What would make you queue? (long post)

[Meero]

We all know about the issue of feast queues dying in the middle of the season because of how low the PvP population is to begin with in addition to people camping rating for fear that they can't get it back and or having accomplished their goals and having no interest in playing anymore. It's a common thing to do in any game with a ladder, but it's so bad here because weeks can go by with absolutely no ladder movement. When you think of what you can do in this game to challenge yourself, it's just PvE and PvP when it comes to actually playing your character. Frontlines are designed to be a casual thing for reasons I don't think I need to discuss. 8v8 is very silly and random, and it seems that everyone wants an unranked 4v4, but there's nothing we can do if developers don't give us something that literally no one doesn't want. Light party would be the most competitive and serious thing, but in our current state of affairs, solo queue is definitely.

Why put in the time making changes to feast, adding a new map and giving it a little bit of attention in patch 3.5 when the game mode is going to go unplayed? Yeah, it's good publicity and might encourage play a little when the patch hits, but the hype will die down, and everyone who's everyone is just spamming frontlines anticipating this new event. People in the top 100 most likely won't see people just trying to farm wolf marks. They too just want to get their rewards and stop. Removing the GC restriction for FLs in patch 3.5 is an excellent step in the right direction... what about feast though?

*Rating decay would be a good change from this perspective because it forces people to stay active or get higher rated than they would have if they want to sit, which means more games, and I think it's crucial with the small PvP community that exists currently, yet what if everyone just decays because no one plays? The rewards for this season are as good as they've ever been in my opinion, and maybe that's why we've enjoyed such an active start to season 3.

*I'm also wondering why there is no subforum or sticky for each data center. I'm taking this idea from the site arenajunkies for WoW, but there would be a forum for that battlegroup (data center) and then a thread for 2v2, 3v3, and 5v5. People would post in the thread and tell others to queue up or say when they will be playing. I'm sure people want to discuss frontline or feast games with their own data center without flooding the forums, right? I know there are discord and skype groups and whatnot, but forum posts get decent views. Though that thread might end up being dead, but it's something.

*I was told someone had an idea for a website where you could put your class and data center, and it'll say that you're currently in queue. This sounds flawed, but I'd assume it would be designed in the best way to not be. WoW has arenamate that shows who is currently playing, their win/loss and rating change in about a 2-hour time span, and spec of course. You can see some of this on PvPaissa, which is amazing, but you can't really use that in the way I mentioned. I don't know how hard it would be to implement something like that though.

*OH, and let's not forget the idea of merging data centers. This would be SO juicy, and it's maybe a change that we just might see, but nothing is confirmed yet.

*Streaming is a way to advertise that you're playing, and people that want games do see that you're streaming, but that alone usually isn't much. PvPaissa shows what PvPers are streaming too just like arenajunkies did, which is awesome too, but you need to PM someone for them to get your stream to show up on it.

When games are only done in the beginning of the season and with the one week warning, I see this as a problem. Can we even begin to talk about game mechanic and class balancing? Can we even discuss how poorly designed the point system or matchmaking is when no one is playing? What is the point if there is nothing going on to make these things relevant? I'm mainly talking about primal at the moment, but I believe aether was stagnant not too long ago. Stuff is happening for them now though, but for how long? I'm sure every data center has had this go on at one time or another.

Custom matches and the spectator client were added just recently, but how often is that client even used? Perhaps one day with this cross server thing, it would be possible for players to host their own in-house tournaments that could be streamed using spectator mode, and the teams could compete for in-game prizes like gil or a hunting hawk just starting out as sort of a test or prototype, then making the prize actual money when things are polished and professional, funded by viewers of the stream or people that want to donate to see this happen. Such a thing is a sign that your game's competition is healthy, and it may encourage more people to get into it. This is a really far-fetched thing at the moment, and it's something that could actually be done right now if people had a character on a select server.

I see SO many people that could play right now and not lose a single thing. There's such little risk of people passing you at the moment, so why not play for fun until you're at risk of losing what you wanted then stop? You could end up with greater rewards, AND you got to play. I get people that would get demoted if they lost 1 game, but those people aren't in the majority. We can't implement something like rating decay ourselves, so is there anything more we could do as a community to promote ladder activity? What changes would you implement if you were a developer with such a goal in mind?

[SuperZay]

I'd que every day if only my highest rating earned during any point of the season was considered for the final rewards. Then I'd have nothing to lose by queing more with much to gain like better rating.

The game will punish me for losing a few matches by kicking from Top 100 and voiding me of any rewards like in S1 and S2 (except lolsilverjewelry), and I don't want to repeat that.

[KusoWat]

Rating decay

[Meero]

I'd que every day if only my highest rating earned during any point of the season was considered for the final rewards. Then I'd have nothing to lose by queing more with much to gain like better rating.

The game will punish me for losing a few matches by kicking from Top 100 and voiding me of any rewards like in S1 and S2 (except lolsilverjewelry), and I don't want to repeat that.

Something interesting you can do is have 2 characters on the same data center, and then you can always play on the lowest one then switch—that way one of your characters is the highest you've been.

[SuperZay]

Something interesting you can do is have 2 characters on the same data center, and then you can always play on the lowest one then switch—that way one of your characters is the highest you've been.

I prefer to keep everything on one, main character unless the rewards will be shared between alts too.

[TiramisuMacaron]

All of these are great ideas and I would love them to be implemented, but here is the harsh reality;

Aether and Primal have 0 physical reason to be different data centers, but it would be too much work to merge them so it won't happen.

Decay won't happen for the same reason rating starts at 0 instead of 1000 (and that they are blocking chat) SE wants its ranked modes casual and forgiving.

There is no API for grabbing player data every two hours without players using an external app. I doubt SE, being a Japanese company, will release one. There still isn't even an ingame parser.

Everyone wants unranked 4v4, but with how much feast players on primal have flocked to FL, I think it would kill the ranked mode. Just removing GC restrictions is going to hurt feast. Some people queue for it because it is the fastest thing that pops.

There is a private Skype group for primal pvp, but I am more of a proponent of the discord because it is all inclusive. The discord helped us fill the remaining two gaps for the only 2 queues of 2017 on primal.

If wintraders didn't exist, I would say a nice solution would be to change the queue to be like a Raid Finder queue. 0/2 2/2 1/2 2/2... Etc. I'll even take a 4/8. I mean even though it would make wintrading easier I think I'd like to have it just to know if queuing is fruitless. The timer means nothing, especially when it resets to less than 5m and the timer bridges unranked to diamond.

Oh, and being an afterthought doesn't help either. Takes like 7 days for them to take away the minion reward, but GC restrictions took years.

What I would do: Kill all PvP in normal servers, create 3 pvp servers: US, EU, JP. You get 1 totally maxed character on every datacenter. All that exists is wolves den pier and PvP queues. Rewards go towards glamours, titles, and animations for your pvp character.

I want to soloq too, I feel your pain

[Zojha]

I'd que every day if only my highest rating earned during any point of the season was considered for the final rewards. Then I'd have nothing to lose by queing more with much to gain like better rating.

This is pretty much the solution if you do not want to change anything else.

Rating decay is inefficient because the incentive to play as little as the system allows remains intact and you'd have to make completely ridiculous minimum play demands that would put proper e-sports to shame for it to make a noteworthy dent in activity. And depending your potential rating loss over those game it might well be the better option to just let it decay than take the gamble.

For ranked Feast, the stagnation is simply caused by the reward structure. That's easy to fix. For PvP as a whole, it's a lot more complicated, but I'll spare you the rambling about that - I've said everything that can be said about that by now.

[Nirokun]

I don't terribly care for the reward this season, mostly I would want it just to deprive someone else of a top 100 spot (assuming I could knock somebody off, lol!) I would want to see where I would end up on the rankings this season.

I got a very late start this season because of work being completely unmanageable (I left that job and have another lined up, enjoying my long and much-needed vacation). I couldn't justify queueing for feast instead of working or sleeping. By the time I was up to queue, there were no pops except for healer, which isn't my favorite (SMN all day erryday), but I still got to 700-something rating after a few days, then ran out of steam (and sightseeing log entries). I haven't requeue'd because I don't feel like I can make it into the top 100 now without really digging my heels in, and I'm not very enthusiastic about it, so it seems like a lost cause. I will try again when the patch launches, but even then, the GARO rewards aren't exciting to me--I'd just want to support it because I enjoy PVP and want to show SE that we appreciate added PVP content/events.

[Ageofwar]

Like most of the FFXIV player base I would suspect the answer to the OP's question would be rewards and nothing

at the moment the rewards from PvP is not enough for me to queue up for PvP since for me personal I don't find PvP fun

I mean the upcoming Garo x will reduce down the queues for a week or 2 after it hits and then you will be back to the 60 min queues again
the GC restrictions on FL I think is a red herring

unless you can get people like me interested in PvP you will have zero hope of any real solution to the PvP queues

I guess for me is I can be a sore looser and being matched up with people who live and breath PvP and will rub it in your face, terrifies me and yes I do know there are systems in place that should prevent this but due to low number I would suspect these are not working effectively

[Verutes]

I pvp now and again for a change of pace and because it's decently fun but have never gotten really into it for two main reasons.

1: Lack of rewards. There are a handful of nice looking glamour pieces but that's it nothing more worthwhile to really spend wolf seals on. So after getting the couple of pieces I like I've seen no real payoff for doing it any more.

2: A lot of toxic people. Now of course there are always going to be some toxic members of any community but in this game I've never seen nearly as many as I do in pvp. It of course just could be my experiences but I've seen so many newbies chewed out for not knowing what to do as well as active pvpers who quickly start barking orders and if those don't get followed down to a T the second they give it they throw a hissy fit. It's just left a sour taste in my mouth that diminishes my interest.