PvP in this game is an afterthought and it shows

[Commander_Justitia]

I know there's gonna be a ton of you replying to this with "I've been playing since Season 1 of FEAST, PVP has some small issues but you're overreacting, the PVP system is fine".

No, you have something called Stockholm Syndrome

I've been playing since Season 1 of The Feast. Already before season 4 ended, we got a sneak preview of how PvP will be in the new expansion/season 5. It was the great PvP overhaul, because in their opinion, the system was too complex, too uninvinting too new players, too many debuffs/buffs to track ~too hardcore.

We didn't have all the information at that point yet, so people stayed optimistic largely (despise the large degree of casualization visible in the videos): "hey just let's try it out, maybe it's fun, it looks like a solid basis to built more stuff on, pvp get's some changes finally - cool".
Up to that point that was the most fun I had in PvP and especially frontline. Spoiler: They didn't really built more customization/skills on it.


There has been a lot of feedback to PvP, especially after those big changes. Players probably hoped it would be a start of a new era.
The only thing we got was:

-A new map replacing the old ones, in the same blue style. (most dislike that style by now, because its been years playing on the same map, while there are other maps already from earlier seasons available; WoW started with 3 arena maps as example -and gets 1-3 new arena maps per expansion)

-The removal of heavy/light medals (asked for since forever, probably a good change, even though it was a noobfilter in s1-s4 because you could take way too many medals and you were 1shot then because of the dmg amplification)

-hud, macro and quickchat updates (some hud options are now worse and less easy to see than before, especially medal overview is tiny while being the most important stat)

-job adjustments and more recently 2-3 more additional skills for more aoe utility/dmg and potions (the aoe skills are not very useful in feast so this is a frontline update tbh, potions benefits players who use them very late when they are almost dead, it creates rng and unfairness just like heavy/light medals did and they scale with healing+ abilities, which makes them a bit overpowered at times, again this seems to be a frontline update// recuperate in Feast was good and smooth to use, we didnt need potions)
Maybe we need a seperation between frontline and feast skills -> customization...

Then there is the lack of general communication which haunts us since years as well. We don't know what their plan is until the day it happens. You don't know if it's time to create a light party team for a light party season for example. It takes time to find a team.
Then you get a season happening after 7 months, and they have to apologize that their seasonal rewards that are given out by a npc (happened every previous season since implementation), can't give them out because they were not finished with the changes. Apparently it would have been ready after 9 months, but the community demanded a season, so it is our fault for asking tbh.

Then they are promoting new frontline maps they released. They are promoting it by cutting off the access to the older maps... A daily roulette that exist out of 1 map is not a roulette.

I think ultimately nobody of the PvP players would have asked for such a big PvP overhaul after S4, you can give feedback and hope that some day something changes into the right direction again. But you know they won't put too many resources in PvP anyway, they are more busy with so many other things. So that is just reality, the PvP could be a lot better and a lot more fun as they already have old system that would make a lot of sense rn. But as long as the community doesn't care about it and just keeps putting it in the meme corner, where I think it does't need to belong (its not that far off other mmo PvP systems, they actually have all the basis/tools necessary) we won't see too many changes.
But yeah, try asking for 1 new The Feast map for years. Try asking for more meaningful customization (like a build, we had warriors able to use "Muse" a MP regeneration skill in the past, when warriors didn't need any MP, it was not a choice to use the remaining useful skills...)
Picture of old customization:


They even have some really REALLY cool skills in the game, which they don't allow atm for PvP or just slowly brought them back... after 2-4years.



But they made the mistake, making some of these skills weak, as a part of the AoE combo, which is pretty boring and not useful.
They were really high cooldown, instant use skills. They had an impact on the game, because they had an EFFECT/BUFF/DEBUFF and NOT because they did aoe dmg.


Take Tar Pit for DRk, a skill that creates a slowing puddle around the DRK, that selfheals him for the dmg others take within it, sounds like such a fun skill.

Take Sacred Prism for Whitemage, a skill that makes you scream at your teammates to stand in the prism to take 40% reduced physical dmg, big numbers, cause the damage buff of dps player had big numbers too. Now we have temperance, just use it and forget, no counterplay possible.

Take mch and brd ability to give their healer MP as support skill.
Ofc these values would have to be adjusted for the new PvP, but at the moment FUN should be more important than everything else for the developers of this mode. Let us have overpowered skills, let us have new maps.

A bit more job uniqueness wouldn't hurt PvP.

So yeah, after all this time you can stay skeptical, imo it's not worth to spend too much time on PvP as SE aren't doing it either(the developer probably has his hands full cause he has to do it all alone :P ). So just enjoy what you can or play other games.