New matchmaking system is a failure

[Aviars]

The PvP population here in FFXIV is downright dysfunctionally small on the NA/EU data centers and what SE really should look into are the reasons for that.

Biggest thing is PVP gets the shaft when they give mindless grinding modes like PotD decent rewards like useable weapons and grade V materia. PVP literally has nothing going for it other than bragging rights of skill, which is less enticing than what monotonous grinding can net you.

[Zojha]

Biggest thing is PVP gets the shaft when they give mindless grinding modes like PotD decent rewards like useable weapons and grade V materia.

Diadem had the V materia before it was cool and up until PotD was released was the only way to reliably get V materia that was not weekly capped. Did it help its popularity? Last I checked, it was barely kept on life support for battle classes while the gear inside was relevant and has since turned into a gatherer only thing.
Savage has the best rewards in the game and yet pretty much nobody bothers. Nidhogg EX has offered i235 weapons before PotD was released, which means people enticed by the weapons are primarily people who cannot get into/beat Niddy EX. And then you have people put up with divebomb and meteor instagibs for as little as an orchestrion roll. Or doing 500+ FATEs for some glamour weapons.

Rewards are a factor, yes. But they're far from the only thing that matters. If it's too hard, people don't bother, which is why Savage cannot pick up despite offering superior rewards while people are well willing to grind the Anima instead. This is something PvP suffers from as well - I doubt you stand the sliver of a chance in PvP if you can't perform well in PvE.
Moreover, latency is a huge factor in PvP, much more so than in PvE, so people without a good connection will have a much worse experience (People randomly jumping around and being impossible to follow as melee, skills animating and even locking you in place as if they went off without actually doing damage because the other person was registered as out of range etc) and be less likely to bother as a result.
The community is an often cited factor, though I personally didn't make overly bad experiences yet - really just one WAR who took the rage thing a bit too literal.
Furthermore, it has a higher entry barrier - You need to grind a long time until you're on equal footing with other players (PvP skill points gained via PvP ranks).
There's also the barrier of knowledge, though that just explains low population, not why people who know about it do not bother.
And to name more subjective factors: It's likely not commonly considered fun to lose control of your character without means to prevent it (See Paladin advice in this very forum: "Run away from him!"). Newer DPS will often cite that it felt unsatisfying because they felt they did very little damage, even though that wasn't the case - the damage was merely healed back up quickly. And some people might have sticked to this game precisely because there's little competition - lack of rewards simply does not explain why Mana has a lot less issues with PvP despite offering the same rewards.

Just a few factors off the top of my head that have nothing to do with rewards. It's why I say SE should look into the factors why people don't bother - if people don't want to PvP "solely" because of the lack of rewards, well that can be fixed, no biggie. If it's another of these factors or something else entirely, rewards might fall flat, because you do nothing against the actual issue. To get back to the above, PotD weapons are relevant primarily because Nidhogg EX and Savage rewards fell flat for many people - otherwise people would already be decked out with better or equivalent weapons. They aren't, because that content is not accessible to them and no amount of rewards fill fix that, only changing the content would.


Sorry for the rant.

[Nalien]

PVP literally has nothing going for it other than bragging rights of skill, which is less enticing than what monotonous grinding can net you.

Personally, I think PvP has the best rewards currently... Exclusive rewards and bragging rights seem far more enticing to me, than some item level-who-cares weapon that'll be redundant in a few patches... I enjoy stuff like Palace of the Dead for its content, not its rewards... PvE rewards have long since become fairly irrelevant to me... That's not to say PvP rewards are fine... Wolf Marks are anything but, they're incredibly dull... SE could remove them from the game and I wouldn't notice, there is definitely a problem there IMO, but Feasts rewards specifically are fine, for the most part. The fact that Season 2 is actually reasonably active at all (despite zero new rewards) is evidence enough of that...

Where I think PvP really suffers in this game is the developers... They've got no clue what they're doing, they've got a "Throw shit at the wall, and see what sticks" approach to new PvP content... There is no structure here and no longevity in any of the content... Feast might break that cycle, but 4.0 might also render it completely irrelevant, and it's a competitive mode anyway... There is no solid foundation for non-competitive PvP in this game, the best we've got is Frontlines, which is terrible... Is it any wonder the PvP community is so small and unskilled? There is no where to practice without getting your head chewed off, and the developers show a complete disregard for the content itself... It's generally just off putting for new and old players alike...

They really need to focus on Wolves Den IMO, I don't think there is really a place for Frontlines in this game... Not if they're going to refuse to fix the damn thing at least... Why they wasted time on Shatter I don't know, though there are somethings that they just can't fix with Frontlines... It's a three sided cluster f*ck that takes too long to get into and goes on for too long, and is ultimately just a complete waste of development resources; Borderland Ruins and Seal Rock are collecting dust, Fields of Glory is certainly going to follow regardless of whether they add some new worthless mode to Frontlines... People get bored with the lack of variety, either you make them all relevant before of working on a new map, or you perpetuate this stupid cycle... Since I don't trust SE to fix any issues with Frontlines, I'm just going to ask that they stop developing it completely... Put that effort into new Wolves Den maps and modes, give us a Wolves Den Roulette, make that XIVs front-and-center PvP option, because filling a 4v4 match is so much easier than filling a Frontlines match... Wolves Den matches are quicker, more rewarding, more educational... Any fun I had in Frontlines, I'm almost certain can be better replicated in Wolves Den, and I'd be able to enjoy it more frequently...

I would say most successful PvP based games work by; Giving players a variety of similar game modes to play. Adding new maps to add variety to those game modes. Then adding a competitive mode on top of that... What SE has done is just a mess... Wolves Den and Frontlines are vastly different, and we have zero variety... Frontlines itself could have had variety, Secure/Slaughter/Seize/Shatter are all game modes, Borderland Ruins/Seal Rock/Fields of Glory are all unique maps, they could have had twelve combinations there... Instead we have one; Fields of Glory (Shatter). That's one way they could fairly easily improve Frontlines IMO, but it doesn't really matter... The issue here is with the competitive mode, and Frontlines is far too different from Wolves Den to really matter for that... They've effectively made two entirely different games and now we're stuck with the majority sucking or not being interested in the relevant one because they spent years focusing on Frontlines...

They really should either have never bothered with Wolves Den, or never bothered with Frontlines IMO... I'd rather have had one thing done well, than two things done poorly... Feasts a lot better than it has any right being, but the community had zero build up, we went from Seize to Feast... It's no wonder things are so terrible...