New Frontlines

[Spawnie]

This is a joke, right? Because I'm pretty sure that this would just kill queue times faster lol.

naturally it was lol i think they gotta add incentive to do frontlines tho to atleast keep it active personally imo... they should have mixed rankings for pvp seasons.. top players in feast get rewards, top players in frontlines get rewards and top players in both combined get the best rewards

and stop making new modes until they fix the broken 1s 1st..

[Februs]

naturally it was lol

Just checking lol. On the forums you never know...

I agree that more incentive is needed. Adding extra rewards would definitely be a good start, but I think they should take a long hard look at the Vendor system as well. If the PvP vendors offered items for crafting, upgrade items, relic items, and tomestone items there would be far more reason to queue up. We don't really use our Wolf Marks as it is, so giving us useful things to spend them on would be a pretty good incentive to get more of them.

[Nalien]

I agree that more incentive is needed. Adding extra rewards would definitely be a good start, but I think they should take a long hard look at the Vendor system as well. If the PvP vendors offered items for crafting, upgrade items, relic items, and tomestone items there would be far more reason to queue up. We don't really use our Wolf Marks as it is, so giving us useful things to spend them on would be a pretty good incentive to get more of them.

I'm incline to think they should cut tomestones/Wolf Marks out of (ranked) Feast and have them solely for Frontlines. Anyone queuing for Feast is queuing for rating, the other rewards are nice, but they mean Frontlines is essentially worthless... I suppose you could just add some new currency style reward to Frontlines to draw interest to it, but that seems like too much effort. All we need then is a solid purpose for Wolf Marks... Then you have a situation where Frontlines is constantly active as people need Wolf Marks, while Feast loses some activity for a time, but hopefully a stronger and consistent casual scene allows the competitive scene to grow in the long run.

I'm not sure what to do with Wolf Marks though... Materia would be very nice, but completely irrelevant to PvP... With Frontlines being the casual scene though, a PvE reward like that would definitely help... What we need is a reason for people in the competitive scene to need Wolf Marks and thus ensure Frontlines is fairly stable... I've seen a few people suggest cutting out Limit Breaks in favor of a more specific "Job ultimate" skills, and I think something like that could work really well if we making it similar to the Heart of the Specialist skill... So you'd have an ultimate PvP ability, but it uses up a consumable that you obtain through Wolf Marks... Could have alterations on that concept, you could perhaps use the skill no matter what, but the consumable effectively gives it full potency, something like that... Unlike PvE rewards, that would be something PvPers would definitely go out of their way to obtain, and as a consumable it'll provide a constant purpose for Wolf Marks.

Can also work it with Frontlines just being far better than Wolves' Den for farming Wolf Marks, perhaps having that 600 Wolf Mark bonus from the Roulette be a "In need" bonus, rather than daily one... That would also (hopefully) provide variation in Frontlines, as Seize would be just as viable as Shatter, and if they ever decide to give us Lv60 Secure/Slaughter, even better...

[Beckett]

I'm incline to think they should cut tomestones/Wolf Marks out of (ranked) Feast and have them solely for Frontlines.

As someone who is not doing Feast, I have to disagree. I'm not a fan of deathmatch PVP, which is why I typically only do Frontlines. The only thing that's tempting me to try out Feast is the fact that I could cap out my Lore a lot more reliably than waiting for 2 hour long Frontline Roulette queues every day. If they removed tomestones from Feast, I would no longer feel an even remote inclination to do that mode.

It's the same issue PVP has had since the beginning. Ideally, only people who really want to PVP would be participating in PVP, but in reality there are not nearly enough people interested in PVP to fill up queues, so SE has to offer tomestones as an incentive to get non-PVPers to fill up those parties.

[Nalien]

It's the same issue PVP has had since the beginning. Ideally, only people who really want to PVP would be participating in PVP, but in reality there are not nearly enough people interested in PVP to fill up queues, so SE has to offer tomestones as an incentive to get non-PVPers to fill up those parties.

That's the point, I don't want non-PvPers queuing for a competitive game mode... I'm not saying I don't want new people getting into PvP or anything like that, but the competitive scene is not the place to draw those people in... Frontlines is... There is no sense getting completely inexperienced people into Feast, get them into Frontlines and if they feel like checking out the competitive scene for those seasonal rewards, after they've got a feel for PvP in this game? I'd gladly welcome them into Feast... Diving into the competitive scene first is just going to result in a bad time, for beginners and their team, and that's just going to turn people away...

Looking at the leaderboards and the number of games played, I'd say there are plenty of people interested enough in the season for rating alone to carry Feast, though honestly they can probably leave tomestones in, or even Wolf Marks, my main point was that Frontlines should be the main mode, and vastly better rewards should provide incentive for that. Frontlines, given it's the casual game mode, should be this games main PvP. That's the place we want to grow the PvP community, not the competitive scene...

[Maxwell]

... I'm not saying I don't want new people getting into PvP or anything like that, but the competitive scene is not the place to draw those people in... Frontlines is... There is no sense getting completely inexperienced people into Feast, get them into Frontlines and if they feel like checking out the competitive scene for those seasonal rewards, after they've got a feel for PvP in this game?...

Good point. MOBA style games such as Smite have progress requirement before you can join ranked matches. It would make sense here (enough frontlines + WD training unlocks ranked WD), but i wonder if there would be enough players to make it interesting. This is just one issue with the whole PvP situation.

[Februs]

I'm incline to think they should cut tomestones/Wolf Marks out of (ranked) Feast and have them solely for Frontlines. Anyone queuing for Feast is queuing for rating, the other rewards are nice, but they mean Frontlines is essentially worthless...

My only concern with this is that it would alienate Feast queues a little too much, because no one really queues just for their ranking. If we're being completely blunt, hardly a handful of people will make it out of the Bronze/silver rankings. This is not necessarily because they can't make it, but because not many of us have that kind of play time. Reaching the top tier of the rankings is a distant dream when you only get an hour or 2 a night. Most players don't want to acknowledge that, but it's a fact. So, if we remove currency rewards from Feast and slot them purely into Frontlines then we'd be basically removing all incentive for the majority to play Feast. Insert long queue times.

That said, I would be interested to see Tome bonuses removed for all ranked game modes (assuming that Frontlines gets a ranked mode at some point ...). Having tome bonuses is fine for a casual scene, but not a scene dedicated to people invested in winning. Instead, I would prefer if all ranked game modes only provided Wolf Marks, PvP rewards (gear, mounts, minions, etc) and that they expanded the vendor system to accommodate a greater interest.