PvP Needs An Endgame Once Again

[Eight]

Personally I would like to see them do another long event like the Garo event because that event literally brought PVP back to life and for a few months PVP was actually doable and it usually wasn't hard to find matches. Now things like the Feast are back to 30+ minute queues again making doing the content/earning the mounts and stuff almost impossible. Another suggestion could be having a set of relic gear for PVP that you can earn through accomplishing certain tasks or a system where you need to meet requirements kind of like the books from previous relic gear. Each gear upgrade would be enough to keep people returning each upgrade and keep PVP going steady.

[Synestra]

Personally I would like to see them do another long event like the Garo event because that event literally brought PVP back to life and for a few months PVP was actually doable and it usually wasn't hard to find matches.

While its nice to get fast ques the most fun i had in XIV pvp was when people considered it to be dead, because when it was "dead" you only encountered players that really did it for pvp and not for shinies. Before Feast got added i was playing with and against players who you can find in Feast top100 list and that if anything was the best learning experience/training you could get, to get better you need to play against even better players than yourself.

I did had 1k matches under my belt when ARR ended but it was that period in early/mid HW when i truly learned to play PvP thanks to those better opponents who rekt and teabagged me really hard, so i want to say thanks to those guys/gals for making me better specially guys like Darkfalz and co

I hate to say this but as long as pvp stays as it is now i have absolutely no interest for it, if 5.0 adds the gameplay of HW back then i will jump back instantly otherwise nah no thanks.

[Eight]

While its nice to get fast ques the most fun i had in XIV pvp was when people considered it to be dead, because when it was "dead" you only encountered players that really did it for pvp and not for shinies.........

While I agree it's nice to play with more dedicated players who are actually interested in PVP because it's more fun but right now there just isn't anyone doing Feast at all and it would be a nice boost even if it's just so people can finish off the achievements and get the mounts and other things like that. I mean right now once a new PVP mode comes out the ones before it just die off so it would be nice to have something to at least keep them going.

[Synestra]

While I agree it's nice to play with more dedicated players who are actually interested in PVP because it's more fun but right now there just isn't anyone doing Feast at all and it would be a nice boost even if it's just so people can finish off the achievements and get the mounts and other things like that. I mean right now once a new PVP mode comes out the ones before it just die off so it would be nice to have something to at least keep them going.

I totally understand but i have never cared about rewards in pvp as pvp itself is reward for me, i could do it even if i get zero pixels out of it but i know i belong to minority with this mentality.

[Eight]

......

I feel much the same, Synestra. .........

Don't get me wrong I absolutely love PVP and would still play it even if there wasn't any rewards or after I've obtained them but there is also part of me who really enjoys things like mounts, in fact I've been working hard to collect them it's something I enjoy in the game (plus our FC spends a lot of time doing weird stuff with mount...don't even ask). It's just a shame those aren't really accessible anymore that's all I was getting at, it's more of like something to work towards for me.

[Rufalus]

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It's the lowest resource sort of barrier I can think of from a content creation PoV to satisfy the op's topic of a separation between newcomers and veteran with a progression from one to the other, simple gate. Not in a vacuum, only in conjunction with other ideas to stimulate queues, like I did also suggest repeatable weekly quest that wants completion of all the pvp modes once each a week, since we also want seal rock and other things to be alive. I know ranked gating is flawed, I'm just spitballing ideas. Make unranked a requirement for something else then since I don't want it to be dead if it is to continue existing.

[BloodRubyXII]

Ideally there needs to be some form of decay but it's a long far-fetched wish, SE doesn't like people to "have" to do anything. It's like when they tripped over themselves with saying they'd never force players to be active to keep their plots secure, they realized it's unfeasible as it'll essentially mean no-one could ever get a house unless it's from another player once all the plots are gone.

[Zojha]

Ideally there needs to be some form of decay [...]

That's a common suggestion, but how do you think that turns out in practice?

Instead of not playing at all, people will just play the minimum amount of games possible. So that minimum needs to be high enough to make a noteworthy difference. One game a week won't, people will sit in a 60+ minute queue one weekend, do their mandatory game win or loss and then wait until next weekend. One game a day? You better hope you don't get a bad work shift and need to queue at off hours for that.

It's not very practical and it makes rating in Feast even more detached from being a proper skill rating. Reason as follows:
If a rating is to reflect your skill at a game, then what purpose does decaying a rating serve? To reflect skill decay. That happens naturally over time. Take two years break and you'll be a lot worse than you were when you quit. Take a week break and the difference is not gonna be noteworthy. And in order to set the rating decay to something that affects queues in a noteworthy way, you have to set it in such a way that it has nothing to do with skill decay.
Not that it matters much at this point - Feast rating is already a mess. So please don't mistake this as a pro or con opinion, I don't care either way because I haven't participated in Feast since Season 2. I'm just stating general issues with it because I have an easy time seeing issues in things.

[BloodRubyXII]

Rating decay is not designed to continuously measure skill, it's to ensure that people cannot sit on a rating for rewards which is detrimental to queue activity. Even if it's just 20 games per a reset, that isn't a lot, but it's 20 more games than a lot of people on Chaos play now lol. It's very practical, it's why a lot of other games like League of Legends use it.

[Zojha]

Rating decay is not designed to continuously measure skill, it's to ensure that people cannot sit on a rating for rewards which is detrimental to queue activity.

If the point of a rating is to measure skill as accurately as possible, changing it in any way except to reflect changes in skill goes against the point of having it in the first place, as it dilutes the accuracy.

More reasoning below, in spoilers since it's drifting off topic.

I gladly agree that a lot of modern games use it - Because their ratings aren't meant to accurately reflect skill in the first place. Since you brought up LoL, LoL uses a hidden MMR as "skill rating" to match you, which has nothing to do with your visible League rating. They are quite aware that it's stupid to change a skill rating when skill isn't even concerned, so they implemented a separate progression system so they can punish you for misbehavior (like queue dodging) without affecting your skill rating.

And this split is something you can abuse to a degree, I did that one myself for the lulz once: You could dodge your promo series in champ select and it would count as a loss. Your MMR was unaffected. If you kept playing and winning, your MMR would rise and you'd be matched with better players, but by dodging, you stayed a dirty bronze scrub as far as the League system is concerned. And then you scrape Diamond and everyone is losing their minds over the bronze guy in their group.
It was a world of fun! You got WTF messages every other game. And it was probably the reason why they later implemented the automatic promotion - They probably didn't enjoy people leading their smoke and mirror league system ad absurdum all that much.

Not sure how other games handle it - Once a feature is "established", a lot of developers simply copy it without thinking about it and the ranking system in this game is probably one of the better examples of that. They aren't much better than normal people in that regard.

That said, since this game's rating doesn't have much to do with skill either - there are people not just rising, but rising into the highest echelons by losing more often than they win since Season 1 - there is no harm in making it even less so. I just find the ranking as such increasingly pointless, but I suppose it is a form of progression system and people don't really care about it being more.


That aside... 20 games per reset? Assume 5 minute match length, 15 minute queue (optimistic guess) and you end up with almost 7 hours playtime dedicated solely to holding your Feast rating every week. Yikes! That's a lot.

For perspective, even in League of Legends Master and Challenger tiers (Top 0,07%), you only need to play roughly 1 game a day (7 a week), with up to 10 bank slots. Gold and below (85%) doesn't have a decay at all and the rest between doesn't start decaying until 28 days of inactivity, even 1 game will suffice to clear that. In other words: For 99,93% of the ranked playerbase, the rating decay will amount to one game a month at most. That doesn't increase queue activity much, does it? If we generously assume 10,000 players play Feast and translate the numbers, only the top 7 players would have to play more than 1 match a month. My, that's gonna speed up queues tremendously!
More than that, all ranks above gold only get the same rewards gold gets in a different color, yet gold doesn't have decay at all. The main reward spots that award the exclusive skin aren't even affected by decay. For them, that's ~ the top 40%. For us, that would probably be the top 100 reward.

In the light of this... do you really think they do their rating decay to prevent people from sitting on rewards and increase activity? Do you think it a practical measure? One game a month at most for 99,93% of the population? Practical? Really? It isn't. Translate the numbers to our playerbase and you can easily see how tiny the effect on activity actually is. If they really do it for that reason, it isn't fulfilling its purpose very well - I'm more inclined to think they simply want some movement in those highly visible top spots. I can't think of any game that has rating decay as strict as you suggest, most of decay implementations have such a small effect on activity that it's doubtful that is their main purpose.

That all said: That still doesn't help on the way to find an endgame. Segregation requires participation, which, in lieu of people playing it for the heck of it, requires rewarding said participation. At the same time, you don't just want to reward participation alone, because you also want people to try. And any reward you do use is only a temporary drive. Odds aren't exactly great.