The Ranked Feast needs a serious overhaul

[Stormfur]

It's probably not even going to be relevant come Stormblood (which is why I think we're not hearing anything from the dev team on changes to PVP -- it will probably go the way of Fold and Seal Rock therefore nothing is happening save for season 4).

BUT

That's not going to stop me from suggesting that ranked Feast needs a serious overhaul. So many good suggestions have been made before -- only to be met with silence. I fully expect this thread will too and would be absolutely FLOORED (in true Dragoon style) if it got an official reply.

Even just to say "we hear you and we're making changes -- stay tuned". I wouldn't even mind that, since I'm sure the developers can't just flip a switch and bring back chat.

I would hope that every change that's being made is being done with careful consideration of the outcome, and watching the current PVP scenarios to see how things play out. But disabling chat seemed like such a knee-jerk reaction to such a far-reaching problem.

The matchmaking system is an abysmal nightmare

Ideally, the system would match you according to your tier. Bronze with bronze, silver with silver, etc. Except we all know there aren't that many PVP players in ranked Feast to make that happen. I don't know the science behind how the algorithm works, but there is absolutely no logical reason why a gold-tier DPS needs to be matched with a bronze-tier healer. That just frustrates the DPS and confuses the healer and breeds more toxicity.

People give up because it's an entirely different world than PVE. And in order for them to get the help and support they need, they either have to join a linkshell, look for (outdated) pvp guides or find resources outside of the game -- none exist inside that tell them what to do, like The Smith does for newcomers.

Promotion qualifiers need to be removed.
I cannot tell you how much I loathe these things. I'm sure I'm not alone. There is perhaps nothing more rage-inducing than being on your final qualifier and losing because the odds are stacked against you -- someone's new and doesn't know what to do, the other team is made up of better players, and so on. It's not their fault -- it's a system that's rigged against you trying to make you prove yourself unnecessarily. Promotion qualifiers need to go the way of Dalamud, and by that I mean, be smashed to smithereens in a ball of fiery death.

There needs to be rank deterioration
So many people hit platinum or diamond -- and then sit there on their ranking. They don't participate any more because they don't want to lose their spot. If I reached that point, I wouldn't want to either. I'm not saying tie them to their chair and force them to continue, but make them want to -- perhaps in the form of something like earning more points toward their ranking when helping out those of a lower tier - or losses not counting for a certain time period.

The lack of chat is doing more harm than good
I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to help people out and not being able to because there's no chat. Some will see this as an opportunity to flame and rage -- especially at newcomers, but when that happens continually, those people need to be punished, not the whole group of PVP players.

Your personal ranking determined by luck, not skill
This is the biggest pile of nonsense. While there are people in the top 100 who are very, very skilled, so much of ranked Feast depends upon how lucky you are to be matched with three other people who know what they're doing.

Let's say you're a silver tier healer and you get ganged up on by a group of unranked DPS and tank and lose the match. You're the one who loses points - not them. They risked nothing while you risked much more. And you could be a phenomenal healer, but you can't heal your way out of terrible matchmaking. You're punished for your performance because of others.


In addition, your ability to rank is also connected to how much time you have in a day to sit and wait for queues to pop

If you PVP as anything but a healer, be prepared to spend large chunks of your time waiting for queues to pop. Job? Family? School? All of the above? The less time you have to spend, the more you can forget about ranking well.


There is a major divide between first-timers (mostly GARO players) and veterans and the toxicity is absolutely festering.


I suspect this is a major reason why they cut chat from PVP. So many first-timers jumping in to get the GARO stuff. I don't blame them, of course. It's absolutely refreshing to see new people trying out PVP. But at the same time -- we can't help them improve. And they're stomping on our efforts to rank. And that is a recipe for toxicity if I ever saw one.

Jobs are laughably unbalanced
Machinist has access to nearly every possible PVP-related crowd control ability but no other ranged does. Healers can go from a sliver of health to full in seconds while it takes two concentrated DPS and a tank to whittle them down gradually.

No other system in this entire game is as teeth-grindingly frustrating as Feast
With so many things stacked against you right from the start, that should make victory all the more sweeter. But when you've got people using hacks and software that calls out what the enemy team members do, no rank deterioration, 8+ hours to spend in game on queues and clogging up the leaderboards with themselves and their 300 alts, it's incredibly disheartening to even want to try.

There are so many suggestions here on ways to make improvements. And there are probably so many considerations that go into making decisions that impact the whole game that it can't be an easy thing to manage. But if the dev team really wants to turn FFXIV PVP into an e-sports event (or even make it more enjoyable in the first place), serious work needs to be done on making things more accessible, fair and do-able for those who want to put in the effort. Even savage raids aren't this frustrating or difficult!

[Kai_Lee]

Savage raid isn't that difficult because they have chat and all of them are working together towards the same goal. Even if the loot is two or even one chest all participants gets pages to use to get the same loot. Feast is not like that, it's actually the exact opposite with chat ban and limited exclusive rewards. I would love to hear the devs inform us that they are either revamping the feast or its rewards system in stormblood or are giving us a brand new pvp mode and are keeping the feast around and will be recycling all four season again.

[Magic-Mal]

Can I add a thing to the list?

There's no 4v4: Unranked!!
This bothers me to no end. I've been wanting to try healing and tanking in PvP but I do not want to do it in ranked 4v4. And 8v8 is just pure chaos, it's not the same as 4v4 >.<.

Promotion qualifiers need to be removed.
I cannot tell you how much I loathe these things. I'm sure I'm not alone. There is perhaps nothing more rage-inducing than being on your final qualifier and losing because the odds are stacked against you -- someone's new and doesn't know what to do, the other team is made up of better players, and so on. It's not their fault -- it's a system that's rigged against you trying to make you prove yourself unnecessarily. Promotion qualifiers need to go the way of Dalamud, and by that I mean, be smashed to smithereens in a ball of fiery death.

What actually happens when you lose a qualifier? Or when you derank? By sheer luck it never happened to me.

No other system in this entire game is as teeth-grindingly frustrating as Feast
With so many things stacked against you right from the start, that should make victory all the more sweeter. But when you've got people using hacks and software that calls out what the enemy team members do, no rank deterioration, 8+ hours to spend in game on queues and clogging up the leaderboards with themselves and their 300 alts, it's incredibly disheartening to even want to try.

While I don't doubt people are cheating and having callout software, I'm pretty sure most are simply Focus Targeting. At least I think they must be Focus Targeting me. The moment I put my buffs on, a PLD is trying to stunlock me, AST Disabling me, Virus getting put on me, People running behind walls, Esunas going off.

[CrimsonThunder]

Your personal ranking determined by luck, not skill
This is the biggest pile of nonsense. While there are people in the top 100 who are very, very skilled, so much of ranked Feast depends upon how lucky you are to be matched with three other people who know what they're doing.

I can't stress how true this is. I won't drop any names but the current number 1 in Chaos Solo ranking is a good example. I've ran with the guy before and while he isn't a bad player he isn't exactly anything special. He's there because he's done over 300 matches and just pushed the margin of probability.

[Kai_Lee]

Its not that difficult to see when range dps are about to burst, especially since there is only two dps and hardly anyone pay attention to the tanks and healers. Plus when you do pop your buffs it actually is shown on screen next to your character model which buff it is.

[Kai_Lee]

When you loose a qualifier as long as you have enough ratings you only need to win one game to get the promotion qualifier again, if you loose 100 ratings below your current rank you will drop out of your current rank and will need to win enough ratings to get the next rank which you just loose promotion qualifiers again

[Magic-Mal]

When you loose a qualifier as long as you have enough ratings you only need to win one game to get the promotion qualifier again, if you loose 100 ratings below your current rank you will drop out of your current rank and will need to win enough ratings to get the next rank which you just loose promotion qualifiers again

Wait so.. Does that mean it's theoretically possible to be a silver with 1,800 rank points for example? By purposely losing enough matches to lose the qualifier but be well over the requirement?

That would also mean being able to take advantage of the matchmaking to get low ranking players only for easy wins and then only losing 8 points every loss when you want to reset the qualifier o.o. Each win gives 25 points pretty much. Get 3 wins to gain 75 then get 3 losses but only lose 24 points..

Surely such a loophole can't exist for real????

[Canadane]

Wait so.. Does that mean it's theoretically possible to be a silver with 1,800 rank points for example? By purposely losing enough matches to lose the qualifier but be well over the requirement?

That would also mean being able to take advantage of the matchmaking to get low ranking players only and only losing 8 points every loss o.o.

Truly.. such a loophole can't exist for real????

There seems to be a cap on how high your rating can go before needing a better tier. Someone in a linkshell of mine mentioned they weren't getting any ratings from winning at one point during their qualifiers.
I don't know any specifics on what the rating or tier was at the time.

[Canadane]

There needs to be rank deterioration
So many people hit platinum or diamond -- and then sit there on their ranking. They don't participate any more because they don't want to lose their spot. If I reached that point, I wouldn't want to either. I'm not saying tie them to their chair and force them to continue, but make them want to -- perhaps in the form of something like earning more points toward their ranking when helping out those of a lower tier - or losses not counting for a certain time period.

The lack of chat is doing more harm than good
I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to help people out and not being able to because there's no chat. Some will see this as an opportunity to flame and rage -- especially at newcomers, but when that happens continually, those people need to be punished, not the whole group of PVP players.

These two I agree with the most.

[Stormfur]

Like I posted in the other thread, it's like danging a carrot for you, and getting kicked in the teeth when you try to reach for it.