PvP 3.3. PvP Mentors, Pre-set Action Points, and Cheat Prevention (sort of)!

[Februs]

FINALLY SE has taken some of the longest running PvP feedback and made some interesting announcements.

*DISCLAIMER: Keep in mind that this information is taken from an unofficial translation of the latest Live Letter found here. So, as always, take this with a grain of salt until it has been officially confirmed by the horse's mouth. In the meantime, lets dive in and see what's up.

• PvP Mentors!
  
  This is the fist surprise announcement, as well as the most sparse. The announcement simply stated that there were "new mentor marks," including "PvE Mentor," "Trade Mentor," and "PvP Mentor."
  
  How will this work? I have no idea. I haven't really been involved with the current mentor system at all, so I'm in the dark here. I do know, however, that several players in the PvP community have requested this feature for both learning and teaching purposes. So, quite a few of you should be pleased to see that it has an official designation.
  
  That said, you should keep in mind that this is a designation only. SE has made no announcements regarding PvP training rooms, skirmish matches, dueling, or any other such methods that could be utilized by a mentor to sponsor a new player. You'll be limited to whatever functions exist within the current mentor system, until such a time as SE successfully expands our current PvP related resources. All in all, it's not a huge adjustment, but it's a step in the right direction.
  
  
  
• Pre-set Action Points!
  
  For those of you who recall their previous excuse of it taking too much time and resources, I present to you: the sound of the other shoe.
  
  This was the big one for me. The wording of the translation is not 100% clear on how this will work (SE was likely scarce on the details), and, again, this is an unofficial translation of something that was fairly vague in it's wording; however, it sounds as though we will now, FINALLY, be able to store our job action points separately as of Patch 3.3. If this is true (everyone cross your fingers right now), the benefit of this is three fold:
  
  Firstly, if this works the way that we are all assuming it will, you will no longer have to manually re-allocate your PvP action points each time you want to change jobs. No more time consuming menues. No more clunky macros.
  
  Secondly, PvP action points will be stored in a similar fashion to Gearsets. This means that you can store multiple PvP loadouts for the same job. In theory, if the lower level (lvl 50) PvP game modes were still active, then you could customize your loudouts across level brackets. More likely, however, people will use this feature to customize their Action Points across the different game modes. For example, some PvP actions are more uesful in Feast than they are in Frontlines, and vice versa. Players could now customize a "Feast loudout" and a "Frontlines loudout" which emphasize whichever skills will see more use. I don't expect many people to do this, but it's a nice option.
  
  Thirdly, and Finally, I give you:
  
  
  
• Cheat Prevention Measures!
  
  It seems that one of the reasons that SE implemented the separate storage for PvP Action Points is to add in a fail safe check for cheaters. According to the unofficial translation, each time a player switches their PvP loud out, the game will run a loading screen/bar which checks for any known cheating software. If it finds any of this software active, down comes the beautiful hammer of justice.
  
  Cheater's beware.
  
  The word is still out on how long of a check this is, if it will stall your game at all, or exactly how extensive of a check it is. The announcement was made specifically for PvP, but, in theory, the same program could be applied to any gear switch in the game. It could also be used, in theory, to check for bots.
  
  How effective will this "check" be? No idea. We'll have to wait and see. I'd like to hope that it will be an effective means for SE to police their PvP game modes and finally put a stop the a well known problem; however, we can't say that for certain until we see it in action. Presumably it will be an automated system as well, so we also can't discount the possibility that it will make mistakes or have oversights. Regardless, it is a sign that SE takes the problem at least somewhat seriously, so that's a good thing.
  
  
  
• EDIT: HuD Customization:
  
  I forgot to mention this one. Changes are being made HuD customization. My understanding is that we will be able to have saved HuD pre-sets (up to 4, if I recall correctly) which we can switch between as needed. This is not a PvP specific adjustment. The same function can be used to create a custom HuD for Raiding, Healing, Viewer/camera mode, etc. However, I figured this was worth a mention, because it gives us the option to create a custom HuD pre-set for PvP without the trouble of using a macro. Customization options seem to include anything that is currently identifiable within the current "HuD menu" in your settings; so, you still may or may not want to rely on some macros for things that are considered "system settings" such as "floating text."

Now, AGAIN, this is not an official statement from SE, and we'll have to wait and see how much of this rings true. We'll also have to wait and see how, exactly, these things play out, especially in regards to Action Points. SE was pretty adamant on not making this kind of adjustment in the past, so I'm still a little hesitant to believe that it will be all sunshine and rainbows.

That said, if all of these things are implemented, then it would be appear to be a pretty healthy dose of good news for us regular PvP'ers. At the very least, it's good to see that SE is taking a serious stance on PvP and taking player feedback into account. I'm looking forward to future updates and news.

[Nalien]

The PvP Mentor symbol sounded disappointing to me... Sounds like that's literally all they're doing; Adding a new symbol to the existing system...

I mean, it's better than nothing, but it's not going to do much... What we really need is our own separate Novice Network, perhaps a new symbol for new PvP players too... That way anyone who is new instantly gets sent somewhere where we can tell them to check PvP skills... Still absolutely nothing for real practicing, but a Novice Network style group might have helped with people organizing 8v8s or something... Doubt anyone new is actively going to seek out PvP Mentors, so I can't see this doing a great deal...

Still waiting on duels of course... I think that's the single best addition they can make with minimal effort... Would give me something PvP to do to pass the time between queues, and it would be perfect for practicing... You can watch people duel and learn that way, or practice against an actual person rather than those worthless dummies...

[SaveTheSunF1R3x]

Man i'm super excited for the mentor system. Ive already been making an effort to help out the newer players and im sure this will prove to be a useful tool. The ability thing is also great as being a scholar my hot bar is completely screwed when im pvping amd havnt made the effort to make a macro for pve.

[Februs]

The PvP Mentor symbol sounded disappointing to me... Sounds like that's literally all they're doing; Adding a new symbol to the existing system...

I'm pretty sure that's exactly what they're doing. Like I said, I don't really know much about the existing mentor system, so I can't say for sure how it works, but it sounds as though they're just adding a few monikers to it, and that's it. In my opinion, it's not enough, but it is a start. Ideally, I'd like to see some kind of practice mode / arena / pvp area in conjunction with the mentor system. Matched party 4 versus 4 was probably the closest thing we had to that, before they added ranks to it. Now that they have, that's not really an option; so, we need some kind of area where people cant test things out.

I like your idea of having a PvP novice sign ... though I'm not sure how they would implement it. I doubt that the rest of the community would want a green leaf next to their name just because they don't play PvP (especially seasoned raiders), so it would have to be exclusive to PvP areas, like Wolves Den Pier or the arena. If we had PvP zones, that would work too.

As for duels, I seem to recall Yoshi-P addressing that possibility in an interview a few months back. If I remember correctly, he was (surprisingly) open to the idea, but I'm pretty sure he said he wanted the PvP scene to develop a bit first. I recall him mentioning the desire to put in a spectator mode before allowing for duels, as well as possibly hosting an official tournament. We'll have to wait and see if any of those lofty goals actually go anywhere though.

[Nalien]

As for duels, I seem to recall Yoshi-P addressing that possibility in an interview a few months back. If I remember correctly, he was (surprisingly) open to the idea, but I'm pretty sure he said he wanted the PvP scene to develop a bit first. I recall him mentioning the desire to put in a spectator mode before allowing for duels, as well as possibly hosting an official tournament. We'll have to wait and see if any of those lofty goals actually go anywhere though.

I'm really getting sick of them doing this... We need tournaments first? Really? Spectator mode might be OK, such things are usually good for new players to watch and learn, but that is highly dependent on the game itself and I don't think XIV PvP makes for a good spectator sport...

Seriously though, we do not need official tournaments at this point... We need SE to do something to actually grow the PvP community... We need PvP to be more accessible and more approachable... A PvP Network would be absolutely amazing for making it more approachable, but given SE absolutely refused to address Frontline queues, I'm giving up on them making it more accessible... They'll continue to f*ck queues up, then they'll add a bloody spectator mode that could help with that, by letting us watch a match while we wait, but they'll probably make it function like Chocobo Companions and watching a match will take you out of your queue... I'd still much rather actually PvP while I wait for queues though, even if they work it properly, a spectator mode is inferior to Duels... Though they'd probably work Duels exactly the same way as Chocobo Companions as well, so whatever...

Duels are by no means a silver bullet, but they're one of the most basic forms of PvP... That Yoshida wants to add more superfluous crap before something so basic is really disappointing, but by no means a surprise... They still refuse to address Frontline queues and their implementation of Shatter shows that they still have no real idea what they're doing... How long do we have to complain about queues before they stop making new modes and start addressing the root of the problem? Shatter looks fun and all, but I have no reason to believe it wont end up the same way as Secure and Slaughter... Ultimately wasted development time... Duels, on the other hand, would pretty much never go out of fashion... You can watch Duels to learn... You can participate in them to learn... You can participate in them to pass the time... What will we be able to do with Shatter this time next year? Nothing.

That they prioritize anything over Duels is... Ugh...

[Eorzean_username]

Still waiting on duels of course... I think that's the single best addition they can make with minimal effort... Would give me something PvP to do to pass the time between queues, and it would be perfect for practicing... You can watch people duel and learn that way, or practice against an actual person rather than those worthless dummies...

It would be a lot better than no practice while sitting in queue, but what I'm more interested in practicing is how to coordinate with a team properly. Not so much 1v1, which is a situation I've rarely encountered in actual PvP (and when I do, I try to just lure them back to my team).

What would be great is a 'Sparring Mode' or something, the ability to queue up Solo or Light (or even 2v2, 3v3, or 8v8) duel-style to practice Tank, Healer, DPS coordination without affecting rankings or sucking in disoriented random players.

As you say, dueling would still be better than nothing (it's at least some practice for recognizing enemy DPS burst patterns, or how to survive them as Healer, etc) but outside DPS vs. DPS match-ups it would probably get tedious fast.

[Februs]

I'm really getting sick of them doing this... We need tournaments first? Really? Spectator mode might be OK, such things are usually good for new players to watch and learn, but that is highly dependent on the game itself and I don't think XIV PvP makes for a good spectator sport...

I'd be interested in a spectator mode for two reasons, actually. The first is to give me something to do while I wait for my queue to go through (assuming they allow you to spectate while in queue ... which I really hope they would). It would help keep me in the zone. The second is a more practical reason. I want to know where I stand in the queue line.

This is mostly in regards to the queues for Frontlines, where the teams are quite large. At the beginning of a pvp game mode's life-cycle, queues go by fast enough. However, later in the life-cycle, when queues slow down, I find that most of my queue limbo is actually because I'm waiting for an open spot in games that are already in progress. It's something I could easily see in Seize, because I often noticed that my queue time corresponded to the length of a full match, and once I finally got into a match I would be riding the same queue train with the same players over and over again. Being able to watch the current match in-progress would help me judge how much time I have before I actually get into a match, which would be a lot better than simply waiting in the dark expanse of uncertainty.

As for tournaments, I'm on the fence. This was an opinion taken from Yoshi-P in an interview, not a hard-balled fact handed down by the dev team. It was also purely speculative, like a "one day ..." kind of comment; so, it's hard to say what their actual order of priorities are. I do agree that Duels and some kind of training mode should definitely come first, though. You don't run before you walk, after all.

That said, Feast definitely seems like something that would be fun to watch/participate in if official tournaments were organized. It would also be nice if those tournaments provided a secondary means for people to obtain rare/elitist items rather than simply striving for the top 10 each season. It's not something I would want to see added right away, but I can see why they would set it as a long term goal. Even from a marketing stand point, those kinds of events generate a lot of interest in the community, even if the general participation is lower. Compare it to Savage level content. The general percentage of players out of the whole who actually ran the first Savage level coils was tiny, but everyone knew what they were. It's a gamble, but as far as I'm concerned any amount of publicity to stimulate the growth of PvP in FFxiv is good publicity. If they could just solidify the foundations that people stand on at the entry level, then this kind of content would be a welcomed as a sort of PvP end-game.

[Xenosan]

The customized HUD profiles, does that mean/include different Action Bar profiles (not having to rely on /hotbar copy, /chotbar copy, etc)?

I don't how much help HUD profiles are without that as well.

[Februs]

The customized HUD profiles, does that mean/include different Action Bar profiles (not having to rely on /hotbar copy, /chotbar copy, etc)? I don't how much help HUD profiles are without that as well.

I'm not sure I'm quite understanding what you're asking, but my first instinct is to say no. I saw a screenshot of the new interface, and it only showed the content that is currently available within the HUD customization screen. Given that your hotbars are stored as part of your character profiles, I would assume that they are not included in the HuD. That said, the fact that they are adding additional system storage for PvP profiles should help. It would probably be a pain to set up the first time, but once it's done you should be good to go.

The bigger omission, for me, was system settings and the Duty List. Customizing the amount of visual clutter is a big deal for some people in this game, especially in PvP. Being able to cut out floating text with the push of a button would have been handy. I would have also liked to have seen a distinction drawn between the score and Duty List. Normally, I don't really need to see all my active quests while I'm in a dungeon, so I hide my duty list. Unfortunately, the Feast's user interface considers the score a part of the duty list, so if you hide it, you can't see the current score (unless you have the actual score box open, and that thing is huge... so no). I would have liked if they put that as a different HuD designation, so that I could have one open and not the other.

Either way, it's not a bad adjustment to take advantage of. I'll definitely be creating a custom PvP HuD, as well as one for Raids and maybe a Viewer/Camera mode.