The Fields of Glory (Shatter)

[Rhode]

Please remove the GC restrictions! It will make the mode more fun!

[DamianFatale]

How about you stop making Seal Rock irrelevant. I have not gotten all the rewards, and now there is no way I will be able to. When this new map came out, I thought of it as an addition, not a replacement! When I was a kid, I'd play these pvp type maps for the fun of playing them all! Please don't ruin that variety.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

This is why, when I sugfested the idea of "Shatterdays" on Aether data center, I encouraged people to queue for BOTH Shatter and Seize.

You get one, or the other, and both effectively stay relevant.

[Morningstar1337]

How about you stop making Seal Rock irrelevant. I have not gotten all the rewards, and now there is no way I will be able to. When this new map came out, I thought of it as an addition, not a replacement! When I was a kid, I'd play these pvp type maps for the fun of playing them all! Please don't ruin that variety.

I ramped up the Seal Rock attempts to get the Coat and title BECAUSE I knew that the new map will be a replacement, the PvP players are niche minority and as a result when a new mode comes out all of them will flock there, and render the other modes impossible to queue for. Its why Reddit has several says put aside for Carteneau. I would suggest asking them to do the same for Seal Rock or hope that RNG for the roulette puts you there. Because there is not enough people to keep two modes relevant, especially when one of them is dangling a silver and blue mount in their faces.

[Dimitrii]

Because there is not enough people to keep two modes relevant, especially when one of them is dangling a silver and blue mount in their faces.

That mount is such a lame reskin too. Only reason I queue for shatter is because I like to PVP and it's the only mode that's at least semi active atm. I couldn't care less about that mount and would queue to seize or secure instead if the modes were actually active regardless of me not getting the new mount.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

Aside from growing to like PvP, the ADS mounts are the main reason I PvP. I asked an asked for an ADS mount since Patch 2.1, and when they finally added it, they make it a PvP reward (still kinda pissed about that). I have neither yet, but it's thr reason I remained patient through an entire night of losses last night. If I stop now, I'll never get it.

[Eorzean_username]

But seal rock was the same thing, there are matches with just endless fighting all over and then there was matches im won doing not much but watch the other alliance fight while we steal their nodes.

I've seen others claim this too, so I guess personal experiences in Seal Rock varied a lot:

All I can say confidently is that for me, personally, the vast majority of my Seal Rock matches involved a lot of contesting nodes, skirmishing, and conflict. Even if I landed in a team that wanted to avoid fighting, it didn't work, because:

• Nodes would spawn in dangerous territory, where they needed to be claimed and held (a simple zerg could not drain it of all points)
• Our own nodes could be contested at any time (even by sneaky NIN, etc), necessitating a return home and more conflict (a simple zerg could not secure all of our nodes' points at once)
• Doing anything to a node required fighting off anyone else present, swatting away anyone attempting to switch its identity, or dodging anyone trying to stop you from switching the node for yourself — there was no taking anything in Seal Rock without direct contest and wiping out the immediate competition first

In Shatter:

Yeah, you can definitely disrupt the enemy team, annoy their DPS, or even score a handful of kills while opponents try to focus Ice.

But I usually see this as a failed strategy unless one team is overwhelmingly more powerful or coordinated than the opposition, because the GCDs diverted away from attacking the Ice just is not made up by the kills scored, nor does that disruption stop enemy DPS enough to edge out your own team.

At the very least, it requires way too much planning and coordination to work out well or feel fun in a PUG full of uncertain strangers. "Zerg the Ice" is a lot more reliable in that situation.

For my personal experiences, Seal Rock was majority hard conflict, small minority waiting games. Shatter is increasingly the inverse.

Another thing that continues to frustrate me is as PLD, my ability to CC and defend strongly feels like a pointless gimmick at Shatter Ice pops.

Yes, I can run around Stunning DPS blowing CDs or Aegis Boon the random Bind+Cometeor on the melee pack, but better results come from just blowing FOF and tunneling the Ice as hard as possible.

In Seal Rock, my personal DPS felt far less important as long as my team could defend our node or push the opponent out of theirs. Aegis, Testudo, Cover, Stunlock, off-heals, Silence, all of this felt like it made a huge difference at the most important points of Seal Rock matches.

words in post #271

I completely agree with everything you said here, these are good observations and reflect my own experiences as well.

[Eorzean_username]

Because there is not enough people to keep two modes relevant, especially when one of them is dangling a silver and blue mount in their faces.

This is so simple to solve that it makes me really frustrated, though. Especially since the solutions are already everywhere in PvE, precisely to prevent outdated content from being hopeless for newer players.

Make a daily map rotation with bonuses for winning that map. Make the Roulette give a payout beyond the first match of the day. Make a daily or weekly quest to win specific maps or all maps. etc blah blah. I, you, we, all of us can easily sit here all day long coming up with simple solutions that would incentivize queuing older maps. Instead the devs just bulldoze over them and drop a new map and seem almost pleased that the old one is abandoned.

[Thekk]

Another thing that continues to frustrate me is as PLD, my ability to CC and defend strongly feels like a pointless gimmick at Shatter Ice pops.

The same kind of point could be made about healers. With the constant fighting going on plenty of heals were needed and you could harass people trying to capture nodes.

In Shatter, if people tunnel on the crystal and no healing is required (sadly, that happens pretty often) the only thing I can do is attack it myself with my pitiful damage (no cleric stance) that is only about to get worse with the increased magic resistance.

[Februs]

The same kind of point could be made about healers. With the constant fighting going on plenty of heals were needed and you could harass people trying to capture nodes. In Shatter, if people tunnel on the crystal and no healing is required (sadly, that happens pretty often) the only thing I can do is attack it myself with my pitiful damage (no cleric stance) that is only about to get worse with the increased magic resistance.

Agreed.

On the few matches that I've been forced to play as Whm whenever there was a crystal up, HoT's were more than enough to keep people alive. I hardly had to worry about stray players running out of range either, because they are hardly ever attacked. By the end of the match, I usually end up casting a lot of sleeps just to troll enemies, cuz' why not? I'm a pretty crummy healer; so, it's still enough to keep me entertained, but I imagine that seasoned healing veterans might find Shatter to be pretty boring.