Thread: 3.2 PvP: Feast Game Mode Discussion Thread.

Originally Posted by Dimitrii

Also wtf is up with every loss seemingly being a static -25 yet wins barely net 20 points?

This is really starting to bug me... +19 for a win, -28 for a loss... Plus I have no idea what is causing that variation... I suspect it is a combination of the difference in total party rating (in which case matchmaking can go to hell) and current rank, but I'd rather not get worked up trying to figure out why I get hit with such shitty rating rewards... Always fun to watch a weeks progress flushed away because reasons... Bad enough matchmaking calls a novice healer v one of the top DPS "balanced"...

I'm really quite sick of the rating/matchmaking system... Someone feel free to claim its fine, we have a leaderboard where around half the players aren't actively participating... If that's not a damning critique of Feast, I don't know what is... Matchmaking isn't the only issue there (the rewards are a huge part IMO), but the prevailing meta is "Don't play once you get 1,100+ rating" because the matchmaking/rating system can completely strip you of that in a matter of hours... I don't mind losing when teams are balanced, but they rarely are...

I don't even care if we don't have the playerbase for a tighter matchmaking system, I'll take longer queues for consistently enjoyable matches, over short queues for utter tripe... I'd say getting completely destroyed by someone on their way to Platinum is going to turn more new players off than long queues anyway, and we know for a fact that plenty of existing players are turning away regardless of queue time... The alternative is changing the rating system so it isn't such a frustrating mess, you can't just copy a rating system from games where one person can carry a team and slap it in here, where that is far from the case... Instead we have a system where it seems you're actively punished for being good... Matchmaking balances out the teams terribly and you end up losing more and gaining less the higher up you go... It's a fucking horrible system and it's no wonder so many are turning away from it, which sadly just compounds the problem since now you're almost certainly stuck playing with worse players as all the good ones get their 1,100+ rating and bail...

guess who just went from 1,000+ to 800 in the space of two days

I really don't like posting on these forums and have no interest in discussing things with players. But I deeply want pvp to be better in FFXIV so I'm making these posts in a vain hope that maybe a devolper who matters might consider my opinions. I know it's naive and silly, but I have to try! This feedback is for 4v4 solo queue and it is aimed at gms/devolpers/yoshi or whoever it is that is in charge.


Just to set a little context; I absolutely loved the original den. I started this game, got to 30, tried pvp, then spent a huge majority of time in the den, first night I pvp'd I couldn't even sleep cause I was too excited theroy crafting out my marauder.
I leveled my marauder to 50 mostly through the den. I played 30's and 40's and used that as a means to gear myself. Since I didn't PVE and the only thing I knew was den and story mode dungeons, I was just a pvp Marauder/drg/pal (but I couldn't play drg.pal, because I had to spend wolf marks to switch clas traits), I had to get to rank 30 and save up enough wolf marks to buy an i90 direwolf set, so that I could have some gears to enter 50 pvp when I finally reached it. 30's and 40's were occupied by premades and dead because of it. Back then players didn't even start with skills pvp skills, you had to earn them, it was absolutely grueling facing these premades over and over and over as you literally had no chance, your healers would be new with no pvp skills and barely even got to their job (quite often still being a class), and would have barely even experienced the game itself, they would die in 2 seconds and the matches would end within a min. And the queues were horrendous when the match making was put in place. But I still enjoyed it and got my gears in the end and thoroughly enjoyed 50's den. But then den was dead on secure arrival, and it only got worse with time. point of all that is just to show how much of a fan I was of den.

I've been waiting nearly 2 years for it's revival. Then we get feast...


I want to say that I love certain things that they've done with the feast.
Implementing a solo-queue was the best thing ever for me. Premades really caused a lot of people to quit original den and even frontlines. And seeing that there was modes catered to both solo and party play was like a dream come true. I would really like to see future pvp modes follow a similar concept.

The fact that 4v4 is the primary mode was also a great news to me. I dreaded 8vs8 when I heard about it and felt it would be just a big zerg fest, and I really didn't like that idea.
Seeing that this was treated as nothing but a training ground, was again, very good news to me. It's small scale pvp combat, which I love, and what I feel FFXIV needs much, much more of. I'm really tired of zerg.

But outside of that, I can't find too much other positive things to say about the fest.
Just to state, these are just my personal gripes with the feast and only that, if you love everything about the feast, more power to you, I got no qualms with that.

It's mostly the medals that kill it for me. It's like the medals were put in as a joke, so that players would have endless stories to tell about the ludicrous situations they are put in.
Every game is nerve racking for me, because it always comes down to someone ignoring what people have said, and then picking up way too many medals, of and of course, picking up no medals. I have no control over this. I can do everything right, and setup an extreme advantage for our team, only to see that wasted because someone decided to pick up too many medals. Our team can even die, and lose the advantage, and I can pull it back again, only to see them do the exact same thing again.

I don't mind random teammates really, I'm used to it. I can be put in a severe disadvantages team skill wise, and turn things around, and this is usually the case. But when you throw medals into the mix, it's one step too far.
I can still turn things around in spite of the handicap, but it is nothing but a frustrating process to me and it's very far away from the competitive and "balanced gameplay" I was looking for.
You know how frustrating it is to see the SMN pick up 10 stacks after you've slaughtered the enemy? To have to fight tooth and nail to carry a tank and range that can't kill a thing, finally pull off the kills to put you back in the lead, only to have the tank pick up everything and get 1 shot by an LB? It's comical gameplay at best and it just gives me a headache being put in these situations over and over again. I just can't stress enough how unfun it is to be put in games repeatedly where the deciding factor is someone not listening about medals. There is occasions where I do get games where medals aren't an issue, and these can be quite enjoyable. But they are sadly greatly outweighed.
Give me a handicap straight up 4v4 deathmatch, and I can turn it around and have fun.
Do the same but remove deathmatch and throw in medals and instant kill limits and it just leads to ludicrous situations that are like something out of a Monty Python skit, and I just don't enjoy myself much, even if I turn it around, and I often do, it's just an unsatisfying experience. When skill isn't the deciding factor, but a player picking up 5+ medals is, I have little interest in playing.

Then you throw in the queue times on top of this. The queues were fine until I hit gold. Now I'm switching around my schedule just to get into games, queueing at multiple different time windows, only to have to wait more time than I can bear, to get matches that are again, comical at best. Matchmaking killed the original den. I thought after that being clear as day I wouldn't have to deal with it in the feast... I was wrong.
There is no tutorial for the feast in game, players don't understand how medals work, and how to deal with them, it means the same mistakes are repeated time and time again and it gets old pretty fast.
Too big a number of my games in both pre-season and season 1 have been lost due to this, and I'm very tired of it.
Those are the main reasons I guess I'm finished with current installment of the feast. If only this mode was just 4v4 straight combat like old den but at 60, if only
I feel the mode has potential, and maybe in the future when people know more (wishful thinking) I won't find it as frustrating. But for now, it ain't worth the queue time for me.


Then lets see.. Apart from my personal gripes above, these are the problems I see with the actual gameplay of the mode and things I feel really need to be worked upon.

One of the main problems I see with the feast and now PVP in general is the change that came from 3.2? tank changes and the fact that most games end via a timeout.

You gave tanks way more HP and nerfed their damage potential.
This makes tanks way to hard to kill. And this is to me, the main factor that leads to boring and prolonged matches.

Tanks have what 14/15k hp (more with defiance), ontop of insane damage mitigation skills and a last stand invincibility move, and the innate pvp reduction they get (20%? vs physical), and self heals.

So I'll start off a game, kill the healer, then we kill the dps and ranged, but unless the tank is dumb and stands still, I can't finish off the game. I need to re-kill their other players a few times, without my team-mates dieing (while they have the medal handicap) in the mean time.

Matches were ending in ties too often so I believe you increased the adr rates and offense boxes. But this actually does the opposite of making the match end quick.
Because you give losing teams LB's, they pull back a kill, now your team has to get off that many more kills to end the game .

It's just too hard to finish off a tank in it's current state, ontop of all their survivability, you have to counter the healer healing them and their team-mates peeling for them, and even if you do, theres that last stand that skill that just sees them survive anways. This makes it so tanks are usually a no go, which lessens your combat options.

In the original den, tanks were mostly a no go too, but they didn't have as much skills back then, and nowhere near as much HP... so if a tank got cocky or you needed to switch things up, the option was there.

If tanks had their old HP and damage back matches would play out very differently.
Matches wouldn't suffer from the constant stagnated games that result in timeouts.
Tanks would do more damage and they would be much easier to kill. Games would be so much more enjoyable like this imo.

So you've given tanks a lot more hp, and nerfed their damage potential. But that HP is useless unless they are being targeted, and usually in pvp there is little reason to target them.
So you have to create an incentive, medals! I feel this is extremely shortsighted. What about modes where there are no medals? No incentive to hit them? They are just sitting there with nerfed damage, horrendously bad mobility, and wasted high HP and to what end?

Why did this change need to happen in pvp? Most good pvp mmo's allow tanks some sort of customization to specialize differently for pvp, pvp specs. They are not tanks in the traditional sense, but "tanky" quasi DPS. They usually have better utility/mitigation/self heals or something then actual DPS so they are still "tanky", sometimes very.

I don't see what was the need to pull tanks further away from being killers, and giving them this HP. This change shouldn't have applied to pvp.

I loved my paladin, I loved my warrior, and I even loved my dark knight on the rare occasion that I played it. It was one of my long term goals to try and really learn dark knight in pvp properly and make it my main pvp tank. Because I loved how strong it's on command burst was (crazy with fever). But now? I got no interest in playing these tanks. The worst mobility in the game, insanely bad mobility at that, CC magnets who are near defenseless against CC and now they have pitiful damage? Yeah, that killed all my interest in playing them in pvp and I know for a fact I'm not the only one, I've seen multiple pvp tanks quit due to this.

I'm not saying tanks didn't need some nerfs, or damage changes, they could have received some for sure, warrior especially was over-tuned. And I'm not saying tanks can't kill or do damage in their current state, sure they can still, but it's pitiful compared to what it was before, and it was to me a very short sighted change that greatly diminished the enjoyability of the class in pvp for very little reason.
This is something I feel really should change for pvp.

Speaking of their low damage, I was in frontlines the other day on scholar against three tanks, just messing around with them, and they could do absolutely nothing to me damage wise cause I could just cast through their pitiful damage.
I wouldn't have died to them before all these changes or anything, but I would have at least been a little threatened. Now I just stand there spamming adlo while they can't really even cast break me, at least not enough to matter. Their damage sucks and I have to much ability to freecast.

And speaking of which. Thats another short sighted change. I can cast so, so often now under-pressure, mindlessly even. Before I needed to work for every cast, now it's brainless.
Okay in the feast, it may balance out to a degree, but what about in other combat modes? How is that countered, when a healer can't be interrupted and has free reign to CC, CC, CC and heal, too much power in their casts?
What is the counter now to that, zerg? Battle fever? LB? These are real imbalances that are leftover from feast and will spill into other pvp modes from what I feel are nothing more than quick fix solutions to make the feast more playable to a wider audience.

Funnily enough, I found this post made by me 2 years ago talking about this situation.

Originally Posted by tehomegaking

Casters are designed so that their casts can be decisive factors in an encounter. This forces you into selectively choosing which to use and when, and which cooldowns to sacrifice to get said skill off. Give WHM freecasting and they become a god. There is no class in any MMO ever that would be this overpowering... not even scholars from ragnarok online. A freecasting WHM can heal what damage you do with ease, disable an entire party in multiple ways, hell, it can even kill you with ease.

This game designed with a very specific plan in mind. You can't just add freecasting and expect things to work. You'd need a complete rebelancing of the entire system. Thats why this won't happen.

Since then they removed cleric, but most of it still applies. They don't quite have freecasting, but it's not far away at this point.



Oh, and I almost forgot, the LB's. Limit breaks are simply an imbalance that is thrown out to anyone. You can have truly low skill DPS, that can't do anything, but they can turn around the game purely by being granted access to limit break. Not to mention the adr rate, some games where we are just dominating I'm spamming 3 LB's a match. How is that fair? Do people enjoy that on the other end? I've never had to deal with it myself, but I can imagine it's painful to play against.

LB's could be a cool and interesting gimmick that open up gameplay further. Why do we only have access to one? The beauty of limit breaks throughout the series is that they offer choice and even utility. But this is simply absent in FFXIV. They could be plugging the holes in your gameplay, and giving you further utility. As a melee for example, I'd like a limit break that was a defensive cooldown that was actually worth while. Or access to a strong ranged attack, maybe even a self heal, lancet is a series staple that is just missing from our toolkit could be put right in there? These are just ideas, obviously all classes would get similar options that further fleshed out their class and added utility. I'd like to see limit breaks done over, current implementation of them in pvp is just overpowered and dull and offers no variation.


I could really go on and on about the imbalances and class issues, but these are the main things that I feel really need a proper look at rather than quick fix solutions.

Originally Posted by Dimitrii

Its the platinums that are fking up the points.

I just got -31, no platinums involved... My team all gold, other team 2 gold 2 silver... If I'm losing more because my team had the rank "advantage", then SE really needs to take a look at how they match up teams, because there was no reason not to have both teams be 3 gold 1 silver...

Really though, I've still no clue what's causing this... I've had matches with pretty much the same set up as far as ranks go, and gotten -20, where the hell is that extra -11 coming from? I really wish this stupid rating system was more transparent, this is just constantly pissing me off... The game just seems to like going "Fuck you!" constantly, it's really not enjoyable at this point... If I at least could see why I'm seemingly randomly getting hit with large reductions in rating, I'd perhaps be less annoyed by it... Probably more annoyed at the matchmaking system instead, but whatever...

EDIT: exactly the same set up, 4 gold v 2 gold 2 silver, -24... Seriously SE... What the hell... And what the hell me, for playing on a weekend -_-;

I guess actual rating, which handily I cannot see, is involved... Either way I really have nothing polite left to say about Feast... Guess I should just look forward to more incredibly disappointing Dark Knight adjustments and Shatter...

Originally Posted by tehomegaking

LB's could be a cool and interesting gimmick that open up gameplay further. Why do we only have access to one? The beauty of limit breaks throughout the series is that they offer choice and even utility.

I'd love it if they dropped Limit Breaks from PvP in favor of Job ultimates... Powerful PvP skills that require full Adrenaline in order to use... Could do a lot of fun things with that and we wouldn't need to be limited to one per Job...

Doubt that'll ever happen though, since that would require SE to put effort in and require a great deal of balancing... I imagine we're stuck with the riveting gameplay Stun > kill button entails... At leasts tanks is slightly more interesting...