Okay, It's Two-Way Communication Time

[Isala]

Starting to wonder why I'm even bothering to keep hope for the PvP here. We've hit, what, over a year... two years of unanswered, unacknowledged questions about the direction and choices of PvP? We've been lied to, especially about how "seriously" they take match throwers, and win traders. We've been told that our reports are "exaggerated", and that killing chat brought in new people. Has anything of value ever been addressed? We get, what? One official response every six months in this forum? But they IMMEDIATELY jump on topics, such as how unfair it is to put a minion in PvP. How unfair it is that not everyone has a house. Instant responses to literal nothing content. Minions and houses are not content. One cannot raid a house. You cannot earn tomes or gear from owning a house. But holy crap. "I can't have a house!" BAM! Yoshi P appears, and tells them that everything is going to be alright. Meanwhile, the PvP community is ignored, lied to, shunned, and left to rot while the hackers, win traders, bots, AFKers, and all around scum get away with literal murder. But it's not PvE, so that's okay.

[Krolja]

Maybe the Devs shouldn't have said things so ambitious as "e-sports" and "competitive" when talking about PvP in this game in it's current state. With the little to no effort they are making on helping curb cheating and balance issues I feel like you did when you were excited for the Dominion ranked. I WANT to love PvP in this game, I love everything else about it, but when I do PvP and then compare PvP in other MMOs...it's just night and day how much better other MMOs handle it. Granted it's been quite some time since I've sat down and tried to PvP in any other MMO so they could also be suffering from the same issues we are. At this point, I'm just stuck trying to figure out how we as a community can communicate and be heard. Housing hits the fan day 1 and they get instant response. PvP hits the fan for 5 seasons, and we've just now had 2 responses. It hurts.

[Krolja]

We get, what? One official response every six months in this forum? But they IMMEDIATELY jump on topics, such as how unfair it is to put a minion in PvP. How unfair it is that not everyone has a house. Instant responses to literal nothing content. Minions and houses are not content. One cannot raid a house. You cannot earn tomes or gear from owning a house. But holy crap. "I can't have a house!" BAM! Yoshi P appears, and tells them that everything is going to be alright. Meanwhile, the PvP community is ignored, lied to, shunned, and left to rot while the hackers, win traders, bots, AFKers, and all around scum get away with literal murder. But it's not PvE, so that's okay.

Shall we start a petition for more communication between PvP devs and players and form an open dialogue? The people whining about housing did and they got a response in less than 24 hours. Perhaps there's something to it.

[Geryth]

Shall we start a petition for more communication between PvP devs and players and form an open dialogue? The people whining about housing did and they got a response in less than 24 hours. Perhaps there's something to it.

The squeaky wheel gets the grease. The problem is there's not enough wheels to squeak in the PvP forums to get attention.

If they would just put the resources, time, dedication, and love into making PvP in this game a great form of content then it could have a large enough community to get instant responses when things go wrong. As I said, I've seen this before - it gets neglected because there's not enough players to justify the resources and there's not enough players because it's neglected. There's one way out of that cycle - SE needs to double down and fix the mode with the required costs or it's going to limp along in a broken state until they decide to put it out of it's misery.

Titles and mounts are band-aid temporary fixes that pull players in for the flair and when they get it they're out. Those are not lasting solutions. Lasting solutions are taking a creative approach to make each game fun enough for long-term replayability and fostering a populous community to make queues short (the community itself can only do so much). I really do want The Hand of Mercy (1400 kills to go) and The Knight of Glory (70 wins to go). Every day is a chore - Shatter just isn't that fun. Since 4.1 came out I've had some Secure's and Seal Rocks. They are a little better but not much. Can't say I'm going to hang around for more riveting games of Frontlines once I get those titles. I try to break it up with some Feast but I can not get a ranked game to pop in a reasonable time frame (I have limited time to play I'm not going to twiddle my thumbs in queue for most of it).

[Krolja]

Understandable. Queue times are pretty bad on Primal these days. Even before the 4.1 changes I was getting MAYBE 2 games per hour, and after about 2-3 hours of games people just stop playing. I sat in one 64 minute queue before I gave up and decided to just go to bed.

[Theodric]

The queue times are pretty bleak on Chaos as well. I do hope we see more incentives added over time - especially the sort that make use of wolf marks. Maybe some sort of special crafting material that requires 20,000 wolf marks, can be sold on the market board and is used in a recipe for a very appealing glamour? Let's say ten of this item are needed per craft - that'd go a long way towards making PvP at least somewhat profitable.

[Moomba33]

The lack of action against botting and win trading is pretty baffling. Even as a very casual pvp player I don't want to see bots in my matches and I don't know how SE expects to make XIV's pvp an esport if they can't even prevent cheating.

On the subject of non player objectives in pvp I'm not sure if SE is in the wrong. In my own social circle no one enjoyed Slaughter. We got pops for all 3 current FL modes near the beginning of Stormblood but my friends soon took Secure out of their queue list because they felt the matches took too long compared to Seize and Shatter. It wouldn't surprise me if Shatter is genuinely the most popular FL mode among the masses.
This isn't to say the hard core pvp community doesn't deserve a more pvp focused game mode of course. But Rival Wings looks like its going for the more casual Shattter crowd that likes other objectives.

[Theodric]

-snip-

I think you hit the nail on the head. The 'masses' have a habit of embracing the path of least resistance. I myself enjoy objective based PvP more than outright PvP so I don't mind the inclusion of Rival Wings. I don't find much enjoyment in pure PvP due to a combination of win trading, match throwers, the lack of a chat for coordination and healers being exceptionally powerful. Which is a shame because I really want to enjoy the pure PvP modes in this game.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

The problem with Shatter is not the objectives, it's the active discouragement of fighting other players, both by players themselves, and the overall importance of points from the ice. I have defended many times that the ice alone isn't the only way to win, but in a vacuum, it is possible. It becomes an issue when players' understanding of the mode begins and ends with that, and one missed large ice demoralizes and defeats a team.

It's not that we love "pure" PvP, but PvP is gradually moving away from active combat between players with objectives to little more than an objective-based competition between players. For all that, we might as well just be having a spelling bee.

It certainly doesn't help that our community reps - while limited in what they can say/do - often seem to opt for silence, especially when compared to other game communities and their forums. Changes are often made without warning or explanation (side note: I particularly like that when changes are made to heroes in Overwatch, they explain why the change was made. We could really use that kind of approach in XIV). Devs as well share the responsibility as we're told things are being forwarded to them, but the communication remains one-sided, or information is often given after the fact (i.e. announcing the Feast chat restriction without any prior mention, and completely ignoring feedback).

And I never miss an opportunity to mention the fact that someone who wouldn't touch PvP for reasons other than a minion voiced a complaint and got a record response within 10 days versus the community frequently giving feedback and suggestions that go ignored and unanswered at length. This is not okay.

[Krolja]

Can we get a dev in here to explain the new matchmaking? Out of the last 10 games I've played tonight, I've had the same healer on my team each match and he's...not ready for high level Feast. In the meantime, I've played against 4 other healers and not once have I had one of them on my team. My first game tonight was against the healer that I'm being constantly punished with. I don't get it. How did I manage to play against him ONCE but get him on my team 9 more times in a row while playing against other healers?

Yes, I'm a bit salty but I'm also frustrated and confused how the system works. This has happened the last three nights in a row.