Thread: 3.2 PvP: Feast Game Mode Discussion Thread.

Originally Posted by PapaSteel

While I understand that new players shouldn't be at a disadvantage, players who dedicate themselves to pvp - much like pve - would like to see the reeards they get provide incremental improvements to their character.

I do nothing but PVP in this game. I do not want to destroy new players even more by having a morale advantage. They tried it with WD launch, it failed miserably. When I had full Rank 30 PvP gear I'd destroy anyone who had no morale at all. It was a joke, they had no chance no matter how good they were, and it is a bad system.

Morale could be turned intoa resource that is activated when you use the Universal ability "Morale Boost" Could cost 50 morale for each actions used under that resource and once it's used up it's gone for the rest of that match. So it wouldn't be something you would use right away but rather something you would try to time.

It could be as simple as let's say "Deal Full Damage from DoT" "Double duration of x ability"

Or better yet, Have "Morale Buffs" that you can use that alter the effect of abilities based on what's used.

You could "Morale DoT" "Morale Support" "Morale Melee" and each would do something like, "increase potency/duration of support ability" "Increase DoT potency/reduce timer or straight up deal full dmg without applying DoT" and "Increase dmg of x melee/range action when used, and for mages could just be x spell.

I'll say this outright: Morale should not give an advantage in combat without a trade-off, no matter if it's to respawns or PvP skill effects or whatnot. No matter how indirect the advantage, it'll still be a net gain and thus be a requirement and another hurdle for new players to overcome. Also it'll limit using Wolf Marks for glamour and make gearing alts a requirement for PvP instead of freely using whatever class you would like without a disadvantage.

I have two possibilities for Morale, but both aren't exactly optimal. Really it'd just be safer to remove it. Anyway:

1.) Make Morale take the place of a secondary stat, and let it increase damage mitigation. Right now there are plenty of potency increasing options, but there are no damage mitigation options for classes that aren't tanks. Having a defensive option would add interesting approaches to strategy. The effect of the mitigation doesn't have to be as strong as Morale used to be for Wolves' Den since that was ridiculous, maybe just as effective on average as Parry or around that. The downside is that this would be very strong on healers, since losing secondary stats isn't a very big downside but damage mitigation would be amazing.

2.) Make Morale take the place of a secondary stat, and let it increase the rate Limit Break increases. This would add very interesting strategical variation. For example, on one hand DPS classes would have less burst from less crit/det/speed, but they would get LB more often for huge advantages in select fights. The downsides would be that the effects of this would be hard to balance without Morale being either the dominant strategy with how game changing it is or completely useless with how infrequent it'd have to be. Also, healers and especially tanks do not have many downsides to losing secondaries but have very much to gain from their LBs.

Well in some pvp systems they do have a stat like moral and it works well. However if the majority believe this to be unfair, then I'd suggest moral only working for ranked matches.

Rank should be for serious contenders. Those who put in time and effort into pvp should be rewarded in some fashion. Give a small progression to pvp like pve. I don't understand why it's ok to have to be geared strictly for new pve content but not pvp?

New to pvp (at 60 of all things)? After a small time doing unranked, get seals and buy pvp to contend with the big leagues. I do want to see pvp gear play a part visually in pvp. I want to see people with gear visuals and be like "woah, this guys been around".

But maybe we just don't have the player base to suggest progression, which means pvp has even worse problems

Morale could do this.

The more you have, the more likely you are to dodge an incoming attack or spell or resist a spell(enhanced by materia). Cap it at a low % and add diminishing returns for the more you have. This would promote people to experiment and adjust their gearsets to their playstyle and or available gears.

Allow counter balance from other players morale to lessen this effect. As in if two people are stacking morale, they counter each others effects of dodging attacks and or potency of incoming attacks or duration of debuffs.

The difference and balance in this theoretical combat would then be, maybe one uses less morale so he misses more on the player stacking morale. In this example the less morale wearing player could instead have gear that promotes crit. So when they do land attacks, they hit harder.

Effectively what a setup like this would do with proper adjustment for effect of morale for EACH job is tip the scales in the favor of one class over the imperfect balance that is job hierarchy.

Imperfect balance

A class beats B class, but B class beats C class, and C class beats A class. By adjusting morale on a individual class basis for its effect, you can effectively cause moments where this scale tips back in the other direction.

A > B > C > A
Lets say C is now stacking Morale. Abilities, potency, and evasion are now enhanced, and the traditional B class can no longer beat C hands down. However as a counter balance, C can no longer defeat A, but instead is brought to a level of steep difficultly to still accomplish.

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Its a given for example, that no matter what a healer caught alone by a ninja or monk is gonna have a bad time.

Lets have an example,

the many stuns from a monk stopping a healer.

With morale, the healer could evade a few stuns or resist with materia enhancing the resist to last longer against the monk, to get a few more heals out and survive longer for teammates to assist.

Or a Summoner stacks morale and now takes so little damage, but their damage in return is now less. Traditional players will want to take out the glass cannon, but when they find out the glass cannon is now made of iron and shoots 9mm instead of cannonballs, they will have to on the fly rethink their direction of attack.

In a nutshell, make Morale help players to break the meta. To be creative, to be a tanky ninja that can't kill but confuse other dps long enough for ones team to exploit!