3.2 PvP: Feast Game Mode Discussion Thread.

[Februs]

The word is that a new game mode was announced in the 3.2 live letter. It seems like no one is talking about it, so I figured I'd post a discussion thread and point out the things that I think are noteworthy.

**DISCLAIMER**

None of this is set in stone, and I'm taking all of this information from an unofficial translation found here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...JiIPSvZ_Q/edit

This could all end up being hogswash, or it's possible that I'm totally misunderstanding the live letter. I'm taking all this information with massive mountains of salt until the official patch notes confirm or deny any of it. As should you. With that out of the way, lets get down to the fun part.

FEAST:

The new game mode is called "Feast," and, word is, that it is objective based and run in a small to medium format across a few different game modes.

**EDIT: The Rules for Party composition have been released in the recent live letter:

This is the PvP content we have been referring to as “The Wolves’ Den 2.”

Rules:

Need to be level 60.
Item level syncs to 150.

Party composition

4v4: 1 tank, 1 melee DPS, 1 ranged DPS, 1 healer
8v8: 2 tanks, 2 melee DPS, 2 ranged DPS, 2 healers.

You’ll need to have both melee DPS and ranged DPS in your party.
You will not be able to queue if you have a different party composition.

Nothing too surprising here. Like Wolves Den, party composition for Feast is restricted. The downside to this is that Q times will, undoubtedly, be negatively impacted by Job class restrictions, as most people tend to Q as dps. That said, No one really expected this to work any other way. The game mode requires it. Unfortunately, there's still no word on any real incentives to play as healer; however, they did mention that the results page will have an additional column for "Assists."

Result screen

The result screen will show the number of knockouts (K), the number of times you were knocked out (D), and the number of assists (A). Assists can be earned through heals, buffs, and other actions. It’s pretty easy to get assists, so try to get a lot of them.

It seems that Healers will have an easier time scoring Assists via healing and buffs. SE has not mentioned how this will play into the game mode though. There's no word on if assists will count for anything in match, or if new challenges / achievements will be tied to assists. The system is in place now, though. My speculation is that we may see future achievements come into PvP that are scored by having a high number of assists. Given that healers have more ways than most to score assists, it would basically be a healer achievement. That said, SE has not said anything on them other than that we should be trying to get a lot ... **

The Screenshot they showed for the Results page also showed a victory! image. For the moment, it seems that the point cap for winning a match is 150 points.

Rules of Engagement:

My understanding of what I'm reading, so far, is that match points will be allocated in a similar fashion to a ticket system.

Anyone who has played "Bounty Hunter" in MGO will kind of get how this works. Basically (if I'm reading this right and the translation is correct), each kill will grant points. The more points you have, the more you are essentially worth (you increase your bounty with each kill). If someone kills you, they are granted all of the points you had before death and vice versa.

The game mode is still a death-match, so to speak. So, strictly speaking, all that talk about Wolves Den 2.0 is not wrong. However, priority targets will now be determined by worth rather than job. This is kind of similar to the way battle highs/fevers paint a target on your back in Front Lines.

Rumour has it that there may be more objectives other than point harvesting from high valued targets, but to my knowledge, none have been specified thus far. If anyone knows of any more information, please share it.

Speculation:

From this information I am speculating that (1) match victories will be decided points rather than eliminating the enemy team, (2) you will be able to re-spawn, and (3) SE will have provided some means for us to identify which players are holding how many points (similar to battle fever/high). The reason I'm speculating these things is because I just don't see who it could work any other way.

Having matches end with the complete annihilation of the enemy team would defy the point of having points in the first place and would result in Feast matches playing out exactly like Wolve's Den Matches ... Which would make Feast pointless.

Also, re-spawns would allow for the possibility of upsets. If matches are based on points, rather than wipes, and points can be stolen by killing high valued players, then a match can be turned around by killing a player with a lot of points. The trailing team can come back from a loss in such a way. This would not be possible if re-spawns were not allowed. Matches would end too quickly, and no one would have an opportunity to score high as there would be a limited amount of people to kill. The result would be just wiping out the enemy team as quickly as possible and ignoring high valued targets... which would be the same as Wolves Den, so, again, no point.

The real question is how would resurrections effect this, if at all? If healer revivals prevent score stealing then In which case, then waiting for a rez would be a tactically sound option to re-spawning. If not, directly re-spawning would be a better option, since you already lost your points anyway.

**EDIT: The live letter has outlined the rules of engagement more clearly.

Deciding the Victor

Different than the previous Wolves’ Den content, instead of completely wiping out the opposing team, the objective is to steal your opponent’s medals, and the team that has the most at the end of the match will win. Each team’s members will start the battle with 100 medals.

When defeating an opponent, they will drop their medals. Your team can pick these up, and once you reach a certain number of medals, your team will win.

If you’re worried about dragging a team down because you feel like you’re going to get killed over and over--have no fear! The amount of medals you drop will become fewer and fewer the more you are defeated, so there is no benefit to defeating the same person continuously. Depending on the amount of medals your opponent drops, there will be various effects.

Also, you won’t be able to collect medals off of your teammates

Again, it's a token system in which you drop or collect medals. It seems pretty straight forward. There are a few interesting things to highlight, however:

The first is that the number of tokens (medals) the player drops upon dying is reduced with consecutive deaths (thereby eliminating the pre-established tactic of KILL THE HEALER!). You could go after the same person over and over, but the return gets lower each time, and there it may, in fact, be easier to kill a different player (I'll get to that in a bit. See: Heavy Medal Debuff).

Another thing is that SE has neglected to mention how re-spawns work in this game mode. The fact that you get diminished medal drops with each consecutive death seems to indicate that you can re-spawn; however, SE has still not officially stated this. My money is still on a free re-spawn though, because I don't see how this could work any other way. If the healer died, for example, then the match would end regardless of how many medals the team if the rest of the team could not just re-spawn themselves.

Another interesting note is that SE stated that medals must be picked up. This seems small, but it actually could make a HUGE difference in match. If medals are automatically given to you upon killing a player, then it won't have any impact to the match, but if the medals are a physical item that you have to pick up it could be a tactical exploit. Having to actually stop and "interact" with a dropped item means that your opposing team can interrupt you. Meaning they can stop you from scoring even if you have killed one of them by preventing you from picking up the dropped medal. SE wasn't totally clear on this one, but the image they showed made it look like it will work this way.

SE also mentioned that there are features called "Culling Time" and "Heavy Medal:"

Culling Time

This time occurs when a player isn’t defeated for certain amount of time. If no one is defeated the debuff will continue to accumulate, but once an enemy or ally is defeated the debuff is removed. This will also affect the background and sound.

Heavy Medal

Depending on amount of medals held, players will receive physical damage up debuff. If one player collects too much medals, they will receive that much more debuff, so please be careful.

Culling Time is basically to stop matches from being a stalemate. If no one dies, the vulnerability buffs accumulate until someone does. The idea here is to throw a wrench into the fight if the two teams are so evenly matched that they can't gain the upper hand. The buff is applied equally, so it's fair, but it's enough that it might shift the fight and keep it from getting locked.

Heavy medal is a little different. This is a personal Buff. Basically, the more medals you collect the more vulnerable you are to getting killed. This does a few things. The first is to stop players from picking on the healer (or generally squishy targets like Smn's/Blm's). If another teammate has the heavy medal debuff, they will be much easier to kill. It also encourages your team to split your kills with each other, instead of having one player do all the leg work. You don't want to stack all your medals on one head, especially if that head gets vulnerability for having too many.

The last addition to what we know about the Rules of Engagement is the inclusion of Supply Boxes.

Supply Box

There are supply boxes which are available from the beginning, and those that will become available at a later time. By attacking this box, it will break, and give an item called Supply Kit. Item will be given to the team that dealt the most damage to the box.

• Offense Kit - Increased attack
• Defense Kit - Increased defense
• Medical Kit - Heals
• Adrenalin Kit - Increases the Adrenalin Rush gauge

I mentioned in my original post that SE hinted that there may be other ways to gain objective points. This seems to be what they were hinting at. Depending on how the match goes, supply boxes will spawn and directly effect the result. Supply box spawns seem to be tied to Medal drops (as they mentioned that dropped medals will have various results). The exact details of how killing/dropping medals = supply boxes is unknown at this point. However, I'm speculating that the number of medals dropped by a killed target will essentially buy a different type of supply box. Killing an opponent who has many medals, for example, may result in an Adrenalin Kit. Whereas, killing someone repeatedly for a lower medal count might result in a Defensive Kit. etc. It's hard to say though. They could just be random (like node spawns). We'll have to wait and see how this works. **

Game Modes:

Supposedly, Feast will come in a variety of options, including:

• Unrated 8v8 casual.
  
• 4v4 Solo Q (ranked)
  
• 4v4 Solo Q (un-ranked)
  
• 4v4 light party (ranked)
  
• 4v4 light party (un-ranked)

Presumably, of these options the 8v8 will be the most commonly qued for, but the immediate question among most of us is: will this dilute the player base too much?

Having a variety of game modes is nice, but having the same game mode offered five different ways might not be all that good for ques. The deciding factor for this will be the rewards offered by each game mode.

Supposedly, each game mode will provide it's own rewards. In true FFXIV fashion, the one that has the greatest rewards will probably be the one that the majority of the PvP community ques for, making the other four obsolete. To my knowledge, we do not know what any of the rewards are yet, so it's hard to speculate on how ques will play out. One good thing I can see coming out of this is community created events.

The solo Q options are exactly that, solo Q. You cannot Q as a party of 3 with one random. So, the pre-mades who like to troll solo Q groups in Friday night matches will, supposedly, be out of luck with this new game mode. Organizing community events should be a little easier with this kind of set up. My only hope is that Q's don't die out quickly. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the upcoming ranking system keeps them alive.

**EDIT: The Game modes were clarified as well. Not much changed from what we already knew.

8 vs 8 (Win/loss rating does not apply)
Rating does not apply for this mode. We want players to enjoy with this mode, so first please try this and have fun.

4 vs 4 (Solo, Win/loss rate applies)
Players will only be able to queue for this mode while solo. Your rating will change depending on your wins/losses.

4 vs 4 (Light party, win/loss rate applies)
Players will only be able to queue to this mode as a light party, and the win/loss rate will apply.

*There are practice modes available for both solo and static parties. Additionally, the rating for party and solo will be different.

It is noteworthy that SE is being stricter on Solo Q's. Meaning that Pre-mades can no longer waltz into DF and decimate solo Q'ers. We can only wait and see what this does to our Q times though... **

Seasonal Rankings and Rewards:

Whereas the actual rewards for each season are not public knowledge (yet), the live letter did announce that seasonal rankings will eventually be implemented. Each major patch marks the end of a season, and rewards are handed out according to your ranking (IE: 3.2 -3.3 = 1 season).

What I'm hoping for out of this is that the seasonal rankings keep ques alive by encouraging people to play ranked game modes. It does, potentially, alienate casual players though. So we'll have to wait and see what seasonal rankings do to ques, and which kind of game modes people play.

**EDIT: SE also put out more details on the Rankings and Seasons.

Ranks
There are six tiers of ranks for both solo and pre-formed parties: no rank, bronze, silver, gold, platinum, and diamond. Once you reach 1000 rating points, you’ll start promotion battles. Winning 3 out of 5 promotion battles will allow you to be promoted to the next rank.

Ranking
The Feast has its own specialized ranking. It will be tallied for each Data Center.

There will be a ranking list for each rank, so I recommend trying your best in the rank that suits your skill level.

Ranks and Reset
With the change of every season (3.5 months), both rank and your ranking will reset.

Those at the top will be given special rewards.

There will also be special rewards particular for a season only for players at the top of the diamond rank. There will be rewards for each of the ranks. The top players will also be able to receive the prizes that those below them receive.

The special reward for diamond rank is equipment with a completely new design, and diamond ranked players can earn the entire set. There will also be trophy furnishings.

We put a lot of effort into the prizes, so strive to be the top of a rank that fits your skill.

There are a variety of Ranks for a variety of players, and FEAST has it's own separate ranking from that of your general PvP rank. SE seems to have put some effort into making it "fair" in that regard; however this does seem to benefit hardcore PvP'ers much more than casual players. The good news is that this may infuse a much needed surge of interest into the PvP community, because the rewards seem pretty juicy. New gear, in particular, is a very tempting prospect. They showed an image in the Live letter. It looks pretty cool. Not totally awesome, but definitely not-bad. There's also furnishings, for those of us who have wanted that option.

SE did not mention how these rewards are actually obtained in game. They could mail them to you, or they could be a token system for a vendor. It's up in the air. It's a little disappointing that they did not add more items directly to the vendors (that we know of), but this is definitely a step in the right direction.**

Notably Absent Content:

The live letter did not mention:

• Any adjustments to Front lines.
  
  Que times still suck (and only stand to get worse after 3.2). GC's are still in existence. They have not mentioned any plans regarding this.
  
  
• Raising level caps of previous game-modes.
  
  There was no word on raising the level cap of Secure or Slaughter. They are dead, and there seems to be no hope of them getting a lifeline. It's very sad.
  
  
• Adjustments to the Wolfs Marks System.
  
  No word on this either. No new items announced. No new vendors announced. No new content announced (EDIT: Is, partly, addressed by Ranking rewards. See above). No additions of Relic items.
  
  
• No updates to the Action Points system or PvP load-outs.
  
  **This one is actually up in the air. Whereas the live letter mentioned nothing concerning any adjustments to our action points, traits, or making PvP specific load-outs with PvP specific hot bars, we did recently get a community response saying that they are "looking into" making the AP points more fluid and easy to manage ... I'm not holding my breath though. I'll believe it when I see it.
  
  
• There was also no word on Morale Bonuses.
  
  This is specifically of interest to die-hard Wolves Den fans. SE did not mention anything about the long debated and controversial Morale Stat. They did not mention any adjustments or if it will even be implemented in the Feast game mode. Given that the current Rank 50 PvP set has a stretch item level of 210, I would like to think that Feast will, in fact, utilize morale. However, there has been no official word on it.

I think that's pretty much everything. If I missed anything, or if there's other speculations or rumours you've heard, feel free to post them. I'll update accordingly.

Otherwise, discuss away. How do you feel about the upcoming additions to PvP? Do you think they will work? Are you happy about them? Are their any changes you'd like to see implemented? Is there speculation that I missed that you think is likely? Post your theories, questions, and insights below.