PVP System and Rewards

[Koya_Kazarishi]

honestly, i want the greyhound armor but i do NOT wanna suffer the lame ass quality pvp to get it :/ so i just afk/ low effort grind

[AchaNoYumi]

Hello!

I want to start out by sharing my sentiment with you on how stressful the game mode can be. Due to the lack of participation, unranked - silver games are heavily influenced by veteran PvPers who either took a break for a season or more, transferred to a new server which resets their rank, or by pvpers who are practicing new classes on alternate accounts. I can see how this makes the early climb very difficult as we encounter a problem of heavily one sided teams as opposed to having teams that are evenly balanced out. There is always the option of healing through these tiers, however I am not a healer in PvP, I do not perform well as a PvP healer, nor do I trust my latency and ping to heal if I were to get better at the class.

In my opinion, I feel like the decision SE made to apply the change to the starting rank tiers for each season killed the game mode more than helped it. From what I have observed, it has not only caused veteran players to stop playing as much as they used to, but it also heavily influenced the imbalance teams in the beginning rank tiers where as before it mixed a fairly larger group of experienced and non experienced players all in the same spot. While SE's tier system, in theory, would have worked perfectly if the game mode was more populated, the simple fact is that PvP has a very small community and these adjustments have not been beneficial to expanding or helping the community but rather contribute to harming it among other varying factors that are not applicable to this topic at the time.

I also heavily relate to your statement of having a life. To be quite frank with you, before I made the decision to switch jobs, I was completely incapable of enjoying this game's PvE content while learning how to keep up with the PvPers in ranked. My working hours were atrocious, always starting from 8:30AM Central and would not end for me until 7/8PM Monday through Friday. (It wasn't always like this at my job, but started to become rather consistent towards July 2018 up until I quit.) For me, I had to make a choice and give up on participating in PvE for this very reason even before my working hours became horrible. But that didn't mean I wanted to give up the content all together and I do feel like I unfortunately missed out on several wonderful aspects of this game despite being present for all of it. To top it all off, I also made the not so wise decision to sacrifice a lot of sleep to keep up with the boards on Primal, Aether, or both. I felt like I never had any time after work to enjoy this game nor was I confident enough in my skills to play the ranked mode only during the weekends and maintain top 100. All in all, it is definitely difficult to maintain top 100, do the PvE content, and maintain your life all at the same time and unless you're a God at this game, something is going to have to be sacrificed in order to get that top 100 until you've become skilled enough to keep a very high win rate.

The biggest problem, from what I can see, is that there is no middle ground for players to expand their ability to perform better in the Ranked PvP mode without making some huge point sacrifices to not only themselves, but the team members they get as well. I say this because the moment players get out of the silver tier, they are immediately thrown in with the veteran players who have dedicated their time in this game mode for years now. Unless some serious practicing and studying has been done, I can easily see how this is overwhelming for the newer players who had the patience to even climb through the heavily imbalanced unranked - silver tiers.

I wouldn't say all of the problems, but the majority of these problems stem from the how small the community is.... and the community is so small due to the multiple amount of issues, small or large, that have never appropriately been addressed.

While I do not believe re-releasing the top 100 rewards is the best way to go as it devalues the reward, I completely agree that there needs to be more incentive to bring newer players into this game mode. The small community has done it's fair share of work to expand it's community, however there is only so much that the community can do before these issues are passed on to the developers.

An example of this is that the only true reward gained out of participating in the ranked mode are indeed the Top 100 rewards... and for players who feel like they aren't able to commit or keep up with Top 100 have no true incentive in even playing the game mode. The weapons themselves are not impacting enough to farm out the seasons to gain wolf collars. So what's the point of dedicating to PvP when players can do savage raid content and actually feel like they are accomplishing something?

So until SE is able to work out the technical issues with the ranked mode that affects the community, help establish a middle ground for learning players, and create a true incentive to participate in PvP outside of just the Top 100 rewards... I'm afraid we're going to continue to see this game mode slowly die out.

[DrWho2010]

can't get everything. be satisfied with what you have, otherwise you're gonna have a rough time. collect every other mount that you can instead. I'm sure there are some pvp'ers out there that can't get other mounts because they don't have the skill to do some PVE stuffs.

[Theodric]

can't get everything. be satisfied with what you have, otherwise you're gonna have a rough time. collect every other mount that you can instead. I'm sure there are some pvp'ers out there that can't get other mounts because they don't have the skill to do some PVE stuffs.

That isn't something that works both ways. PvP enthusiasts can go back and get rewards from PvE after content is naturally nerfed over time. PvE enthusiasts cannot do the same for PvP as a lot of the rewards are only available for a very short period of time.

[Commander_Justitia]

That isn't something that works both ways. PvP enthusiasts can go back and get rewards from PvE after content is naturally nerfed over time. PvE enthusiasts cannot do the same for PvP as a lot of the rewards are only available for a very short period of time.

There are seasonal events, promotional items too, ultimate never gets nerfed. Players just don't like to see PvP content getting exclusive stuff because many don't really like the mode. Grinding for light in pagos is so much better after all.

Btw I don't think you guys got Karma reference to the OP post (who even reads that anymore), its just the other point of view. Don't take it literally lol

[Zensho]

PvP enthusiasts can go back and get rewards from PvE after content is naturally nerfed over time.

Yeah but those tournaments where the best of each data center show up and fight for top 100 is the farthest possible thing from "nerfed content" ... Let them have their prestige, you literally have everything else...

And actually, as PvPer mostly, it's kind of an insult to do pve content that was "nerfed".... I wouldn't touch that patronizing content with a 10 foot lance.

[Stormfur]

Sure, it's more of an achievement when you get it while it was difficult... but a lot of groups go back and do old stuff for fun, like getting all of the birds or even further back and getting the horses, especially if you started later in the game. Even in the FC I'm part of, we do retro raid nights where we'll go back and do Alexander Savage or something so that people get a new mount.

Let me spend my wolf collars on something other than weapons, already.

[AchaNoYumi]

You know, I have to say the difference between this PvE vs PvP enthusiasts argument that everyone tends to forget is the top 100 rewards are rewards granted to players who participated in the Ranked Competition hosted by Square Enix. PvE content like raiding isn't considered a competition between all Square Enix players unlike The Feast Top 100. The only true competition that I can think of that is comparable to The Feast in PvE is through FFLogs and parsing to which, as we all know, Square Enix doesn't truly condone.

But lets take a moment and pretend that parsing is legal and is now considered a competition that Square Enix is hosting: if there are rewards granted to the top 100 raiders with the best parses, the situation would remain the same in which those hardcore raiders would be absolutely livid if those rewards were given out to people who didn't earn them.

Raid clears and the items that are granted are just simply considered in a completely different category; Square Enix does not recognize raiding as a form of competing against other players, and the rewards from the moment they are released are considered to be accessible to everyone in the game.

So, at least from how I see it, using the ability to run old raid content unsynced and get those rewards granted by clearing old content does not provide a useful counter argument as to why Top 100 pvp rewards should be given out to players who didn't make it to Top 100 during the season.

Edit 2: This does, however, still brings up my point that The Feast does not provide amazing content that everyone can get! Sure, the weapons are cool looking, but not nearly as cool as some of the weapons you can get in clearing raid content! Therefore, this argument further proves my point that the Wolf Collars SHOULD HAVE BETTER, AWESOME REWARDS that everyone can get! These rewards should also be updated regularly! That will give so many players a reason to play the Feast even if they aren't aiming for Top 100!

[Atomusk]

I will bluntly say, no matter how much time I try, I can't stay on top 100.
I probably would have to play only PVP to get into it with my 10/100 win ration. But unfortunately I have life.

I'm just not good enough to reach it.
But I want the rewards, in the end after trying my best I feel depressed and disappointed as it seams I haven't got anything except dunno 5 wolf marks, that wont give me anything that I want.

Hmm What to do?
Git Gud I guess..

Hello fellow PVPER O/

I can understand your frustration, take it from a player who played since Season 1. Time and again I have failed, Season 2, Season 3, Season 4, and so on and so forth and I began to seek help to better improve my game (I doubted myself). Luckily I had someone teach me how to be a better player (Shotout to Esu) but even so I never got to top 100 until Season 9! Every Failure before that season was really tough for me, and I was even told I would never make it to top 100 by a few people in the pvp community, constantly bash for my dumb plays and I will admit that I am also at fault for losing control of myself and tilting in games I could have improved better. For me personally, Feast all came down to Motivation. I have seen many of my friends just up and quit once they reach Gold rank or Platinum, because they either let the toxicity get in their head or they themselves believed they could never improve.

When I reached top 100, it not only silence my critics but I did it under harsh circumstances. I was working for Mariott full time from 3 to 11PM and only had 2 hours to play on weekdays, I would sometimes get teammates they either didnt want to work with me or just threw the game. Again, extremely frustrating but never the less I continue to motivate myself because I wanted to own one of those rewards, I wanted to overcome those obstacles, and I did because I made it a goal to prove everyone wrong that said I couldn't do it! Now I'm a top 100 player for 3 seasons (Soon to be 4th), you just need to keep at it OP because like raid content you just need to pick yourself up and not back down from the adversities in front of you!

I also understand that everyone desires the rewards that is made available through each season of Feast. I do believe I know a solution to this that I already sent as a suggestion to SE that involves wolf collars. To me, what would be a perfect solution would be to make Mounts from past feast rewards be 150 Wolf collars and the Feast glamors can go around for 125 Wolf collars for a set. This would mean you would have to grind for the reward while also competing for the current rewards up thats up grabs, this is also so that the past season rewards don't lose its worth and value. Anyone can respect a player who got 150 wolf collars; it shows you were persistent and never gave up the good fight.

Believe in yourself, if you truly want something you'll get it

[AchaNoYumi]

See? Even top 100 pvpers have different opinions on the top 100 feast rewards. Haha. Good post Syrith, that was a very motivating read. ^_^