3.2 PvP: Feast Game Mode Discussion Thread.

[Sicks]

it might hurt frontline queues even more for people who just want to still play frontline if people that would've been queueing for frontline are queueing for "Feast"

[Februs]

it might hurt frontline queues even more for people who just want to still play frontline if people that would've been queueing for frontline are queueing for "Feast"

I'm pretty sure this is an almost guaranteed outcome.

Every new addition to PvP has traditionally killed its predecessor. Seize has a slight advantage in that it is the only 72-man game mode available at lvl 60. Meaning that people might still Q for it when Feast comes out. However, it's an almost forgone conclusion that the Q's will slow down, get scaled back to 24-man matches, or eventually outright die.

SE could save Seize from going the way of the dodo bird, but they'd have to bring Secure and Slaughter up to level cap and provide a PvP Roulette that actually serves a function rather than just providing Tome Bonus.

[samurailargo]

The Dev team likes to keep things fairly locked with lore. It might be an option down the road that old frontlines maps may not be GC locked for too long. Its locked to the 3 GC lore wise. If some of the old pvp story is concluded then it is possible to see unrestricted frontlines matches. Not gonna say to see that happening soon. As the older pvp is locked back at lv 50 which needs a lv 60 equivalent, and the dev team figuring out how pvp works slowly. But when they do figure it out, frontlines pvp could see a re surge in activity.

As for the feast, I am slightly hoping for an objective based pvp. king of the hill, and death match are nice and all but how this game plays I can see a moba type pvp being what will keep people coming back for more. And mentioned earlier, even a capture the flag would be not bad off the beaten path.

[Februs]

The Dev team likes to keep things fairly locked with lore.

The problem with this is that SE has abandoned it's own lore when it comes to PvP.

The original FL was to settle a territory dispute. Slaughter had no lore and focused only on one section of the territory we were disputing, but you could still argue that it was at least related to the lore. Maybe they were just trying out a different method, since the original method resulted in no definitive victor and settled nothing ... It's pretty weak, but you could say the lore persisted through Slaughter. However one would be hard pressed to try and make a case that there is any relevant lore to PvP post 3.0. At that point, the lore ends.

The end of the 2.0 story line and the events of the 3.0 story line *SPOILERS*

concluded the territory dispute of the FL game mode by murdering off the character who started the dispute in the first place. Omega weapon has been pushed to the sidelines. They went no where with it, and the only character who was interested in it is dead and buried in two stumpy little graves. The whole plot was outed to pretty much everyone. At the very least the leaders of the 3 city states know what's going on. No official word was given on the land dispute, but, for all intents and purposes, the lore of Front Lines is over. It's become completely irrelevant to the main story, and the only hope of it ever coming back to haunt us if SE goes anywhere with the Sultana abdicating the throne, or if Papalymo's and Yda's adventures with the Al Mhigan resistance leads back to Ul'dah in some way. This, however, is extremely unlikely given that the Al Mhigan's have already settled in little Al Mhigo, and the whole point of the resistance is to get them home, not settle them in the Carteneau Flats.

Fast forward to 3.0 Seize ... and there is absolutely no story relevant content whatsoever. There's not dialogue. There's no quest to unlock the content. There's no lore involving the island, what it has to do with the Carteneau Flats (if anything), and there's no information on the Allagan Tomestones that we are farming for data. They don't even tell us what the data is for. There's literally nothing. They made the game mode because they had an idea and ran with it. The concept of lore was completely abandoned, which leads to the question: WHY ARE THEY CLINGING SO HARD TO A LORE THAT THEY'VE ALREADY WRITTEN OUT OF THE GAME?!

Even if there exists some defensible position for SE's ridiculous decision to keep the Front Line Game modes locked with GC restrictions, there's still no excuse for why Secure and Slaughter have not been given a Lvl 60 Q option. This should have happened at the release of Seize. The level cap should have been increased when the Front Lines Roulette was introduced, but, instead, we have a Roulette that only Q's us for 1 out of 3 available Front Line game modes ... I would love for someone to explain how that makes sense without sounding completely insane.

If there is one thing that I would say makes the top of my list for what I'm hoping to see in the Patch Notes, it's that SE fixes this baffling oversight.

[Spawnie]

I would rather they address all of the points you touched on under 'notably absent content' than implement a new mode.

Fix what's broken first, then add new things please :/

exactly this.... what do they do to try improve queues ?? add another completely different mode which will make frontline queus 3-4x longer nows honestly its like they want frontlines to die off instead of fixing the problems .-.

[kensatsu]

It can help new pvp mode make shadow on predecessor, i will not blame new pvp mode for this, it's logic players play news things
but what if people want to meat and organize to play older pvp ? the GC restriction almost kill it.
It was the same with the old wolfden and the rank restriction, both team need the same rank amount to instant queue, or they need to wait a lot of times to queue because the rank is not equal. (even on ilvel synced mode)
Restriction kill all the pvp instance.
SE, just Get the GC restriction off, synch old front in level60. why lockout everything...
It make queue longer.
Players just want to play pvp, not waiting longer on queue because of restriction system.
(don't forget also, some players are not playing frontline at all because 30 minute queue is too long and not worth to play 10 minutes)

[Februs]

It can help new pvp mode make shadow on predecessor, i will not blame new pvp mode for this, it's logic players play news things
but what if people want to meat and organize to play older pvp ? the GC restriction almost kill it.

Exactly.

I don't mind the fact that they're giving us a new game mode. I actually like the idea of having different PvP game modes to play. I'm looking forward to Feast. It seems like it will be fun.

What I don't like is that each new game mode is designed to replace the old game modes instead of working with them. If SE stopped being so stubborn and raised FL caps to 60 and put them into a functional roulette, we'd have more variety of PvP and shorter Q times. Feast will, most likely, still be the fastest Q, but at least FL wouldn't be completely dead.

GC restrictions need to go, and level cap needs to be raised. This should all happen on day 1 of Feast being released, or the following patch at the very latest.

[Astryoneus]

Unless if I understood what you said incorrectly, I'd like to point out that the first season starts in patch 3.25 and ends in 3.35. Not the even patches.

Otherwise a good post with all the information gathered in one place.

[Februs]

Unless if I understood what you said incorrectly, I'd like to point out that the first season starts in patch 3.25 and ends in 3.35. Not the even patches.

No. You are correct. I just left out the pre-season bit with a place-holder example, because the live letter did not specify the exact seasons and was a little vague.

According to the live letter, the seasonal rankings will be updated every major patch. The first season will have a warm up period between 3.2-3.25 in which players can adjust themselves to the new content. So the first "official" season does not actually begin until 3.25. The live letter did not specify what constitutes a "major patch," though. So I did not want to speculate on when the first season would official start and end, since they weren't exactly clear on what a "major patch" is.

It is also noteworthy that SE did not specify any relationship between seasonal rankings and weekly rankings. It would seem that, for the moment, the current system for keeping track of weekly wins and losses is still in effect. Presumably Feast will be given it's own tab in the PvP menu, but this is not confirmed. All the same, players should probably still be Q'ing for Feast even in the pre-season to bolster your weekly performance and get some experience before the official season begins.

[Februs]

SE HAS PROVIDED NEW AND UPDATED INFORMATION FOR THEIR NEW GAME MODE: FEAST, IN THEIR LATEST LIVE LETTER WHICH CAN BE FOUND HERE: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...-Update-Thread .

The updates span from page 1 to page 2. I've also updated the information in my original post to outline the key features that were explained. It's a lot to look through, so I bracketed the relevant information with EDIT and **, and I provided Quotes from the live letter. Not all of it is 100% clear, but they've made quite a few juicy announcements. Have a look, and, as always, if you have questions, concerns, or opinions, post them for discussion.