Free to Play (Current PVP Meta)

[Airget]

This is just my current opinion on why PVP in XIV is a struggle, even a doomed expedition. There are just to many Free to play or one time cost PVP online games out there with their own xp systems that boost your characters overtime and cosmetic shops to give your character a unique look.

In XIV you can't get into PVP so you already lose potentially 75% of any PVP playerbase who just wants to PVP but they can't and on top of that you need to be 60 to even play all the PVP content without limitations.

Limitations in battle time with a high requirement to entry fee is a huge turn off to anyone interested in PVP, by the time you get to PVP the only people you have are the small handful who were looking forward to it spread across server and server clusters. You could potentially have a decent PVP scene if the NA/JP had their clusters queue together for PVP aka Primal/Aether and Gaia/Mana/Elemental. At least this way PVP would have a bigger pool to pull from for doing that type of content.

Overall though if SE did take a look at games like Overwatch, League of Legends, DOTA, Team Fortress, etc, the common theme of each would be a lack of a monthly subscription and quick queues(to an extent can vary). Overwatch is a one time cost(with expansion costing more I imagine) but keep this in mind, you pay 60 for the game, don't have to worry til you potentially pay 30-40 for the expansion. With XIV if you consider it before price drops it was something like 60/50 but 15/14/13 sub fee based on how long you do each 30/90/180 days. So a yearly PVP like XIV ends up costing someone anywhere from 266-290 dollars for the "Entry" year and then 156-180 per year.

If SE wants to make money/to have PVP be a thing, they have to look into a model that allows people to just jump into it and play, while using concepts like a "loot box" to give players the option to pay into the content. Consider the overwatch loot box, 2 for 1.99 and 50 for 39.99, Pull away the sub cost for XIV and throw that into loot crates to get ilke 150-200 loot crates a year rather than a yearly sub that just pays to allow you a chance to queue up for pvp.

Overall PVP is fun but that fun can't be overcome by the huge entry fee and cost to be able to partake in something which only offers people minuscule rewards for their efforts. The Feast might be a decent concept on paper but overall it's rewards aren't enough to get people to play because the cost to reward ratio isn't properly balanced to keep people interested in playing on.

I would strongly look into restructuring PVP to allow easier access for people who enjoy PVP to play and add in a cash shop to give them the option to add some flair to their character. People who PVP want to just enter PVP they don't want to go through the hassle of everything else, and this is something mainly created from the design of DOTA and League of Legends, it's queue system that cuts out the fat and gets right to what people enjoy, the pvp. XIV PVP can succeed, but in order to do that the team does have to take into consideration changing the path of entry for such content.

[Aramyth]

I agree with the point that PvP needs to be easier to get into. It needs to be accessible from level ~10+ and be balanced around the fact that people of all levels could play.

Waiting until 60, means that most players don't develop any interest in our PvP.

[Nalien]

I agree with the point that PvP needs to be easier to get into. It needs to be accessible from level ~10+ and be balanced around the fact that people of all levels could play.

Palace of the Dead style level boost when entering PvP? I've suggested that in the past, and it seems fine to me, though it does have its drawbacks... That's a lot of skills to dump on someone at once, Palace of the Dead at least still has you working towards them over time... We'd also see a pretty heavy drop off in skill, since I doubt low level players would be well adjusted... Though most of the players I see kicking around... Not sure I'd notice Lv1s entering the fray...

I wonder if they should just give PvP an entirely separate set of skills altogether... Remove PvE skills entirely and just rework PvP combat around a smaller set of skills... Could be a good way to make combat snappier and more decisive by removing the PvE mechanics entirely... Would also open PvP up to pretty much everyone, since PvE level can just be completely forgotten as a requirement, would need to drop item level as well, but I've long since wanted PvP to just standardize everyones stats to remove any potential difference, not that itemization in XIV allows for much of an advantage, but PvP should be entirely skill based IMO...

Could also be a fairly nice way to ease up the Grand Company restriction... How would people who've yet to join a Grand Company be handled in Frontlines? Could just make PvP require having joined a Grand Company, but instead they could just use those players to fill empty slots... An ephemeral solution to be sure, best option is still just to do away with the restriction... Since SE is hard on the "community" aspect the restriction brings though, they might see it as a bonus to have new players "try out" different Grand Companies in PvP, or something like that...

[Thekk]

Palace of the Dead style level boost when entering PvP? I've suggested that in the past, and it seems fine to me, though it does have its drawbacks... That's a lot of skills to dump on someone at once, Palace of the Dead at least still has you working towards them over time... We'd also see a pretty heavy drop off in skill, since I doubt low level players would be well adjusted... Though most of the players I see kicking around... Not sure I'd notice Lv1s entering the fray...

If they ever do go in that direction, they really need to have a practice mode somewhere (a la hall of the novice?) where they can set up their bars and at least try the skills a bit that everyone would be forced to go through before even stepping into a match. You really wouldn't want someone getting into your feast and sitting there the whole match setting their bars.

[Zojha]

Well...an interesting proposition.

But wouldn't it be better to just have a standalone PvP game then? You can completely revamp the gameplay and introduce new jobs and whatnot without affecting PvE in the slightest then. Moreover, you can have an entirely different engine and shed the restrictions of legacy code (which supposedly are numerous). And you save yourself the hassle of separating the players artificially via blocking access to the market board or similar. No competition of PvP cosmetics with PvE glamours either, so the lootbox concept would work out better.

[Rufalus]

Maybe more people will get into pvp when they start offering character boosts so you can go directly there without doing any leveling or main scenario. I think some potential pvpers give up on the game before they have pvp unlocked atm.

[GrumbleBeard]

I'm 100% against boosts. Besides, some pve gear is better than the pvp gear so if you were truly serious about it you would have to go through it anyway.

[Risvertasashi]

The 'problem' is hinted at in Zojha's post. You listed a bunch of standalone, content-light (relatively) games. Traditional, monolithic MMOs work around building things onto their core systems. I mean, you could also argue LoV might do better standalone... but it's built into XIV's system, with all the advantages and disadvantages (including level gates and monthly subscription fee gates) of everything else..

Low level pvp would be very screwy, though, since you could crossclass things like b4b and raging strikes at level 5, well before their native class gets access. Scholar fairy is ridiculously OP, healing over half a player's health at very low levels. Among many other things. It's just a mess and I don't think it would be worth trying to balance it without harming PvE.

On the other hand, there might be merit to PvP only characters, as done in Guild Wars 1, or a "temporary level 60" boost (upwards (i)level sync instead of a downwards one) when in PvP. Something to make it more accessible, since Yoshi & co do seem determined to continue despite the playerbase's continual minimal interest..

[Enlial]

What you listed were all E-sport titles, not casual oriented mmo's. And I'm hinting at the problem right there. The overwhelming reason I hear from people for not wanting to try frontlines or feast is that "I dont like PvP". Not, "I dont like Final fantasy 14's pvp", but that they find competitive gaming in general to be too stressful.

Mechanically, the game you could draw the closest comparison to is WoW, which, incidentally, is also sub based.

[Morningstar1337]

To add, the games OP listed are in different Genres from XIV. Final Fantasy games are usually JRPGs with Xi and XIV being MMOs and XIV in particular is PvE focused and tab based. Overwatch and Team Fortress 2 are First person Shooters and DoTA and League of Legends are MOBAs.