Seal Rock...

[Moonlite]

While not exactly a thing to make PvPers happy. Other games have special weekends for content. While not optimal a weekend with an obnoxious amount of rewards would increase the amount of games for one weekend. I don't do the whole anima thing. But something that greatly reduces that for a weekend. Minus the dungeons if you could get a whole weapon done in a weekend from a reward weekend.

While another thing that won't make PvPers happy. On special weekends if possible count attempts for wins for achievements. I know it is not fair. But does it really matter if someone has a Field commander coat because they did 100 games in one weekend. Wins in 72 man can be more luck then skill for pugs. You can have 20 kills and still lose.

[Guesswhat]

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One of the problems with PvP in this game is that it's too hidden. You'll have to be max level in order to participate, and even then it's not clear what you need to do to enter. Imo, they should make pvp available as early as possible. Lets say: You either have to level to max, or go through a tutorial similar to the novice hall -or something a bit more sophisticated- to get used to max lvl and pvp with your job. This way, even if you never bought HW (or any other expansion), you'd still be able to play the latest FL, at highest lvl cap. Ranked pvp should still require max level.

As for the argument that this would lower the average skill level in PvP for this game... ...Yeah, I don't think it can get lower.

But I don't see this happening. Just putting it out there. I think SE will keep their policies on FL pvp, meaning Sieze and Shatter will remain 60; Slaughter and Secure will remain 50.

[Serilda]

While another thing that won't make PvPers happy. On special weekends if possible count attempts for wins for achievements. I know it is not fair. But does it really matter if someone has a Field commander coat because they did 100 games in one weekend. Wins in 72 man can be more luck then skill for pugs. You can have 20 kills and still lose.

I only ever PUG. We don't hate rewarding participation because of elitism and wanting to feel superior, we hate it because it means people are finished earning their rewards faster and the queues die again. Plus if you don't need to try to win, you end up with a bunch of people who aren't trying properly - or even bots- and it's not fun at all. I am really glad they made the GARO rewards require actual wins and hope this continues; there are plenty of rewards for losing already in the form of Wolf Mark rewards and progress/kill achievements.

Understanding why you can have 20 killing blows yet still lose is part of the learning process. I do think they need to support people transitioning into PVP a lot better, but handing out rewards for failure isn't the right solution.

[Zojha]

We don't hate rewarding participation because of elitism and wanting to feel superior, we hate it because it means people are finished earning their rewards faster and the queues die again.

That's incorrect, because with a given win rate, you can make participation and win achievements require an equal amount of games. The easiest case is 50% winrate, because you can just double the amount of games you'd set for a win achievement as goal.
The main difference between the two is people who are either skilled, form a premade or cheat (trade wins) finish faster than those who aren't when the rewards are based on wins. This means that if these skilled players only play for the rewards, they lose their incentive to play faster than the bad players, thereby leaving only the worse players in the queue. At least, this hastens the acquisition for the worse players in a downward slope, as the competition gradually gets worse and worse, thereby increasing the relative skill level of any given individual.

In a competitive (mini)game, setting incentives via rewards is pretty much a loss-loss situation for the players either way. Win-based rewards encourage throwing games that seem lost in order to get into the next game faster as well as wintrading and other forms of cheating and can push players out of the queues if they feel the challenge is insurmountable, rewards based purely on participation encourage not trying in the first place and thus lead to AFK. Hence why it's imperative that players don't play primarily for rewards.

[Serilda]

That's incorrect, because with a given win rate, you can make participation and win achievements require an equal amount of games. The easiest case is 50% winrate, because you can just double the amount of games you'd set for a win achievement as goal.

I'm not sure it's quite that random; I may be biased as I'm often in tiny 8v8v8 matches but teams with a lot of new players lose a lot more than teams with a lot of veterans (irrespective of premades; they're relatively rare in my datacentre anyway) and I certainly lost a lot more regularly when I had no idea what I was doing. It's not just rolling a dice and taking the win, and the people who try their utmost do tend to do better overall.

I do think that the reported issues with wintrading need to be addressed, though. It makes a mockery of the entire system. And I certainly can't argue with the bulk of what you said at all - though attempts to incentivise other forms of play (e.g. killing blows) are a step backwards in terms of encouraging people to build balanced team compositions and work together towards the overarching goal. As you say, the players need to want to win for its own sake rather than for prizes.

I miss Seal Rock because I loved the experience of playing Seal Rock; I have all of the Seal Rock rewards already but it hardly ever pops any more and I have to settle for Fields of Glory. Given that everyone has different tastes in which PVP mode they like best, it's all the more the shame that everything other than the current flavour of the month mode is abandoned the moment a new map is released. I do think that fixing the level 50 modes would help Seal Rock; I and many others would stay in the roulette rather than directly queueing for the level 60 modes if it meant not having to be stuck with the synced maps, increasing the possibility of something other than Shatter coming up rather than reducing it.

[Bloody]

That's the thing..no one wants to pvp in shatter.

Tell that to some of my teams I've been on or fought against. Won through pure bloodshed and field dominance, not ice kills.

[Zojha]

I'm not sure it's quite that random;

Oh no, I was just giving an example that's easy to calculate. The formula for my statement is:
Required Participation Games = Required Wins/Winrate.
So with 100% winrate, whether the criterion is wins or participation is irrelevant, whereas with a 50% winrate the participation number is twice the win number. At 0% winrate, no conversion is possible due to dividing by zero.

The actual winrate is personal. And thus, people with a winrate above 33,3% or 50% respectively finish faster with a win criterion than with a participation criterion, as those are the winrates one would assume when converting them.

Anywhoo, I personally don't think that upping the maps really helps. Seal Rock currently is at the level cap and if everyone was to queue for Seal Rock and Fields of Glory, it should be like a roulette between the two. Fields of Glory pops more often because you end up filling, as you would if you queued for the roulette, and more people queue specifically for Fields of Glory than Seal Rock. The same thing should thus happen if you were to up all the maps to 60/70 and entered the regular roulette - the map you'll constantly play will be the one where most people queue specifically for.

In the grand scale of things, I don't think it would matter. It wouldn't hurt either, mind you, so I'm fairly indifferent on what they do - I just do not believe PvP here has the playerbase to sustain decent queues in more than one or two maps tops without taking away the possibility to queue for a specific one Feast style.

[Moonlite]

snip

The whole point was that the don't pop and they can't get the rewards, win or lose. Not sure if they care or not but I am sure SE has the data for the amount of seal rock achievements finished after shatter dropped. The PvP community knows that to consistently fill fast ques you can't split the player base.

We already have people botting regularly with no punishment. SE does not seem to have the ability(tools?) to deal with bots. The one healer we boot repeatedly on aether is so funny or sad. 30k healing and they have this jittery way of moving around and almost always aoe even if no one is in range but they are getting hit. If I see them moving I mark them and get the free kills in between ice. They almost always average 5+ deaths. I think they have farmed 2 anima weapons worth of light though.

The whole knowing why you have 20 kills and accounted for over 100 point swing and why you didn't win. Nothing to learn the rest of the team didn't pull their weight. At least on Aether all the highs are always at the ice working. They aren't randomly trying to cap some base waiting for a quick solo kill. Also it is 3 team based PvP. I have literally spent games helping second place win because I hated the way first place played. The whole learning and skill is more team vs team. It feels like that is coming.

[Khalithar]

That's incorrect, because with a given win rate, you can make participation and win achievements require an equal amount of games.

I want to address this because there is an MMO that does something like this and maybe the devs should consider for this game.

In SWTOR, there is a PVP daily and a PVP weekly where you have to play a certain amount of games to get credit, however, if you win, it counts for two games instead of one. They could definitely go that route in this FFXIV.

[DarkSlayerGrimm]

As it sits right now you have to wait 20min to 30min to 1 hour to 2 hours for a Seal Rock queue to pop but even then you might even lose the game or a person will leave because they got put in there by Frontlines Roulette and you are back to waiting looking at your 9/100 wins for the Field Commanders Set :'c

What Im hoping happens is something like they did with another piece of outdated content that had hour long queues and that is the Crystal Tower raids, back then way before Wonderous Tails and Aether Oil step for Animas the crystal towers had waaaaaaaaay longer queues hell you'd maybe get 1 or 2 queues a week and trying to get the Armor of Light set was a impossible task but then they added a reason to run them, Aether Oils,Poetics for Anima Parts and of course the Wonderous Tails now you see CT queues daily even up to 6-7 Labyrinth of the Ancients pops on Primal on a week day.Shatter got a huge huge boost from tying PvP with the Garo armors which was good and bad but that wasnt the only thing thats keeping it going as it gives you Light for Animas as well. I'm just hoping they add some way to get the Field Commanders set sometime soon because it doesnt look like getting it now will be a option.