PVP Rank and PVP Experience Change

[Mofafafa]

Please no, I don't my time spent queuing for an hour or more per match just to win/lose or queue against win trader pre SB.
Season 4 = 3 months long queue, especially as a range DPS, almost all content is dead and subscription fees isn't free during that time.

Could you imagine? spending hours and hours half AFK ingame but can't do anything else other than casual things such as crafting in which there isnt anything left to craft pre-stormblood

[Crim2989]

not sure about everyone else, But I took the pvp grind of ranks for the additional traits and skills...this to me added a sense of progression in PVP, I get SE/
Dev team was to reset everything and make it as basic as it can get with pvp's own skills and such a simple UI an 8 year old can understand it.

That being said, what has taken place of these adjustments? seems they want to address some concerns but are unwilling to have a community presence in an MMO.... kinda odd.

Wouldn't it be interesting to have pvp matches setup like pve raid content? do well, get your rank, get the gear, progress to the next tier. Better you preform the faster you climb, Feast being the pinnacle of the dedicated few.... walking in decked out to the 9's... a huge understanding of different pvp strategy's that can be altered to the 8v8 or 4v4 arena. There is your E-Sport.

[Geryth]

Wouldn't it be interesting to have pvp matches setup like pve raid content? do well, get your rank, get the gear, progress to the next tier. Better you preform the faster you climb, Feast being the pinnacle of the dedicated few.... walking in decked out to the 9's... a huge understanding of different pvp strategy's that can be altered to the 8v8 or 4v4 arena. There is your E-Sport.

Progression systems don't work for PvP, because the skilled players get the gear quicker and now that they out-gear AND out-skill newer players, the bar of entry becomes seemingly impossible for most players. That's how you end up with a dead system that no on participates in.

[Wintersandman]

Progression systems don't work for PvP, because the skilled players get the gear quicker and now that they out-gear AND out-skill newer players, the bar of entry becomes seemingly impossible for most players.

I remember progression gear in WoW. It was amazing and you would be queued up with people with equal rank. In FFXIV the matching system is horrific. I was trying to do team feast in season 4 and 3 diamond players would go and recruit one bronze player just to get queues against bronze players to boost their win rate. That is demotivating not a progression gear system. Frontlines would still be chaos but it already is.

[Geryth]

I remember progression gear in WoW. It was amazing and you would be queued up with people with equal rank. In FFXIV the matching system is horrific. I was trying to do team feast in season 4 and 3 diamond players would go and recruit one bronze player just to get queues against bronze players to boost their win rate. That is demotivating not a progression gear system. Frontlines would still be chaos but it already is.

Vanilla WoW PvP gear progression was fine - the PvP gear was the same as PvE gear, except with a tad more weight and stats put into vitality (hit points). You could gear for PvP by getting PvE gear, and to a lesser extent vice versa.

When Arena came later and a solid separation of PvE gear and PvP gear by adding new stats like "resilience" and later "PvP power" you could no longer gear for PvP with PvE and vice versa. PvP became its own progression system to get the latest and greatest PvP purples. That really causes issues, but in the context of WoW they weren't as prevalent as they are in FFXIV for a couple of reasons.

1) WoW has never had a participation issue. Like, ever.
2) Along with point 1 I think WoW also had better match making algorithms.

With participation and better matching, new players were playing against new players. If you were as skilled as the other players then you would fall into a group of players similarly geared as you, and your matches were still competitive. I think it's dumb that someone who has simply been playing longer or got the gear first gets to win with skill level being equal, but at least the road to getting that gear and following the progression path was doable and maybe even fun since the matches on the way up were competitive.

In FFXIV, there's just not enough participation to alleviate the flaws of a PvP gear progression design. Even if there was, I still prefer the way they've normalized all the stats. I don't lose to someone just because they have better gear and are further along in the progression game. If I lose it's because I got outplayed. That's really the way it should be.

But it's extremely demoralizing to be a new player trying to get into PvP and not only is there a learning curve to PvP where you are out-skilled, by also being terribly out-geared really makes the prospect of winning any games an unlikely venture. And not winning games means getting the new gear comes painfully slow. That's where a lot of players nope out, feeding into the participation problem making other new players more likely to match up against veterans. And that's where we are now, without progression gear feeding into the problem. New players can't get into games and the games they get into are against higher ranked players or some high ranked player playing on a low ranked alt.

[Wintersandman]

But it's extremely demoralizing to be a new player trying to get into PvP and not only is there a learning curve to PvP where you are out-skilled, by also being terribly out-geared really makes the prospect of winning any games an unlikely venture. And not winning games means getting the new gear comes painfully slow. That's where a lot of players nope out, feeding into the participation problem making other new players more likely to match up against veterans. And that's where we are now, without progression gear feeding into the problem. New players can't get into games and the games they get into are against higher ranked players or some high ranked player playing on a low ranked alt.

Now the problem is there is no point investing the time into PvP. There is no motivation to continue like there is for PvE which is where gear progression is beneficial. It's like great I can spend all this time pvp'ing and there is no real reward for my time spent. There should be something that shows for investing time in either PvE or PvP. I am behind gear wise for PvE and if I tank I know I will be getting hate ripped off me. I have to invest the time and it will be frustrating just as it is for the new person starting off in PvP. Your demoralization argument applies to PvE as well but you don't see SE changing how that works. How long did it take groups to say Clear needed on new Ex fights and won't take anyone new in PF? I see it within a week.

So there should be something to show that you spend the time. PVE gets it all. Mounts, gear and titles.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

That kind of gear advantage went away the moment Frontlines was introduced. Item level syncs were introduced, and largely so long as you were at the sync level (something people apparently struggled with, but that's a fault of their own), you were fine. There were subtleties, naturally. Min/maxing stats using older/easy to acquire PvE gear I was able to have roughly 10.5K HP (high for a DPS back then). This was perhaps obtained with one tank accessory (accuracy didn't matter for the most part), but it also guaranteed I could survive an 8K melee LB (or a double caster LB, which hit much harder then).

There was no grind to building my PvP gearset. By the end of the 3.x era, I was just using my old Lore gear, and some Gordias accessories I pulled off my retainer, and largely for the secondary stats. If anyone knows their job and their favored secondaries in PvE, you were already halfway there for PvP. I understand gear and stats were largely removed to facilitate leveling players, but gear advantages really weren't an issue at all. I did just fine even before I optimized my gearset.

[RiyahArp]

The rewards are plenty for the amount of modes we have in the game. And if I remember how you lot complained about Garo newbies and botters, any more rewards would probably have you beg SE to remove them after a month. This isn't a hardcore progression/competitive PvP game, and you need to get used to that. The more they try to fit PvP into that kind of mode, the worse it gets.

[Shadotterdan]

Kinda skipped over a lot of this conversation, but one thing I missed about old pvp was the unique stats like morale. Something I've thought of recently for bringing it back in a way that doesn't make it harder on newbies might be to give rank and pvp gear bonuses that effect your team instead of just yourself. It would make sense too given the cooperative nature of it, what would bring fighting spirit back to the rank and file but the sight of one of their powerful warriors in their midst?