A player thinks, frankly, too much about improving PvP

[Tristamwolf]

Despite being popular among certain groups of players, PvP seems to have a relatively low engagement amongst players within the FFXIV Community. I feel that there are a few key factors to this which may have gone partially or completely overlooked by the FFXIV Development Team, so I wanted to write a bit to those points. I believe that there is a significant barrier to entry for new PvP players, that the Frontlines Daily Roulette fails to address that gap while simultaneously disguising the fact that PvP is not very popular, and that the reward structures for PvP are not currently engaging enough to fully convince players to participate in PvP as an experience and, in fact, may be specifically driving some players AWAY from PvP content.

PvP is challenging. There is never a situation where facing off with another player will be easy, but that challenge provides a definitive barrier to entry which needs to be overcome in order to reach a level of competency necessary to compete in certain PvP modes such as The Feast. The development of a system to educate people on basic PvP strategies and abilities, similar to the “Hall of the Novice” for new players entering their first PvE Dungeons. This system could cover basic and perhaps intermediate strategies for players in each role to give them an idea of what they should and shouldn’t be focusing on during a typical match in The Feast and Frontlines. This would at least soften the Barrier to Entry experienced by most players who might be interested in joining PvP.

1/3

[Tristamwolf]

Unlike The Feast, though, Frontlines do tend to see regular play as indicated by Yoshi P in his recent Destructoid Interview. However, I believe this is not an indication that Frontlines are in a great place from the perspective of PvP players. Rather, the Daily Frontlines Roulette provides significant PvE EXP for any class without even requiring the player to play Frontlines on that class. This means that a significant number of players will play a single match of Frontlines PvP every day simply for the sake of leveling up their PvE classes and then not engage with the content again until the next reset. While we as players do not have direct access to this data, I would be willing to bet that the number of players who participate in more than one Frontlines match per day makes up a relatively small portion of the player base. This is not entirely negative, as it gives the players who ARE willing to engage more with the content a constant stream of opponents, but I would not necessarily consider it a full success of the PvP system to be used in this manner.

These other two issues could likely be ignored by the community to some degree if it were for the pursuit of some Awesome Loot. There are, in fact, a number of interesting glamour sets and a few other items available for Wolf Marks, the primary PvP currency which can be obtained from Frontlines. However, there aren’t enough items here to warrant most player engaging beyond their daily Frontlines roulettes, as most players won’t want to obtain every last Glamor Set and the bonus Wolf Marks from the daily Frontlines roulettes will allow them to quickly obtain everything they want from these vendors. Further, the most interesting pieces added as rewards for engaging with PvP in The Feast right now are locked to anyone who can’t achieve a ‘Top 100’ finish, with the only other Ranked Feast rewards being tokens towards a single Glamor set which not everyone may want. This means that unless players are good enough at PvP to believe they can finish in the Top 100 they are actively discouraged from participating by having the best rewards completely sealed off to them.

2/3

[Tristamwolf]

Thus far, this post has presented a lot of issues, but very little by way of solutions. I believe that all of these issues can be overcome without compromising FFXIV’s PvE experiences for the sake of better PvP systems. Firstly is the barrier to entry to PvP in general, which I could be overcome by re-imagining the “Hall of the Novice” for PvP as a new system, perhaps something like “Hall of the Young Wolf” which prepares players for the various challenges they’ll face in the Wolves Den and other PvP areas. Secondly is the imbalance in player base towards Frontlines due to the daily ExP bonus. This is more difficult to address, but I would suspect that a combination of a few tactics could be used to overcome this such as adding Rival Wings to the Frontlines Daily Roulette challenge as a rebranded ‘Daily PvP Roulette’ and providing a once daily EXP buff for The Feast could at least increase the volume of players engaging with The Feast at some level during PvP seasons. Finally, rewards (especially for The Feast) simply aren’t at a place where they’re encouraging many players to engage with the content repeatedly. In this case, the gap between receiving ‘effectively nothing’ and ‘unique, one of a kind Mount’ is simply too large for players to bother engaging with the content, so finding ways to make more/better rewards available to more players will draw players in. As an example, moving the mount rewards to ‘All players Gold or Better’, with Top 100 receiving either a special version of the mount or a special weapon similar to the Ultimate Raid weapons would encourage far more players to engage with PvP by making significant, worthwhile rewards accessible to more players while still providing specialized rewards for the very best players, and introducing something like short term Frontlines ‘Seasons’ which give rewards based more on participation (perhaps with a bonus for placement) could create more hype and engagement around Frontlines in these timeframes.

Overall, I really feel like PvP can be quite fun but currently needs some updates or improvements to encourage players to engage with it as more than an EXP fountain for their PvE classes. I hope that I’ve been able to clearly explain my mindset without boring people too much with this 1000+ word post about a system players some players seem to simply not care about. Thank you all for reading and considering, and I look forward to any feedback you might have to provide.

TL;DR: PvP is currently not as accessible or rewarding as it could be, and there’s a lot of ways to improve on that which I feel are worth discussing.

P.S: I know that PvP discussions can get a bit heated at times, but I ask that everyone keep an open mind with regards to the general ideas I’ve presented here. I won’t be engaging with anyone that can’t at least be cordial, and I ask that everyone else take a similar stance.

3/3

[Sauteed]

I don't want to discourage any honest hope to see PvP improve, but some thoughts from me are that rewards will not improve the pvp experience, there are new rewards for me to grind for, but i have no intention to pvp to get the rewards, because in my opinion the pvp itself is horrible and I do not enjoy it at all. It is a shallow husk of what it is supposed to be I think. It offers nothing outside of a mount here, or a glam there, maybe orchestrion rolls which to me are the only slightly tempting thing I'll endure it for but I've as of yet to build up the desire to go for that. If something needs rewards to make it something you would play it is a good indication that the content is either extremely poorly designed or just bad, and the proof is that it NEEDS a reward to be engaging for someone to be slightly interested in it.

There are no real rewards I value particularly from doing palace of the dead, I still do that from time to time because to me, it is fun. I have no real benefit to leveling an alt other than just having more inventory space, or checking out another world or seeing the msq again in the context of doing all the running around, but I still do it because I find it an enjoyable experience.

That being said, there is just absolutely nothing appealing to me about current XIV pvp. It's just in utter need of total rework, and all modes are just trash garbage to me.

[Tristamwolf]

It offers nothing outside of a mount here, or a glam there, maybe orchestrion rolls which to me are the only slightly tempting thing I'll endure it for but I've as of yet to build up the desire to go for that. If something needs rewards to make it something you would play it is a good indication that the content is either extremely poorly designed or just bad, and the proof is that it NEEDS a reward to be engaging for someone to be slightly interested in it.

I understand where you're coming from, but I don't necessarily agree with your conclusion in this part. True, content should be fun for the sake of being fun, but especially with something that is naturally going to have a smaller draw by it's nature such as PvP, rewards act as additional incentives for people to engage with the content. Especially with as much content as there is to do in the game, with basically everything having a reward of some sort, the percentage of players who would be willing to engage with PvP solely for the prestige is likely close to zero (as even the players who like PvP would likely prefer to spend their time on something that offers other possible rewards)

There are no real rewards I value particularly from doing palace of the dead, I still do that from time to time because to me, it is fun. I have no real benefit to leveling an alt other than just having more inventory space, or checking out another world or seeing the msq again in the context of doing all the running around, but I still do it because I find it an enjoyable experience.

Palace of the Dead provides EXP for jobs as well as items that can be sold, so even if some players engage would engage with that content purely for the joy of playing PotD without ANY rewards whatsoever, I doubt there would be enough to make the content viable for anything but the most niche appeal. I don't really compare Alts/NG+ to other content as the primary experience is very much a re-engagement with the story, so it's more like the reason someone might rewatch a movie or reread a book rather than reason people might requeue for Feast

That being said, there is just absolutely nothing appealing to me about current XIV pvp. It's just in utter need of total rework, and all modes are just trash garbage to me.

Is there something in particular you can point to in PvP that is not engaging for you? Your feedback about rewards was worth discussion, but this last bit in particular is just bashing PvP for the sake of bashing PvP and wouldn't give them anything to work towards beyond 'not this'. The design space of things which are not what FFXIV is currently doing for PvP is just far too wide open to actually do anything with feedback that is 'this sucks, I don't wanna play it', so I hope you can give us a better idea of things that make the PvP less fun for you from a gameplay standpoint!

[Sauteed]

Is there something in particular you can point to in PvP that is not engaging for you? Your feedback about rewards was worth discussion, but this last bit in particular is just bashing PvP for the sake of bashing PvP and wouldn't give them anything to work towards beyond 'not this'. The design space of things which are not what FFXIV is currently doing for PvP is just far too wide open to actually do anything with feedback that is 'this sucks, I don't wanna play it', so I hope you can give us a better idea of things that make the PvP less fun for you from a gameplay standpoint!

A few things, first of all, most of the "pvp" modes in this game are capture the flag. With the exclusion of The Feast, i feel like this complete dodges what I think of as pvp. A few games I've played in the past genuinely ensure you are fighting other players, not annoy them while they stand there and grab a blinky sparkly node of some sort. Sure most "modern pvp" games are like this, but I really don't play any of those either, for similar if not exactly the same reason. It's not pvp, it is annoying.

Additionally, the every one is just level 30. All stats are identical, everything is "too balanced" but not even really balanced at all aspect annoys me. This has been a huge issue for most of the people I've talked with but I won't go as far as to say "everybody" or "most" because I really don't know how most or "everybdoy" feels about it. I know it annoys me. Outside of the pvp aspects, there is really no impact on any other system of the game except gaining levels, and nothing I do outside of the pvp aspect has anything to do with anything IN pvp but, everything I do with pvp levels up my combat classes outside of the pvp world for some reason. I kind of feel that's a cheap way to draw someone's interest to it that has no real desire to play pvp in and of itself.

To double back on to one of your previous points about potd, I really just enjoy that. It's nice also that I get experience for it. If it gave NO experience, I'll admit I'd be less inclined to just go do that. I have not used the titles associated with POTD, and dont' do it to sell items either. I do it because sometimes I get the itch to go do it, I'm not sure it's the random floors, or changing music or random challenges and hurdles it throws at you at the start of each level, but it is a charming game play mode, and a nice alternative to queue'ing up for a roulette sometimes. I don't recall ever getting tomestones or other items like wolfmarks for ever doing potd, but I have many times over chosen to do Potd in place of leveling roulettes or other things for experience points.

PVP on the other hand is often littered with people who just queue up and go auto run into a wall or enemy base and is usually coupled with teams purposefully throwing a match to ensure some other group get a victory. To further add to this kind of jambled mess of "features" now you can only join pvp as a freelancer and can't choose to be only your Grand Company. The "lore" behind pvp or reasoning behind it is bizarre to me. I know the "Eorzean Alliance" doesn't want to go to war with each other but they want what the pvp areas give, like some kind of tomestones etc, so nothing done in those battle zones will ever be somethign they can hold against each other, but what functions like that in real life? We could look into how proxy wars really work in war torn zones in the world and I assure you, the repercussions are there and much worse than people are led to believe. It has not teeth, there is no kind of investment in it on any level for me. It's like a good ol waste of time. It doesn't matter how ready I am to win, I'll usually queue up and see 1 person making the big calls, and about 15 other people do anything but that and die horribly and blame someone or start cutting insults the whole time. That's kind of par for the course for most pvp games i've played but it's just annoying the framework we are given. Also the removal of smaller teams being able to queue up for some early or off hours pvp hurts what is already there.

The skills being "stream lined" is helpful in some ways, but also really just a further detachment I have with pvp. Some skills do something completely different altogether than their pve equivalents. The everyone gets 3 healing potions bugged me, I could list things that annoy me about pvp but I rarely just bash something to bash it. I honestly have said much on the forums about pvp. It was part of the reason I signed up for the forums. My distaste is quite real, and in my eyes as legitimate as any other player of the game.

[Tristamwolf]

A few things, first of all, most of the "pvp" modes in this game are capture the flag

It is true that Frontlines tends towards objective-based game modes, but I don't necessarily see that as a problem. The Feast provides a more competitive 4v4 Arena setup, there is 1v1 Dueling on the Wolves' Den Pier (which could probably use better systems around it), and Rival Wings is based on MOBA gameplay of pushing objectives and eventually destroying the enemy base. All of these encourage players to engage in PvP with one another in different ways rather than every game mode simply being Team Death Match all over again. Sure, not all of these game modes will reward players for ignoring everything but their kill count, but if you've ever seen the mess that happens when all 3 teams in Frontlines try to duke it out over a single point, you'd know that having a roughly 72 person PvP fight gets messy and impossible to read anyways, so creating systems that require players to strategize when to fight as a giant blob of instant death and when to split off into smaller squads creates more interesting and engaging PvP combat as a result of the match type.

All stats are identical, everything is "too balanced" but not even really balanced at all aspect annoys me

I can understand the desire for a game to be balanced better; that's something that exists in basically every game that allows players a choice in class/character, but the stat syncing is definitely something that helps with balance rather than hurting it so I don't see how that fits into the balance complaint. I will concede that the game could probably be balanced better, I've never been so far into PvP that I could tell you with certainty what class is poorly tuned by what degree (unless that degree is 'ungodly', of course)

PVP on the other hand...

(shortened because character limit)
Sadly, some people will throw matches pretty hard just because the Roulette EXP buff is the same whether you win or lose and whether the match is 5 minutes or 30 minutes. If someone is intentionally throwing or is cussing people out or something like that, it's (IMO) a problem better treated as an outlier to be handled by the GMs than as a systemic problem to be solved by player discussion. As for the lore aspect, it did become a LOT weaker when they started forcing freelance at all times. it'd be a lot better if it at least had a stated preference to your GC so you only got freelanced during off hours or if NOBODY is queuing for a certain faction. That being said, I view the lore justifications as closer to war games with rewards than proxy wars. All three factions agreed to both the terms of the competition and to the rewards to be doled out for them, so this isn't like the GCs are legitimately striking at one another through cats' paws or anything.

[Tristamwolf]

The everyone gets 3 healing potions bugged me

This seemed odd to me as well, but after playing a few matches and seeing how salty people will get when they die (even if they clearly had all 3 pots up still) made me as a healer realize how much worse it could be if players didn't have those potions, so I can understand how they ended up there.

My distaste is quite real, and in my eyes as legitimate as any other player of the game.

My apologies if I came off as if I felt your concerns weren't valid. I simply was hoping to keep this particular thread as a place where we could discuss the issues PvP is facing and how it might be possible to address them. I had a feeling you had some good feedback that to expand upon (which you have since shared) but without that feedback there wouldn't be anything to go on either for a discussion or in the event that the dev team ends up reading this post (I do know they read the official forums from time to time).

[Sauteed]

I really feel like pvp is just some tacked on side thing that was never a real focal point of this game. It is the same in XI it is awful there too in my opinion. I don't feel like either game was designed with player vs. player combat a true core principal of it, and that is not a bad thing in itself. It is bad because they are trying to appeal to pvp'ers I guess but not providing a pvp game.

Pvp is not the deal breaker for me in XIV tho. I enjoy parts of the game enough that I'll play it til that loses its luster. PVP was at one time something I would log in and do, I was never "super good" at it, but I think I did pretty good at times. What we have here now tho, just seems like massive leaps backwards from what was there even just before ShB "updates". Another thing I didn't enjoy at all was the Dashing Nadam or whatever that's called. That was about the end of pvp for me in this game.

[Anhra]

from my perspective, PvP in this game lacks alot of things, it clearly doesn't feel fleshed out at all and it also isn't rewarding enough on the long run.

-Gameplay has a too strong rock-paper-scissors feel to it imo, every role only does what it is suppoest to do and nothing else, there is almost no room for creativity aside for selecting 2 bonus skills. I mean, you can get lucky as a tank or healer if you find that one unlucky fellow with low HP who just happens to have his unlimited supply of potions on cooldown but aside from what? theyre both just there for stalling time and a huge invisible "please hit me, i cant fight back!" sign above their head (tanks have it a bit easier since they can abuse the laws of gravity and knock one guy off the ledge every minute).
almost every other MMO out there (and those in the past) usually solved such issues by having either tech trees or a skillkit that can respond to any situation but with different magnitudes depending on the class/job you played.

and by the topic of Potions, throw those things into the Trashcan where they belong to. If you think that "i will just melt without these before i can do anything" you should rethink a few things. playing recklessly can and SHOULD punish players who get ahead of themselves and overstep their boundaries and limits. Those Potions only stall needlessly for time and drag fights for way longer than they should, it would be more convenient to fix such a thing with potency adjustments on skills and abilities.

-Feast would be more fun if it would have more variety, like having no limitations how the party is formed. is it unbalanced? probably, but keep in kind that "balance isnt fun". is it dumb? definitely but it will also be fun. it would also be great if the party sizes had also more variety, such as 2vs2 and 3vs3 matches.

-Duels are as good as nonexistent and with a good reason (see gameplay). it would be really great if duels were also avaiable on more areas rather than just inside wolves den pier (maybe even allow it inside large houses or on the garden). Other MMO's usually have the option to duel someone almost anywhere possible, so why not impliment something similar as long as it isnt inside the city.

those are just a few idea's which most likely have been probably mentioned countless times already by other players and i am absolutely certain that this message gets ignored anyway aside from a few players, but i do wish that PvP would have a greater spot in FFXIV since it is clearly lacking in alot of things.