PVP Exodus Past/Present/Future

[Highjump]

Hi Everyone I wanted to take moment to post some past experiences I myself have had With PVP in FF14, where Im at right now and what I envision for the future of the PVP Scene in this awesome game. When This game brought in PVP for the first time it was in the form of frontlines and wolves den, each with its own set of win conditions and objectives. Wolves den was a more simple feast, last man standing wins, no respawns and quicker game times then the current feast. Wolves den que times were on the longer side and frontlines were a little better. When different versions of forntlines came out they were well received and played and even thou the wolves den suffered and became non existent save for the tournaments players would put together, the frontlines still had a fun and fresh feel. Once they came out the FEAST, along with the idea of a ranked feature I felt like it was going to be a great thing the atmosphere was awesome but soon after this was implemented I feel like the PVP Scene took a big hit. Feast along with any newer game mode has a learning curve and adding rank to it can make it a volatile environment, which some players find much to harsh to learn something new in. Confidence is hard to acquire in solo q if you are new or trying to learn another class. A little about the present me. Friends wanted me to come back to play FEAST with them, most of those friends being new or having little practice in the feast, I was forced into a roll I hadn't had much experience on because no one else wanted to do it. To try to get better for my friends I tried to practice in the environment we would be fighting in, so i started queing for solo Feast for practice. The community made it clear that they don't like people learning or trying to get better. Healing was not a good fit for me but I didn't really have a choice. I had to try a couple different roles until I found something I liked and could succeed on, I have recently found Tank to be my favorite role and really have been seeing how awesome the feast can be when you feel like you understand what is going on and you have some success. That being said the community is still small and the bridges between good, average and new players are still huge. All this being said leads me to the future, With Season 3 starting in less then a week. I feel like now is the best time to talk about The future of exodus and PVP. I have met some extraordinarily skilled players on exodus and whether it was a good or bad Experience I learned a lot from these players about PVP and the Feast. The link shell im in on exodus is awesome and suggest anyone interested in what im posting join it, its called PVP Power and it will be where I will be sharing a lot of these posts along with the forums. Im going to be starting a TWITCH Chanel for FEAST Tournaments on Exodus with prize pools and commentary through the spectator mode. I am hoping Exodus can get big a PVP powerhouse and we can get a lot of viewers from our server and would love to have some 4V4 tournaments. I have hope that we can make this a regular thing and get so big they will have us at fan festival for PVP. This cannot be done by one man. I can put together The Prize pools, twitch, and Times but I really need the community to step up and help out with the teams and competition. I should have everything together in the next week to stream. I really hope for feed back from you all and hope we can make this work. I know PVP Power will represent. If anyone has ideas or comments please post, all ideas are welcome. If anyone wants to help out Please post or message me as well.

[Mhazizi]

Unfortunately, I don't think any of these ideas will bring new players into PVP. While Square is trying to make PVP in FF14 more interesting and new player friendly, the basic motives are PVP are still the same. People play PVP for the competition, new players don't play PVP because they are afraid of letting their party down and getting called out.

A lot of the things you mentioned don't motivate me much either. I don't care for gil or in game items, maybe a mog station item would motivate me somewhat, but its a bonus to something I already enjoy doing, not something that would motivate me on its own.

[Mhazizi]

A lot of new players might also think similarly. Unfortunately FF14 streams don't get a lot of viewers either. A server like Exodus which is very focused on FC's and immediate friends might also not hear anything about a PVP stream, or be interested at all.

In my opinion, the best way to include people in PVP is something Square is already working on. Exposure to PVP without having to actually fight. The work that Square is putting in the spectator option is being worked on, and letting PVE players spectate PVP matches is sure to get new players into PVP. Wondrous Tails helped quite a bit too, but SE would benefit greatly by bringing the level cap to borderland ruins to 60, and removing GC restrictions.

[Mhazizi]

Getting new players involved in The Feast is even more of a hurtle. Its 100% competition based. There are rewards for winning (Rank and standings), which you don't get from losing. A game like League of Legends has this model too, but League is a PVP based game, and isn't likely to have someone not interested in PVP in the first place even play the game. FF14 is not a PVP based game, people play FF14 for a huge variety of reasons, and most don't start playing for the PVP. This mentality stops most played from even trying PVP. Why bother with a mode that you could have a horrible experience in when there is so much more to do in the game?

In short, I think that all the ideas presented aren't very likely to attract new players. Directing the tourneys and streaming specifically at the existing Exodus PVP community might be better.

[Mhazizi]

Even trying to organize full Shatter pre-mades like Lamia has would be a great start too. But I think that waiting until SE releases key features, like spectator mode that doesn't require an invite, will boost PVP participation more than a player initiative.

[Highjump]

Thanks for the feed back mhazizi, I think a good start for this is to get the solid pvpers on exodus to compete, we stream it and record it to show the people on exodus what its all about. the prizes just makeS it a fun and friendly. I think this would bring the community together. The pvp core would be a huge part in putting this together. I'm looking for people who can pvp that want to help make teams and put this together.