Gone from Mid-Gold to Mid-Silver. My observation.

[itsoni]

So I peaked at just under 1200 with around 160/170 matches played. I've played countless matches since and have spoken with people I've met in the Feast and we've all pretty much agreed on one thing...

Matchmaking based on rank is completely broken.

It's not possible to be the good player on your team that carries the rest if the others don't know what they're doing. It's just due to the nature of this triad system. To stay alive, you need a good healer. Self heals and self defense are minimal, unlike in MOBA's where you can buy items and change your defense/offense... etc etc. It should be based on your individual performance, because that's the only strong indicator of your OWN skill level. It's completely unfair to judge a player's skill level after he's lost 10 times in a row because he's had completely inexperienced players that just stand there shouting abuse at everyone while doing less than 60k dmg in an 8 minute fight.

No wonder there's so much abuse.

[Cleanse]

Your individual skill isn't enough if you're not willing to general your team to a win. Explaining a few things at the start of the match and maybe a few 'focus X job' calls could increase your consistency.

[itsoni]

I've done this multiple times. Being a "General" to your team only helps guide everyone to doing the right thing.

Just now I had a WAR that decided to take 10 stacks in the last 60 seconds. I told him twice to run and hide, he decided to start another encouter and immediately got LB'd. I've just had a NIN that doesn't back off when the healer's dead and tries to take on the entire team by himself.

It only goes so far. Some players are generally clueless and cannot be helped.

[Isala]

Being a "General" gets you told to STFU, and reported for harassment.

[JazzofEtro]

I've done this multiple times. Being a "General" to your team only helps guide everyone to doing the right thing.

Just now I had a WAR that decided to take 10 stacks in the last 60 seconds. I told him twice to run and hide, he decided to start another encouter and immediately got LB'd. I've just had a NIN that doesn't back off when the healer's dead and tries to take on the entire team by himself.

It only goes so far. Some players are generally clueless and cannot be helped.

I know it's tiring dude but actually maybe he learned from it. Maybe he wants to win to and your words are stuck there for him to read back. I mean you did all that without talking to him like trash.

Or... Do you think you have to always talk to them like trash too? Now I'm not sure if you are one of the guys that blow up and do get abusive. But for every guy that receives that treatment and never does PVP again, 4 more new people hit 60 and are going to jump into the feast. (Yes they are imaginative figures)

My point is you guys want to play with more decent experienced players on your teams. But there is not enough of you guys alone for this to always happen. If you was to take away all the new people who have started playing because of the feast you would not have enough people to have a healthy matchmaking system anyway. Give the scene time to grow. Allow it to grow. We need it to grow.

Props to all of you who has been here since "the fold" but was the population so amazing that you wasn't dying for more people to be into PVP? Hmm?

Yea yeah some of you are going to say "I was happy with the low population back then, at least I could get some solid matches in"

Ok now you guys are going to hate me for saying this but... How many of you are actually making pre made teams to rush and fight the beasts from Gilga? I mean you can get your solid games right there without a noob on your team. And I mean they are waiting for the competition but y'all rather mess around in solo q huh?

"But Etro there is not enough people in Light party, whenever I queue with my group we just get Eso farmers"

Well don't you wish more people was interested in PVP now...


(God dammit they got me talking to myself now... D; )

[itsoni]

Kind words

In Solo Queue you have the lion's share of the rewards but due to the matching only taking into account the entire party's outcome and not individual skill, it's causing this massive amount of rage and frustration. If people could play with others at their skill level, there wouldn't be a lot to cuss about. There wouldn't be a lot to call someone out on. There would be better teamwork. But that's not the case at the moment because that's not how we get matched up.

1) You win/lose. Get frustrated/relieved.
2) Get matched up
3) You win/lose. Get frustrated/relieved.
4) Get matched up... etc etc.

I've played 300 matches and I can tell you from experience it definitely adds up. The above system would make sense if it was skill based matchmaking. But it's not. It's randomly plucking out people within a +-2 rank range to yourself. It goes from "I'll just get myself back up to 1100 points..." to losing the next 5 and being at 950.

[Razzii]

I feel like the whole PvP concept is too new to many players in FFXIV.
In LoL, ranked matches are allowed to play ONCE YOU HIT RANK 30. Hitting that rank could take a whole of month just playing 5hours a day. So..people learn and get good from this. Once they hit the ranked matches, they can que up with another friend if they want or not. Its a 5v5 and you get qued up with random people. Again, they could either KNOW what they are doing or not.

In WoW, you can either do RBGs(10v10 premade ranked/rated battle grounds), 2v2,3v3 or 5v5 premade groups. There solo que is I believe is not ranked at all (dont remember). But from there again...people either know.what they are doing or they dont.

So.....I believe PvP is still brand new to MANY players in FFXIV. And TOOO new to even bring competitive rank matches ESPECIALLLLLLLY making these into solo ques. I understand we need to start somewhere, but solo ques is not the way to go.

[itsoni]

PvP New Concept

Yeah I agree with this too. There's no barrier of entry to start playing ranked matches at all. You don't need a single match in practice mode to be able to play ranked. Even SMITE has you meet a level cap AND have mastered a certain number of characters.

It's just go in, try your best, get annoyed when you lose, requeue... All over again. Just trying isn't good enough - people should know how to play PvP and more importantly their class, if they want to play in ranked.

[Cleanse]

League and most other games with solo queue also have the same faults as FFXIV. The only real solution would be for you to play 4v4 Light Party or to accept you can only do so much. If you really are excellent, you will have a higher win percentage than most and over time climb.

[TetsuyaHikari]

Considering there's win trading involved in Light Party, that solution is out. You can't really compete with people like that. It's like suggesting someone to play other people during a Triple Triad tournament while you have these 5 guys beside you paying for wins. Your skill will only get you so far.

I know exactly where OP is coming from though. I'm running The Feast as PLD, so I look at myself to be the leader of the team. We'll devise a plan in what little time we do have, then the DPS will agree to it, but as soon as the match begins... They just do whatever the hell they want and we usually lose because of tunnel vision. You'd be surprised how many people can't focus on a target with a 1 above their head. We had a WAR on the opposite team last night with 10 stacks, so I immediately put the marker on him and wanted everyone to focus on him.

We still had about 2 minutes left or so. What do my DPS do though? They keep having a dick waving contest with the other DPS, still trying to kill this one guy that's not even at 1 stack, because they've been focusing on them for so long, they've got tunnel vision and won't change targets until he's dead, and because he'll never die in that 1v1 scenario, we lose because of our DPS not helping us take out the WAR. There's just absolutely no excuse why your entire team shouldn't burn a tank with 10 stacks, especially when you've got plenty of time to do it.

Here I am popping my vulnerability debuff on him thinking we're going to take advantage of that and just burst his ass into oblivion, but nope... Apparently everybody has their own plan when they go in there and it screws you over in the end. I'm just reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally growing tired of these individuals that are queuing up for PvP and playing it like it's 1v1 instead of 4v4. These people don't realize that their carelessness, recklessness, and stubbornness has repercussions, not just for them, but their entire team. I had a guy try to bolt for one of the offense kits when we only had 30 seconds left, but we were in the lead by one kill (I say one kill because if anybody dropped on our side, they would take over), so I told everyone to pull back and just defend (this is usually the point where I'm popping my last Divine Veil, Testudo, Push Back, LB, Sheltron, Clemency, Cover, and every other defensive cooldown I can while just waiting it out with my party as they push us).

This guy almost got his ass killed though when going for that offense kit in the last 30 seconds. I was already at 7 medal stacks, but if he dropped, we would lose, so I had to risk my own ass to cover his, then immediately popped Hallowed Ground since my health went low real fast (mainly cause I covered him when he was at about 50% HP). Fortunately, we didn't lose and we managed to survive the remaining time we had left, but damn... If it's the last 30 seconds of the match, let them waste time on the offense kit. If we're in the lead, just stay back and let them come to us.

I encounter so many players that want to push even when we're in the lead and it's just annoying. They just don't listen though. They don't consider what this is doing to their healer's MP or how I'm having to put myself back into the fray (at 5 stacks or more) just to keep your ass alive. It's honestly amazing how so many people can't even follow a simple instruction like "run" or attacking the guy with a 1 over his head. I was really surprised at how often those commands fly over people's heads, lol.