5.1x PvP preliminary feedback

[SimonYorke]

Just a few points I wanted to touch on re: 5.1 feedback based on what we've seen as of this morning's live letter.

Frontlines:

• New map: Looks great. Wanted to see the Nadaam in a PVP context, wish fulfilled, looks fun as fuck. A+++
  
  
• Party size limits: While I understand that 8 man premades tend to run the show and PERSONALLY feel that a 4 person limit on premades does address that, this does feel like a bit too strict of a limit that has a much larger effect on those more passionate/interested in PvP over anybody else and directly reduces the ability for not just PvP communities but FCs, linkshells, static raid groups to play together. This is especially strange since the mode itself doesn't have any competitive rankings or rewards beyond overall wins achievements. Further, I'd emphasize that currently established PvP communities (PvPaissa, Revival Wings among others) do not look very positively on this change for the aforementioned reasons. The mode is already being referred to as Flatlines now.
  
  I feel like the better solution here would be to give more incentive queuing as a group - bonus marks, tomes, EXP, something of that nature based on the size of the premade. There's already a limit to the carry potential of an 8 man premade just by virtue of teams scaling up to 24 players - This feels like, despite the intention, it may end up doing more harm than good.
  
  
• 72 Player match restriction:A t the moment activity might seem fine, but there's a real worry in the community that once the novelty of the new map wears off that queues are going to suffer the same fate as Rival Wings - Once the novelty wore off initially, it required the creation of a community centered around coordinating queue pops across different datacenters (shoutouts to Revival Wings for this). With Rival Wings having a hard requirement of 48 total players requiring that much effort (and sometimes not seeing success!), there's a sentiment that it's going to require an even larger effort just to get Frontlines modes to pop.
  
  On top of that, the removal of the smaller scale versions of the mode feels kinda bad. One of the most common complaints I see about people who dip their toes into PvP is that it's very hard to gauge individual contribution in a match, and 72 mans amplify this by quite a lot.
  
  Requiring 72 players for Frontlines (especially coupled with the change to premade party sizes) is going to significantly affect the queues - I'd walk this change back entirely, honestly.

[SimonYorke]

Feast/General:

• What's getting changed? This is kind of a long-running issue that applies outside of PvP as well, but it's always felt very odd (and honestly, rather frustrating) that PvP changes tend to get very glossed-over. We got a lot of large changes to PvP for 5.0 that we as a community didn't even know about until the patch notes for Shadowbringers came out - This was really frustrating as someone who greatly enjoys the competitive PvP in this game. While I know that live letters tend to be more of a brief summary of all the various changes, I know a large portion of the community would greatly appreciate a bit more detail in advance.
  
  This applies to PvE job changes as well, and it doesn't necessarily need to be something along the lines of a verbatim reading of the changelog on a stream, but even just a short but somewhat more detailed digest of changes (for PvP and/or PvE!) would go a long way in getting the PvP community hyped up about what's new. Really, even just a bit more communication in general would go a long way - As of right now, people are pouring over the footage released in the live letter just trying to see what might be changed!

Tl;dr version: Incentivize full premades, don't split them apart; nadaam looks cool as heck; consider rethinking the match size requirements for Frontlines; please communicate changes with us a bit more beyond telling us that they're coming. We want to be hyped up, too!

Thanks to the folks over in PvPaissa for providing additional feedback to add to this thread, and community/dev team, if you read this: thanks in advance.

[Shinklet]

I'll say it again, other devs, Blizzard, gamigo, even jagex give detailed insights and explanations of what they want to do with pvp in their games dating months in advance.

We can't even get correct tool tips 3 months into an expansion. That's after pvp updates get tacked on to the very bottom of patch notes, almost like they'd almost Forgotton it exists.

Pvp is an after thought, whenever you feel like 'pvp is finally going to be good again!' you get reminded that there is no pvp team responsible for this mode.

I wouldn't be surprised now, if 5.1 we get the fl stuff, then 5.15 we get a few tweaks and changes and with 5.2 we get our first season after almost a year.

And we better hope we enjoy the pvp balance in 5.1 because we're going to be stuck with it for over two more years if shb is an indication.

[Shpy]

Honestly SE should invest into making a test server or a pbe to get the feel of changes before they release the patch so not just everyone that plays pvp but everyone in general can be more satisfied with the changes before a new patch rolls instead of just dropping the patch and leaving many players unsatisfied for the next month or two, it's not hard to do SE.

[Feves]

Speaking on the Party size limit. It is really sad that I have to pick and choose which friends of mine I want to queue for Frontlines with. While yes, our group of 8 could go against an entire Grand Company at times and still win - I don't see why we should be punished. I doubt we would win in this case if those enemy players were actually passionate about PvP and not in for the rewards you place there to buff activity. People who want to get rewards from PvP but treat it as PvE. Is this change to make it easier for these people?

Do you know how I have to defend actually killing players in 72 matches because people who come here for rewards think that the PvE (Drones, Tomes and Ice) are worth way more than PvPing? In a PvP mode?

Please provide better resources to boost player skill and keep people playing PvP and not complete each PvE objective then run from any PvP fight. By adding so many PvE elements and then locking rewards such as Garo or Mog Tomes behind Frontlines to artificially boost activity SE created this Premade dominating problem.

[rustybucket]

Speaking on the Party size limit. It is really sad that I have to pick and choose which friends of mine I want to queue for Frontlines with. While yes, our group of 8 could go against an entire Grand Company at times and still win - I don't see why we should be punished. I doubt we would win in this case if those enemy players were actually passionate about PvP and not in for the rewards you place there to buff activity. People who want to get rewards from PvP but treat it as PvE. Is this change to make it easier for these people?

Do you know how I have to defend actually killing players in 72 matches because people who come here for rewards think that the PvE (Drones, Tomes and Ice) are worth way more than PvPing? In a PvP mode?

Please provide better resources to boost player skill and keep people playing PvP and not complete each PvE objective then run from any PvP fight. By adding so many PvE elements and then locking rewards such as Garo or Mog Tomes behind Frontlines to artificially boost activity SE created this Premade dominating problem.

Lol.......

[_Azura_]

The party size limit really ruins the fun in frontlines. Most of my friends and I enjoy playing frontlines together for the majority of our playtime and now we'll have to pick and choose which friends to play with. The new map looks like a lot of fun but I'm really disappointed in the party limit and the removal of 24s.

I understand the devs want to cater to more casual players and get them involved in frontlines, but these changes are alienating the veterans and the regular frontline players. Even if they wanted to discourage the use of premades, removing 24man mode is enough to stop a premade from dominating a game since they can't control what the other 48+ players are doing in 72man mode.

I guarantee that the queues will die out after people get their achievements, just like Rival Wings.

[Crit]

Now all the FL heroes got their premade antics ruined! Hooray team!! We won!!! Now we can enjoy frontlines peacefully and without getting stomped!! Positive changes Square Enix, keep it up ������

[Coopa]

Now all the FL heroes got their premade antics ruined! Hooray team!! We won!!! Now we can enjoy frontlines peacefully and without getting stomped!! Positive changes Square Enix, keep it up ������

aint you just get ***** by maels 24\7 cuz other gc seems like never wins without random premades

[hynaku]

Now all the FL heroes got their premade antics ruined! Hooray team!! We won!!! Now we can enjoy frontlines peacefully and without getting stomped!! Positive changes Square Enix, keep it up ������

Good luck with those new super long queue times your going to get after the changes. It make you wish they didn't happen.