Botters has RUINED PvP :(

[Alleo]

Here's how I'd fix it, note that I'm not fond of PvP in general, but this feels like it would intentionally complicate things so that AFK and bot play would be detrimental without punishing PvP play itself.

a) Don't have safe zones. Give the player 5-20 seconds of being unable to be damaged after respawning them at the last claimed tower. If no tower claimed, drop them somewhere randomly and unpredictably.

b) Time spent dead counts against you. If more than 10% of the time is spent ko'd or inactive, no reward.

c) Remove mounts, remove sprint entirely. Create a PvP specific movement speed so that all players move at the same speed. Remove fall damage.

d) Put more entrophy into the map design. If there was ever a good business case for a procedurally generated landscape in FFXIV, this is it. This makes it hard or impossible for bots to be able to navigate because they can not use the existing game maps to predict where things will be.

a) Well the only thing this would do, is that a AFKler either just travels around the map (like a lot of them do per auto run) or just die and stand up again and again, while still giving points to the other team, which would make it even more difficult to the team that has those AFKler in it. So you would punish the whole team again.

b) I am fine if you have a certain amount of exp for just being in PVP (not everyone that is bad is someone that AFKs) and on top of that the people that are doing a certain amount of damage/heals gets some extra EXP on top of that. I am against things that are just punishments because you can have teams with only one healer and die a lot thanks to that but still try your best. Yet with your solution people would be punished for something which might be out of their hand. (I had more than enough runs where I stood next to a healer and died because somehow they did not heal me. Yet I always try my best till the end)

c) Then they should make the maps smaller otherwise traveling to crystals would be way to long and thus feels borings. Also fall damage is a nice way to kill enemy players. :P I love to kick them over the edge when I am healer and see them dieing thanks to the fall damage. (Also see no reason why this would help against botting?)

d) Instead of map design I really just wish that the next pvp frontline map is less PvE against some ice and more about PVP. I know that ice gives the most thus I try to get as much as possibly out of it, but I have the most fun in the map when everyone is waiting for the next spawn and kill each other. So more PVP against people and less PVE against some objects.

This is quite untrue. PvP had a small but dedicated, ACTIVE playerbase well before 4.0. It gave no XP, and it wasn't as simplified as it is now (and arguably more fun still). 3.5 and the Garo event overshadowed the fact that they made the biggest change the community had asked for for 2 years - the removal of GC restrictions, which in fact did far more to improve queues than the event did. And it STILL didn't give XP.

Let's stop spreading the wrongful idea that removing XP would kill PvP. If anything it'd bring some integrity back into the mode.

Someone said that we should take all rewards away from anyone but the winner team and this would imo be the death of PVP. I mean even if you lost you still got wolf marks, exp points for your pvp profil and stuff like that. Now lets take all of that away from the two teams that will lose it. Casual players only play PVP if there is a good incentive behind it (like Garo or ExP) so those would surely be gone. If you only have dedicated PVP players left you will still have two teams that will lose, even if all did their best. (Or have three winners with same points but thats probably really rare) How many of those players would truly keep playing if they did not even get wolf marks for their time?

Also even if there was a small active playerbase, it seems that its not enough for SE? I mean if they would be fine with only a small amount of people playing PVP, they would not try to do so much to get more players to play it. So it might be fine for the PVP players itself, but its SE that creates content and it was not fine for them. Otherwise they would not have done so much to make it easier for new players.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

Also even if there was a small active playerbase, it seems that its not enough for SE? I mean if they would be fine with only a small amount of people playing PVP, they would not try to do so much to get more players to play it. So it might be fine for the PVP players itself, but its SE that creates content and it was not fine for them. Otherwise they would not have done so much to make it easier for new players.

I covered much of this in another thread in the PvP section. Wolf Marks aren't a very good example to use as before Garo it took quite a lot to get a body piece (12,700 vs the 4000 it takes now, and you didn't win 1000 for first place). You REALLY had to grind marks back then, and by the time the changes were made to both cost of gear and amounts awarded per 1st/2nd/3rd place, most frequent PvPers already had all they wanted with Wolf Marks. Removing wolf marks would hurt those who have yet to earn them, yes, which is why they wouldn't do that. Same with tomestones. But XP is different. You can get XP from every other content, and in some cases more. There was a time it didn't offer XP and it was both active, and there were far less players exploiting it for XP.

And if the state of PvP was not fine for them, why did it take 3 years to fix? Why was support so poor, communication with the playerbase that actually played it (as "not fine" as it was) practically non-existent, and rewards so far and few in between? Why did it take til 3.5 to implement the big change the community wanted, and even told them would improve queues (and it did, not the Garo event)? Why did they completely ignore the PvP community when they said "don't completely remove chat in the Feast; it'll cause entirely different problems" (and it did)?

PvP as it was before wasn't perfect, no, but it wasn't difficult. There was however, absolutely nothing done on SE's part to attempt to teach players. The community did that for themselves. To be fair, SE doesn't put out extreme trials or raid guides, players do that for themselves too. The difference was people who were interested in PvP and wanted to do well sought these guides out. They made the effort, and that's why they did well. That's still entirely possible with all the new systems in place, but I think there's far too many people that expect to lose, and thus don't try to learn or do well, even now with the "simpler" PvP systems. You get out what you put in, and if people don't want to learn, then they make it harder on themselves to win.

And let's not forget if "everyone gets a trophy" (XP in this case), most would see it pointless to TRY to win, thus afking and botting becomes rampant. Can you imagine if win or lose, you got drops from extreme trials? How many people would actually try to learn the fights and do well then? SE can continue to simplify and ease the difficulty of content, but at some point people have to actually TRY. Otherwise what's the point?

[SuperZay]

And if the state of PvP was not fine for them, why did it take 3 years to fix? Why was support so poor, communication with the playerbase that actually played it (as "not fine" as it was) practically non-existent, and rewards so far and few in between? Why did it take til 3.5 to implement the big change the community wanted, and even told them would improve queues (and it did, not the Garo event)? Why did they completely ignore the PvP community when they said "don't completely remove chat in the Feast; it'll cause entirely different problems" (and it did)?

Because extremelly small development team working on game support between major expansions, and PvP is not their priority. I remember Yoshi said in one interview how raids would be much more fun if he had one more programmer.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

Because extremelly small development team working on game support between major expansions, and PvP is not their priority. I remember Yoshi said in one interview how raids would be much more fun if he had one more programmer.

I call BS on that entirely. 3 years and sporadic support, then suddenly big sweeping changes (not all of them great, but not terrible either). "Not their priority" could be applied to a lot of things, but if there was enough demand for them to implement it in the first place, they should not have done so haphazardly or barely supported it. . . Or will that be okay for other "non-priority" content too in the future?

[SuperZay]

I call BS on that entirely. 3 years and sporadic support, then suddenly big sweeping changes (not all of them great, but not terrible either). "Not their priority" could be applied to a lot of things, but if there was enough demand for them to implement it in the first place, they should not have done so haphazardly or barely supported it. . . Or will that be okay for other "non-priority" content too in the future?

Because a big, but temporary team working on expansions (including a lot of programmers who can make big changes like this). If you didn't got what you wanted your next chance is 5.0 probably, with small patches being done by a small support team. That also explains chat ban, they don't have enough GMs to react to all harassment reports. No chat = no reports. GC restrictions could be lifted faster, but I've seen numerous 'lore' excuses before they gave up, so they didn't really wanted to do it.