Feast Feedback: "Black Week" and Rewards

[FreeKingStefan]

Hello everyone,

I have a few key criticisms of two reoccurring themes that Square Enix has been setting for The Feast each season. Namely, their "Black Week" during the last week of the season, and how they go about revealing their rewards. This will be a brief expression on my opinions on the current systems, as well as my suggested changes.

Black Week:


For those that don't know, the last week of the past two seasons now, the boards go "black" until the season ends and servers come back up. This means that you can no longer view the point gains and losses by players for an entire 7 days.

How Square Enix envisions this going: That this will build suspense among PVPers and then they will rejoice when the final tally is taken and the winners are released.

Reality: Everyone is stressed if they are near a threshold of rewards (top 1, 10, 100/30) and create parties to run 24/7 to "block" the queues so that people cannot sneak in any win trading or match boosting. Win traders and the like are rampant during this week because there is no external source (the board) to monitor outrageous daily point gains.

Suggested change: Don't do it. Simple as that, the "black week" is an unintuitive idea that not a single person (that I have spoken to, and I talk to MANY people in the PVP community) enjoys it. I would ask that you please keep the boards active and updating on a daily basis until the servers go down.


Rewards Reveal:

This one will be quick. Currently, Square Enix "teases" the rewards by showing us a very rough idea of what they will be as soon as the season starts. However, the actual, fully realized design of the rewards are not shown to us...UNTIL THE SEASON IS ALMOST OVER. This is terrible, and I will explain why.

How Square Enix envisions this going: A late reveal of rewards will inspire players to get back in and queue up to reach for those shiny new things.

How it goes in reality: Those who have already "secured" their rewards will absolutely not queue up anymore, and quit for the season. Any players who come in late and decide they want to go for said rewards after seeing how cool they are, are unable to even aim for that goal since the vast majority of the player base has already "secured" their spot.

Suggestions: Reveal the rewards at the START of the season, not the end. This WILL inspire players to queue up that otherwise would not have. The "carrot on a stick" should always come at that START of the journey, not some vague promise that is fully realized towards the end.

In conclusion, I feel that these two minor changes can positively impact The Feast, and should be considered. I have put thought into alternative changes and I agree that some things (Like rating decay, time-window queueing, etc.) would also alleviate the issues caused by "black week" and late reward reveals. However, these are the two quickest and easiest changes to implement which directly relates to these issues.

[Titor]

I cannot mash the like button hard enough. I was in the top 100 for season 1, and SE had made it sound like the rewards were going to be the same (or a mild recolour). However, they are a different animal completely. I had gotten somewhat close to top 100 but stayed off it to let others have a shot at what I thought was the same or very similar reward from season 1.. But I really like birds so have been really stressed the last few days trying to get on the board. Had I known what it was from the beginning, I would not have stopped playing.

Also agree about the blackout period. There is no point to it other than to obscure wintraders and cause stress for legit players.

[Atreus]

Agreed, the removal of the "black week" and the addition of rating decay will go a lot further in keeping players playing.

I'm glad they did already "announce" the next season's reward being a mount, but I wish for the details of the rewards to be told upfront

[Zensho]

My data center didn't actively pvp for like 3 weeks leading up to the black out period. There was very little movement in the top #100 during that time, come next week if I am kicked out of my spot and don't get my glam I will break shit. I will admit, this week has had me on edge, and if they got rid of it for season 3, I would not complain. I swear SE are trolls and know what they are doing, they are so good at the mind F.

[Petite]

Black week is stressful, facilitates win trading and is unneeded.

Seeing yourself get kicked off the bracket you want in real time would be just as good an incentive to come back and play, thus reanimating the queues regardless.

[Dimitrii]

I can see it being stressful if you are borderline in the top 100 but last season the standings didn't even change much at all during black week (at least on primal). I remember i didn't even play at all during that black week last season and I went up 1 spot at the end. And with even less players playing this season than last there probably won't be much of a shakeup in the standings this season either. I agree they should just remove it though if it's not having the desired effect they instituted it for.

[Praesul]

I can see it being stressful if you are borderline in the top 100 but last season the standings didn't even change much at all during black week (at least on primal). I remember i didn't even play at all during that black week last season and I went up 1 spot at the end. And with even less players playing this season than last there probably won't be much of a shakeup in the standings this season either. I agree they should just remove it though if it's not having the desired effect they instituted it for.

There was no black week last season? At least, I don't remember it.

[Februs]

There was no black week last season? At least, I don't remember it.

There was, but queues were relatively inactive. The matchmaking was also more exclusive between ranks in that season, so the ranking brackets prevented practically any mobility. Once black week hit, you were basically locked within your player bracket. A few matches were organized within specific tiers, but hardly anyone moved, not even in the lower ranks.

[Kai_Lee]

With how matchmaking is this season, what if you were to wake up Tuesday morning and saw there was a huge shakeup of the bottom 20 and the top 20, and you were knockoff the top 10 or top 100 because you didn't play or you panic and did play but lost your spot because of loses. How piss would you be? And would you still play the season 3 feast knowing the matchmaking Is the same with the same black week at the end?

[FreeKingStefan]

I can see it being stressful if you are borderline in the top 100 but last season the standings didn't even change much at all during black week (at least on primal). I remember i didn't even play at all during that black week last season and I went up 1 spot at the end. And with even less players playing this season than last there probably won't be much of a shakeup in the standings this season either. I agree they should just remove it though if it's not having the desired effect they instituted it for.

Not true. Rum almost took #1 because she was the only decent healer queuing up during black week. Nobody knew until season was over (or unless they watched kenjis stream). That would have sucked for Curty.