Thread: FFXIV 5.0 PvP + Feast feedback

Below you will find issues regarding Tanks and other issues in Feast after a few weeks of playing. Many issues exist for all roles and I implore others to provide feedback so that the developers may gain a better understanding of how their game mode is operating right now.

Tanks

Tanks no longer feel like Tanks. The removal of Tank Stances and other important defensive actions and abilities absolutely gutted their natural base survivability and an element of skill that used to exist by managing it. Many Tanks feel and play like a DPS job now, which is fun for offense but incredibly frustrating when attempting to play defensive. Tanks can no longer safely or reliably pick up and hold medals in their current state, leading to games with massive kill and point swings. In addition, due to their new kits, the reliability of a Tank to be able to CC and control a fight, both from an offensive and defensive perspective, has been severely reduced. There are many instances now as a Tank where you truly feel like you cannot contribute to protecting your team or enabling/initiating an attack on the enemy. Inclusion of AOE abilities on every Tank feels forced and very poorly thought out, these abilities should be specialized into certain Tank jobs while the others have other unique strengths, as many of them currently conflict with some of the kits they are included in. Good Tanks no longer have the ability to impact and contribute to a game in a similar manner as they used to, leading to frustrating and confusing gameplay patterns for the role as a whole.

• Base survival severely lowered by removal of Tank stances, many personal and utility buffs were removed as well such as important old role actions like Recuperate. Layer of skill that was present in turning on/off your Tank stance to enable more damage at a risk is no longer available to skilled players.


•Access to Crowd Control (CC) abilities no longer reliable or readily available. A base 30s CD on stuns for 3 out of the 4 Tanks is atrocious in such a fast-paced game mode. This leads to situations where you feel like you cannot contribute to your team in a meaningful way when leading an attack or protecting from the enemy.



•Play too much like a DPS now, not enough utility or protection for their team to feel like Tanks contribute in a unique way other than damage.


•Utility abilities feel underwhelming aside from TBN and promote unhealthy or counter-intuitive gameplay patterns. Aurora feels underwhelming with no immediate impact. Cover ends up killing the Paladin more times than saving a teammate.



•Inclusion of AOE on every Tank is confusing and feels forced. Specialize AOE into certain Tank jobs and let others have access to other niches such as healing or debuffs.



•Tanks no longer feel like they have special purposes. PLD no longer feels like the defensive tank. Warrior no longer feels like the offensive tank. All tanks play in a similar aggressive fashion with minor differences and very few standout notables.


•Removal of utility weaponskill combos (Halone, Butcher’s Block, Power Slash) no longer present Tank players the option of applying their debuffs or building gauge based on the situation needed.


There are many other issues that currently exist outside of Tanks in regards to The Feast. This is just one small portion of the wider issue that many roles are dealing with in regards to playing the new PvP. Melee Limit Break is currently too powerful and not mitigated by anything. DPS jobs have terrible survivability with the removal of Safeguard and Recuperate from their additional actions, which in turn removes a layer of skill that used to exist in playing around these actions. Healers no longer have enough defensive tools or MP resources to deal with the unrelenting damage numbers being pumped out on their own. Cover now kills the Paladin more often than it saves a teammate. Scholar Seraph uses unreliable Pet AI in PvP to keep teammates “alive”. There are issues in all fronts that came from the massive amount of changes we received at once.

Conclusion

Too many levers and variables were pulled and adjusted in the transition from Stormblood to Shadowbringers Feast PvP. While some jobs play great in PvP now, others feel as if they are facing an identity crisis. Many jobs went from feeling smooth with well-defined burst patterns and gameplay options to now feeling clunky and unintuitive to play. Roles such as Tank and Healer have had many of their tools stripped away, making them feel hopeless in many situations when they used to be able to skillfully handle them. Kills no longer feel rewarding to obtain, as the coordination and planning that used to be required to obtain them by outplaying your enemy and their own defensives is no longer needed. The presence and frequency of these defensive options have all been severely reduced or outright removed, leading to a gameplay flow that encourages unfun, sloppy, and chaotic 10+ kill matches where neither team feels like they can stop deaths from happening.

When the luster of the new PvP kits wears off, many Feast players will find competitive matches increasingly frustrating and unfun to play. In addition, the new system is less new-player friendly than Stormblood, which will only encourage more players to avoid PvP due to poor initial reactions. There is no one single culprit to point towards in regards to improving Feast and PvP right now. Our issues stem from a combination of many factors and variables that were changed simultaneously that has lead to our current status of messy gameplay. A lot of work needs to be done and needs to be done soon. Simple potency adjustments are not adequate in fixing our current situation. Entire kits, game-mode mechanics, and gameplay patterns must be adjusted with abilities being changed, removed, or added. Feast, and PvP in FFXIV in general, has always had massive potential to be a truly successful pillar of the game. However, over the years it has been curated in a way that is baffling to many dedicated players, and one that has caused many people to question the direction the game developers are intending for PvP to go. Frontlines, wolf marks, wolf collars, PvP GC level, rewards, datacenter PvP populations, etc all are in need of adjustments and have been for years now. Shadowbringers is no exception to some of the questionable changes PvP has had over the lifespan of the game, but players still remain optimistic. There is still great potential in Feast and PvP, but changes must be done with an expert’s touch to foster a healthy, competitive, and fun system for people of all skill levels to enjoy and appreciate.


Despite many flaws, there is still fun to be had in Feast. Some of the actions we received in the update open up a lot of new avenus of gameplay that are interesting and were not available beforehand. However, it is important to balance these new additions by not removing too much of what made the old version of the mode fun and balanced.