An argument and plea for more actions in PVP

[Aviars]

From transitioning from Heavensward to Stormblood, PVP experienced a massive revamp, the biggest changes being the drastic cuts to the number of actions available to players in PVP and the changes between the relationship between Diminishing returns and Crowd Control abilities. In contrast 3.x easily provided 30+ actions available while 4.x only provided 9 actions plus 2, ELEVEN. Where crowd control could be used up to three times in a row but had a 1 minute diminishing return to being only able to stun once every 10-15 seconds. It is easy to see the rationale behind this massive change and that was to make the game easier to encourage your normal player to give PVP a shot. However SE unfortunately did not have the foresight to see the negative effects that such a change would bring with such a reduction of skill needed to be successful in a PVP game. This post is made to both tell you the negative effects of these changes and BEG SE to make the game take skill again, otherwise PVP as a whole will continue to suffer.


If everyone can do it, then skill doesn't matter

What was lost

Now the most accurate metaphors I can use with comparing 3.x to 4.x in terms of skill is that 3.x is like Chess while 4.x is like checkers. One is has infinitely more variations in moves and plays that you can use to muscle out a win compared to the other and 4.x style pvp severely limits players choices in comparison to 3.x pvp and I will provide a few examples from a healer point of view in how 4.x LOST a lot of depth in gameplay with the changes.

• Purify
  
  While purify wasn't explicitly removed from the game but might as well have in favor of something completely different, it experienced a massive change in its scope and overall effect that removed a lot of the choice and skill involved in using it. Prior to 4.x purify removed ALL debuffs from a target, could be used on yourself AND other teammates while also having a much longer cooldown. 4.x purify in comparison is only on a 30 second cooldown and only removes crowd control effects from YOURSELF and cannot be used on others.
  
  3.x purify was stronger, but had a longer cooldown. That made the ability take more skill in that you had MANY choices in how to use it but using it made you or your teammates vulnerable to the MANY OTHER events that could potentially swing the game away from your favor. In addition to obvious crowd control effects, you had very dangerous debuffs such as Full swing that increased damage taken by up to 20%, and you also had the choice to remove all debuffs such as DoTs to stop a burst from hitting you to hard. There is no such choice with 4.x pvp. Along with a very short cooldown, the choice to use purify are much more obvious and clear than purify of the past. It is certain that purify in the past had much more depth to it and interesting uses compared to the current purify.
  
  
• Surecast
  
  In the past it was possible to be interrupted by just straight damage if a single damage ability hit you hard enough. Surecast prevented your cast from being interrupted in such a way for one cast and was a bread and butter ability that when used correctly could save your life when you happened to be focused and if used at the wrong time could spell out your death. Healers no longer have this option in 4.x and as it stands you don't even get interrupted by damage anymore. This removed a level of skill that only a higher tier of healer could achieve compared to their peers and it is sad that SE removed an ability that, while very simple, added a lot to show a difference between the average healers from the amazing ones.
  
• Repose
  
  I know a lot for people from back in the day have strong feelings regarding this ability but it still showed a very clear difference of use and effectiveness from weaker players to the strongest. Those players who were weaker and not as in tune with using repose would either let a teammate/themselves die or they would be put in a bad position that would put them very far behind in some way. These weaker players would also either manage the diminishing return badly resulting in weaker reposes over a longer period of time or use it on targets that were potentially going to be hit more often. Stronger players would have varying levels of success with repose, and that success would be clearly shown in the leaderboards in comparison of their peer white mages. Being able to manage repose and keeping your team/yourself alive took a lot of awareness and skill. Now there is no such thing anymore.
  

While those abilities were not the only abilities otherwise removed or gutted many other jobs such as a majority of melee jobs would lose the ability to stun people, DPS in general lost a lot in terms requirements to burst. Back then Monks had to manage their twin snake buff in addition to making sure they had buffs like internal release/blood for blood available with five chakras, tornado kick and a multitude of ogcd abilities. Now the burst is strictly limited to having chakra and greased lightning with the additional ogcds restricted to somersault.

Everyone can do everything

Now how exactly does this make everyone the same and how exactly is that a detriment to the game? When you remove the amount of depth/choice in a game what you are doing is restricting people in a smaller and smaller space to the point where everyone can realistically pull off the same burst/actions other people can do no matter what the skill level is. To make an extreme example if all jobs were just 1-2 buttons how exactly would people differentiate themselves from others in terms of skill? I guess coordinating with your teammates for a kill? Well that is exactly what Stormblood PVP is. The only real "skill" displayed is shown through your teamwork, and not your mechanics or personal skill.

In the case of solo que in particular you get a situation where it becomes just luck of whether or not you are capable of communicating effectively in your team, which is impossible due to restrictions to chat and a lack of voice chat. The game is designed in a way where any type of burst perfectly coordinated with achieve a kill, and since EVERYONE can burst in the most efficient manner then the only thing that matters is the timing, which can be quite variable despite your own skill level. You can be as good as you want, if you don't coordinate with your team or have someone who can't coordinate with you well enough then you won't get kills, this is why culling 5 is so common even without paladins.

The same problem happens when healers are so easy to play compared to the past. Healer has to be be strong to a degree since they have to counter the moves of 3 other players. And when you make dps and tanks easy to play, you have to do the same for healers. And since there is such a thin line coming in between a kill and not a kill more often than not you don't get a kill due to the even slight disconnects of coordination between the two dps and the tank. Therefore a lot of the time culling is required to get a kill. Such power also affects the world outside of Feast in that Rival Wings itself has experienced a Meta of just pure healers. Healer is easy to play yet impossible to kill by even one person.

How casualization harmed ladder

With the reduction of skill across the board, it can be easy to see that more players would be able to compete with even the top players. In the past, Heavensward always had activity in the lower ranks as well as the higher ranks. Season 3 and Season 4 especially in that unranked to silver games were popping relatively often even by the later stages of the season, which were all 4 months or more by the way. In contrast Stormblood unranked and silver games are basically dead by the middle of a season. And seasons now only last FIVE-SIX WEEKS at most and games for lower tiers are basically dead by the end of a season. Why the drastic change from Heavensward to Stormblood? I thought simplification of the game was supposed to attract more casuals not scare them away? The honest truth is that simplification has literally elevated anyone who isn't literally a bot or basically doing nothing to higher tiers that they otherwise would not be in if the game actually took more skill like Heavensward did. If everyone is able to waltz their way out of silver and lower by applying little effort, you have a dead game mode for the lower set of tiers in this game. You might as well not have a ladder at that point because if anyone can potentially get into platinum then there is no reason to restrict Diamond players to just playing with platinums. You already have players that would normally be kept lower down in the tiers that the system is supposed to prevent you being matched up with in the first place.

Healthy PVP REQUIRES skill in order to separate players into appropriate tiers that they belong in. Both for the sake of having actual balanced games and so people can start playing whenever they wish instead of being forced to start playing right away. It actually makes me sad that SE continues to shorten the seasons in a vain attempt to make unranked to silver tier not die out before it ends only to find that it dies out even faster. That isn't to mention that shorter seasons also make the ladder balancing itself out close to impossible. Almost all games will be considered unfair in some way or another, all because the season is so short.

Games are very predictable

Not much to say about this, but with the changes made with pvp have made the games just a constant cycle of burst wait burst wait burst wait every 30 seconds or so. It is ultimately uninteresting in my opinion and the lack of depth I explained earlier makes the decision making displayed in most games uninteresting as well.

Diminishing returns, why what we have now is awful

During Heavensward diminishing returns where far longer, taking up to a minute for a certain crowd control ability from last use, with you becoming immune from such effects after third use (other than silence). In stormblood the diminishing return is now only 10-15 seconds with the crowd control only being allowed to be used once before the target becoming immune. The implication here is that in heavensward stun and other crowd control was considered a valuable resource that PUNISHED you if it was used wrong. Now in stormblood you can barely call it a resource anymore, it is basically always available when you need it and even bad use of it can be quite effective. This fact also contributes to how it ultimately makes the game feel uninteresting. When stun/silence/root/sleep is ALWAYS there when you need it how can you consider its use impressive in any way?

Conclusion

In the end, simplification harms the game in many ways. Games are unbalanced, ladder is a mess from dead ques and locking out the part of the playerbase that it was meant to attract, people climbing to where they don't deserve, experienced players quitting due to an uninteresting game state. I can only describe Stormblood PVP as SE creating solutions to problems that create more problems, when the biggest problem from the beginning was the first "fix" which was making the game simpler. Many of the problems SE has tried to fix in stormblood was NOT a problem in heavensward. Longer seasons were not a problem in heavensward, then they did become a problem in Stormblood due to dead unranked and silver tiers which shortening the season did not help it just accelerated the death of those tiers popping.

While I understand that Square Enix cannot make a drastic change right now, I am literally begging SE to PLEASE make PVP have a similar amount of actions to PVE by the next expansion. If PVE players can handle the amount of buttons they have, PVP can too. It is EXTREMELY important that players in PVP can differentiate themselves from others with raw mechanical skill rather than just being able to land burst at the end of a countdown.

Thank you for reading, feel free to discuss whether you agree or disagree and I will do my best to respond.

[Crit]

add more buttons so I can win more, thanks

[AirWeaver]

Hello I disagree as a controller player adding more buttons will only complicate my game more I work full time and also am a student, reworking my controller hotbar for more buttons and abilities means I have to take the time to get used to where I put those said abis, time which I don't have

[Aviars]

Hello I disagree as a controller player adding more buttons will only complicate my game more I work full time and also am a student, reworking my controller hotbar for more buttons and abilities means I have to take the time to get used to where I put those said abis, time which I don't have

If you can do it in PVE you can do it in PVP, thank you.

[DiademIsGreat]

too many buttons make the game too hard for me ><

[Mutemutt]

I do want more skills, but I disagree with a lot of OP's points.

Truth be told, I much prefer the current CC game more than HW's. There's less stun locking flying around but CC is also in play more often. I feel like it has also made the classes that do have access to the various CC abilities more important I guess.

I also remember the old pvp being similarly predictable, probably because of the reliance on pve skills and their really long cooldowns. I played mch back then and I remember raging strikes and ricochet being a big thing for burst.

And I just don't like the idea of being able to pretty much carry a team solo, at least not past the really, really early ranks.

[joep]

They won't add as many PvE abilities to PvP, this isn't 3.X anymore. But what SE should do is give each job 2 more abilities each expansion. That, along with new jobs being added in the future, will keep PvP feeling fresh and different.

Also, more wolf collar rewards.

[Aviars]

I do want more skills, but I disagree with a lot of OP's points.

Truth be told, I much prefer the current CC game more than HW's. There's less stun locking flying around but CC is also in play more often. I feel like it has also made the classes that do have access to the various CC abilities more important I guess.

I also remember the old pvp being similarly predictable, probably because of the reliance on pve skills and their really long cooldowns. I played mch back then and I remember raging strikes and ricochet being a big thing for burst.

And I just don't like the idea of being able to pretty much carry a team solo, at least not past the really, really early ranks.

CC being in play more often makes the game predicable. That's what makes the current meta game constant burst attempts off stuns/silences with burst that takes little set up. It also means that CC in general takes a lot less thought and is not punished as much if it happens to go wrong, because you will have another chance to do it in just 10-15seconds.

Old PVP doesn't strike me as predicable compared to stormblood pvp. When you watch a samurai in the current game what do you expect from them other than a dash into a midari? Then rinse and repeat until you are successful? With the way jobs were in the past being able to potentially get a kill on their own with the right circumstances, you had a lot more variety in how a game could unfold.

I don't see the problem with carrying in solo play. If you think a person deserves to be dragged down by their teammates by purposefully reducing the number of actions they have access to then I find that strange. In a game with a healthy population this wouldn't necessarily be a issue. You would have plats with plats, diamonds with diamonds, high diamonds with other high diamonds etc. So artificially lowering people's ability to play better and making everyone the same is just a cheap fix to a problem it shouldn't have to fix. Fix player participation by making better PVP modes and offering more incentive to play with rewards for the average player.

Objectively speaking lowering the number of actions has not even helped participation. Rival Wings has been dead for a long time and in retrospect Rival Wings has died due to the game being so simple that everyone literally just plays healer. Rivals Wings not being pvp but a resource collection game.

They won't add as many PvE abilities to PvP, this isn't 3.X anymore. But what SE should do is give each job 2 more abilities each expansion. That, along with new jobs being added in the future, will keep PvP feeling fresh and different.

Also, more wolf collar rewards.

Honestly I don't know why you would suggest adding 2 abilities per expansion, why not suggest what you think should be a hard cap on the number of abilities and have them just do it immediately upon expansion release? I personally believe 20-25 + 2 additionals is fair.

[BloodRubyXII]

I work full time and also am a student, reworking my controller hotbar for more buttons and abilities means I have to take the time to get used to where I put those said abis, time which I don't have

Please enough with the full-time work/student defence, you do have the time, you just can't be bothered. Almost all of us lot on ladder work too.

[joep]

Honestly I don't know why you would suggest adding 2 abilities per expansion, why not suggest what you think should be a hard cap on the number of abilities and have them just do it immediately upon expansion release? I personally believe 20-25 + 2 additionals is fair.

It should be a gradual process, not overwhelm players with 25 abilities in PvP again. Even with 9 buttons right now, a very small percentage of players have managed to completely master a single job in PvP.

I mean, I’ve seen it on your stream as well. You get frustrated with your teammates at times when they don’t use their safeguard or TBN. Now imagine introducing 15 more abilities all of a sudden. It would be overwhelming to most players.

As a WoW PvP player, I love having lots of abilities, trust me. There is room for higher individual skill and you can carry more. But this game and their community isn’t quite there yet. And I think things should be implemented one step at a time and not in giant leaps.