... To see both of these problems addressed is very encouraging.
Yeah, having to deal with random teammates is very, very frustrating at times, but we are all in the same boat and I feel the truly good players can still come out on top as the feast really puts far more control in a good players hands than WD did.

Regarding gameplay, the sprint change was needed as maintaining your TP and thus sprint time through items/skills was too convoluted for new players. This streamlines it and allows newer players to not be such a burden by lacking the understanding of this once key aspect of gameplay.

However, I feel the sprint nerf in regards to the time was a little too harsh. Mobility has always been a problem in FF 14's pvp, but sprint alleviated it to a large degree. Meeles really need sprint up during their burst to secure hits or else you can be easily kited, and we also need it for general mobility purposes. As it stands we get 10 seconds of sprint, that's basically 4 GCD's. We need to use this both to get in range and to secure hits. 10 seconds I feel is just cutting it too fine for everything we need it for. Under perfect conditions for a burst, 10 seconds will suffice, but that rarely happens. I think the time should be slightly increased to give us more leeway in what we are able to do during sprint. 13 or 14 seconds should do, maybe even at the expense of a longer cooldown.

This would be less of a problem if a large portion of gap closers didn't punish you for using them in high level play. Shoulder tackle, Spineshatter Dive and Overwhelm (when spec'd) begin the diminishing returns on stun, which you really never want to do unless absolutely necessary.

So, in the past, sprint was needed as a gap closer and a means to keep on top of your opponent during burst, yet now we need to do those exact things in half the time? I feel this leads to stagnation and slowed down gameplay, which is something that should be addressed.

Perhaps slightly increasing sprint time 13/14 seconds (maybe with a longer cooldown), or allow us to spec into skills like with ninja's Overwhelm. Being able to have the option to choose whether or not we want the stun on shoulder tackle/spineshatter as we can with overwhelm would be a godsend.

Originally Posted by Zhexos

4 on 4 - Solo

I quit.

I enjoy the heck out of Feast, but 4 on 4 - Solo is just a f*cking waste of time and I really don't see any significant changes being ready for the first season...

Jobs

I can only talk for tanks, but Dark Knight is simply a liability and nothing more. Warrior has superior DPS, fairly beastly self heals and some utility to help support their party and/or lock enemies. Paladin has weak DPS, but phenomenal utility and support, even fairly nice self healing with the odd Clemency. Dark Knight offers nothing of value... It's DPS is generally outclassed by Warrior, it has no self healing worth mentioning, and it's support is just pathetic. It is a liability, if you have a Dark Knight in your party, everyone else in the party needs to pick up some slack, especially the healer. Warrior can take care of its self with Second Wind/Equilibrium/Thrill of War, Paladin can take care of the healer with Clemency. Dark Knight can do nothing. So not only do Paladin and Warrior offer more in the way of utility with things like Stun-lock, but they also free up the healer to focus on other things, where as if a Dark Knight gets attacked, they'll require their healers full attention. Was Dark Knight perhaps balanced with Grit in mind for PvP? Even if, Grit Souleater is (completely ruled out in my head until I have enough medal stacks, because losing Blood Weapon is cancer) pathetic when PvP is all about burst; That goes for healing as well, and Grit Souleater will do nothing, by the time I've gone through that combo I've taken more damage that it will ever hope to heal... Worst of all is Tar Pit, is that a joke?

Matchmaking

Why are people able to queue for ranked matches so easily? I've lost count of how many people I've seen in Feast who have no right queuing for ranked matches... They are, by their own admission, not very good... Yet here they are, queuing for a ranked mode where they'll be paired up with people who will lose their rating because their healer is new and doesn't know what PvP skills are... It's absurd... I'll take longer queues please... Lock ranked Feast behind, I don't know, attaining PvP Rank 20? Something... Force people who are new to do anything before letting them loose in ranked where they'll just ruin peoples experience... Please, when 3.25 hits, make us do the quest to unlock Feast again... Have it just unlock 8v8 and make it so you need to win at 8v8 before you're allowed anywhere near ranked... People should not be cutting their teeth in matches where their total lack of experience is going to negatively impact others ratings...

Rewards

First lets get this out the way; "per data center"? Why? I mean, I appreciate making them rare, but you really only want 6 of those furnishings in the world? Wouldn't it make far more sense to have it per server?

Now lets move onto tomestones... This has been a problem for a while, so it applies to more than just Feast (or it would, if Frontlines was at all relevant anymore)... I get why these are here, it's good incentive to try PvP, and it allows people to focus on PvP if they want to, without falling behind on PvE. Were there no tomestone rewards, part of my PvP time would instead be spent on capping Lore. It's good that this is here, but... Do you really need to reward losers with tomestones? This is simply not good. For anyone. It's reasonably bad for PvE (players who "earn" their gear effectively doing nothing) and it's terrible for PvP (players who queue "just for the tomestones"). There is nothing more infuriating than having worthless baggage on your team because PvP is an easy ticket to "earn" some tomestones. Make the tomestone rewards solely for the victor, it would be an extra reason for people to actively push to win and it would completely cut out the worthless individuals that I am sick of dealing with...

Rating

Overkill. I think that about sums it up... For solo, this is far too punishing... Isn't the fact that we need to win 3/5 to qualify for the next rank enough? I'd hope you don't even need feedback on this... You have all the player data... For pre-made, I imagine this is perfectly fine, if you lose there you know who to blame, you can deal with that. Solo? I have zero control over my party composition. I have zero control over whether they actually listen to me. I have zero control over their skill. It essentially becomes a coin flip... As such, progression in this means nothing... It isn't a matter of being skilled and reaching Diamond, it's a matter of being persistent and reaching Silver. If you're lucky. I don't even see the point in 4 on 4 - Solo anymore... And this is the mode you're putting rewards on? Rating has nothing to do with personal skill... You can be the best damned PvPer possible, but you're still stuck dealing with 3 random people who'll lock you at 500 for the rest of the month... That's partly a matchmaking issue, but still... Was it really necessary to essentially have +1 for a win and -1 for a loss? People are not going to advance with this system. They'll get frustrated, then they'll quit.

You know what I'd rather see? Solo and pre-made to be two entirely different things... Pre-made is about having your own little group and taking them to the top. Solo? That should be about Jobs... Register as a Job, raise your rating on that Job, and aim to be the best Derp Knight on the data center... The rewards practically write themselves (hint: PvP Relic Weapons)... You'd need to edit it so we register of course (and for pre-mades that could be great, who doesn't want a team name?), but it essentially allows the solo queue rating to be much more personal, rather than a simple win/lose thing. Losing can still be "punishing", but with rating being more personal because it's tied to Jobs now, you can effectively overcome that by just being good. Died lots? Obviously that's going to negatively impact your rating, regardless of whether your team won or not. Scored loads of kills? Same thing, that'll raise your rating, regardless of the overall outcome.

Honestly, for solo queues I'd actually be much more interested in seeing rankings by Job... It allows you to essentially base rating on personal stats (K/D/A), rather than victory rate... Heck, it doesn't even need to be limited to Feast in that regard... Something like a Mentor Roulette, perhaps? "<Job> Ranking Roulette", which could involve all forms of PvP (though Fold/Secure/Slaughter would need updating with LV60 and Assists), but with the same basic mechanic for passing qualifiers and so on.

Dark Knight

Just spit-balling here, I'd say the Job definitely needs some fine tuning, I'm likely to tired/frustrated to be making rational suggestions at this point though;

Make Dark Knights cross-class skills come from Gladiator and Lancer, rather than Marauder... That's even a PvE change I wanted, granted TP management is a lot better on the Job now... As far as PvP goes though, Feint would be a nice counter against healers, and Blood for Blood could help push the Jobs DPS, which given its abysmal utility should be exceptional... It would still be a liability, since Blood for Bloods thing is kinda going to have you needing more heals, but it at least has a solid pay off - more DPS.

Give Blood Weapon and Blood Price Dark Arts effects, which have them drain HP. Again, another change I want to see in general, not really PvP specific, but the Jobs horrendous self healing could do with being addressed...

Rework Tar Pit into an Aura effect; Somewhat similar to Collective Unconscious, except you retain the ability to move around and attack. Rather than a flat 150/180 potency attack, it becomes a DoT that drains HP. This would work nicely with Dark Knights chase ability (which is really the only thing it excels at) while potentially also being a worthwhile self heal... Seriously, Tar Pit is on a fairly long cooldown, who thought it was a good idea to have it return such low numbers, especially when Abyssal Drain can be spammed...

Give Dark Knight a new PvP skill, essentially something similar to Cover/Clemency. You take 20% of your HP and give it to an ally. Again, playing on the idea that Dark Knight requires more attention from their healer, but actually giving us a pay off... Whether that works as "Up to 20%" and if you don't have 20% you lose/heal less, or if it works like a Sole Survivor type heal I'll leave to someone else... It would stack nicely with Living Dead if it were the later...

Originally Posted by Nalien

snip

One of the best posts on the current situation so far. Agreed on pretty much everything except the quitting part. I'm masochistic and absolutely will keep trying and hoping RNG favors me with competent team mates.(I should probably just stop bothering with solo and do premade only)

Doesn't change how bad this setup is for anyone who'd actually like to be competitive.

Originally Posted by Cynric

Agreed on pretty much everything except the quitting part.

Honestly, I'll probably be back... I do enjoy it, but I just had one too many parties that do not listen in a row, and I just had to throw my controller down and vent... I should probably go get that Pa-paya roll...

Originally Posted by Nalien

Honestly, I'll probably be back... I do enjoy it, but I just had one too many parties that do not listen in a row, and I just had to throw my controller down and vent... I should probably go get that Pa-paya roll...

Yeah I think this is probably the most I've cursed in a long time because of how frustrating it is. My current favorite matches are, Getting a tank that only DPS' and refuses to pick up medals, Getting AFK players, healers especially, and my personal favorite "I'm only here for eso", and having the tank take the offense buff as they go after a DPS the entire match while the other healer freecasts.

Good times.

This applies to all modes, but I feel like the Heavy Medal debuff could afford to scale up a lot more severely than it currently does.

Even at the maximum of 9 stacks for 90% more damage taken, a tank holding all the medals is still a very unattractive target compared to the healers and DPS. As its current strength, the debuff is not fulfilling its function in incentivizing you to switch to targeting people with more medals. It's still more effective to fight with a 'normal' mindset and go for easy targets, because a team without a healer or missing a DPS is easy to control.

Originally Posted by Marxam

actually the debuff is quite strong. I held 9 in one match as a tank, a drg dragon dived towards me and it took about 1/3 of my hp and for a tank that's a lot from one move but the healer was still able to keep me up in tandem with me using defensive cooldowns properly because the other dps was trying to kill the healer to prevent me from being healed. I think the biggest issue is that regardless of whether or not healers have medals they ALWAYS provide the greatest threat by keeping their party alive and that is always an issue.

Was this a casual Match or Ranked match? Because I'm finding that there is a HUGE difference between how they play out.

In 8 v 8, it's not at all uncommon for a Tank to soak up +9 stacks, because the game mode can last that long. I've done it myself, and I totally agree with you that the spike I saw in my damage intake was pretty substantial. I spent the rest of the match running away from enemy Dps just to hold onto my medals. It was actually kind of a refreshing change from the usual way matches play out. I cannot say the same in 4v4, though.

In the ranked matches I've played so far (in which I'm almost exclusively playing as Tank), I'm lucky to pick up 4 medal drops before the match abruptly ends. By the time I start actually noticing the spike in dmg from the vulnerability increase, the match is over. So, in the Ranked matches, the Heavy Medal Debuff hasn't been all that significant, and Dps still opt to take the ranged players over fighting a tank (except for in one, memorable, case in which the teams seemed fixated on picking on the ninja for some reason). Honestly, in most of the matches I've played the enemy team has been actively trying to avoid fighting me and makes a straight sprint for the ranged player on my team. Healers and ranged are still priority targets, regardless of how many medals I'm holding.

Personally, I agree with Myon in that this needs to be adjusted for balancing. There are two ways that I can see them tackling this: The first is to adjust the scaling of the Heavy Medal debuff depending on game mode. The vulnerability should scale higher in solo ranked and lower in casual 8 v 8. The second option would be to simply extend the length of the solo ranked matches by increasing the point cap.