Feast (4v4 Ranked PvP) wasn't actually that bad, but it was set up to fail by SE

[PotatoTree]

Now that the Feast is about to be deleted, I'd just like to say despite all the memes the dedicated PvP community makes about the state of PvP, I actually think that Feast wasn't actually that bad as a game mode. However, it was set up to fail by SE.

Ok I know a lot of you might think "PvP is the worst thing ever and kicked my dog", but hear me out.

For the limitations the game mode has in terms of severs and player size, we'll never get something like counterstrike or Smash Bros or Starcraft or something. With the current engine, the current state of Feast is actually a pretty ok competitive game by these following reasons:

1. There is a skill difference between players that is not gear or RNG based. If you are good at the game, while you may not win all your games you can still win a majority. And if you are new, you have the potential to become good through practice and study.

2. There is enough mechanical complexity. Yes we meme about 9 buttons or whatever, but I'm not talking about flicking headshots in counterstrike or needing 300 APM. There is enough room to grow in terms of keeping track of buffs/debuffs, positioning, learning the flow/momentum of the game, and even knowing certain people's playstyles. Even the 2 braincells you use on tracking medals can give you a huge advantage. At higher levels of play, every little bit adds up, which is really nice gameplay since every action you do has an impact on winning. It's really nice that even where you stand can differentiate a good player from a bad one, if a kill happens or not, or if you give away your team's strategy.

Also I know some feasters dream of the old 3.0 feast days where we had all our abilities plus like 10 more additional ones, but IMO it wasn't that much better. What is the difference in 10 buff buttons instead of 1 Feint? With the overload of abilities there was a lot of imbalance. Plus with so much abilities the state space of a game or action was huge. Pushes and pulls in these scenarios were just basically RNG, there were situations that you just couldn't defend against.

3. Aside from mechanical complexity, there is enough strategic complexity too that winning is possible even if behind, but not in a way that is overly unfair to someone more skilled. (ie: medal distribution, adrenaline boxes). If the more skilled team lost it's not always because of a catchup mechanic, it's because they made a mistake in safeguarding their advantage, something they could have done with a bit smarter play.

4. The current balance is not that bad. Yes there are some jobs that can use a bit of help, but overall it actually isn't super bad. Ast and Sch are either too OP or too UP, and DRK and RDM can use some work, but overall not too shabby.

Yes I know the feast is the worst game ever because that one time you popped a potion and it didn't register the tick before you died, but then again why didn't you pop that potion 100ms sooner? Why didn't you use the same tactic against your opponent and kill them before they could pop their potion? Jokes aside yes we aren't getting the tightest tuned fighting game, but with this engine it wasn't bad.

I know a lot of veteran PvPers have memed over the years about how Feast needs to die or how the game is the worst thing ever, but most have continued to play season after season. Some for hundreds of games, some thousands. And many continue to play even after getting “safe”, meaning they don’t need to even play anymore to get a reward.

In comparison, I personally only ever play a PvE dungeon a single time on release in a patch, then never again because it’s super boring. However Feast despite the frustrations is actually also pretty fun, and IMO if it doesn’t hurt on a loss then it isn’t worth it when you win.

TLDR: Feast wasn't that bad

Continued in next post: However it was set up to fail by SE.

[PotatoTree]

That being said, the Feast never had a chance because SE never gave it a chance:

1. There was NO moderation for cheating at all. You can count the number of people actually punished from cheating in the feast for the last 20 seasons on one hand. This is the equivalent of launching a mmorpg but letting people dupe. I know certain ways of cheating are hard to distinguish from just playing bad, but I'm talking about people using legit speed hacks or using abilities while stunned/silenced that they should not be able to do and should be easily traceable by moderators. Yet the dev team offered no attempt throughout all 20 season at any form of moderation, it's all just canned responses like "we appreciate your report, please blacklist the player, etc". Right now on some data centers it's gotten to the point where you'll likely get shot by a literal feast gang if you walk around the Wolves Den at night.

2. There was NO attempt to help new players at all. There are tutorials for PvE, chocobo racing, triple triad, and even Verminion, tutorials that actually prevent you from even playing the game until you complete it, yet there is no tutorial for the Feast. You have new players joining a match, getting rofl-stomped and bm'd cause they are not performing their duty in a team based competitive mode, and never playing again. I know it would be hard to program, but a mode full of Trust NPCs where you can help practice PvP in would help a huge amount. Maybe training slots can be filled with these bots if there aren't enough people queueing for that mode?

3. There were no updates or communication at all from the devs. There are no new maps, very few balance changes that felt like they were decided based on coin flips, and when we got something new it felt like squeezing water out of a rock. Remember how they couldn't even get the PvP rewards delivered on time after a season, or even show what a reward looks like when a new season starts? Where is the dev communication for anything PvP related? Literally everything good about the Feast was made by the community.

Other Important Issues

1. Queue times. Because the community is small queue times are an issue. There can be multiple ways to fix this, like indicting what roles are missing in the queue, or giving bonus rewards to queueing up on the weekends (ie: 2x weapon XP bonus like in FPS games like CoD?), or even joining datacenters into one big group competing for top 300 or something. One contentious idea is setting up a PvP time of day, like in the afternoon, where you can only gain points at this time. That funnels all players into a certain time zone, which reduces the potential of certain types of cheating and increases player pool available, however this idea is contentious because some people might complain they can't play at a certain time. Nevertheless, other games do implement this strategy pretty often. Even the Chinese client of FFXIV does this for Feast.

2. Quick Chat. I personally think the Quick Chat idea is ok, and probably saved a lot of people from an untimely ban from a few too many gamer words. However do we really need stuff like "Hello" in PvP? We are not playing the game mode to RP to each other. Where are the actual PvP quick chats? For example, "My burst is ready", "Watch your positioning", "Do a light burst here". PvP players literally had to develop their own language using "Hellos" and flag semaphores. If anything, if you're going to give stuff like "Thank You", at least add in "Sorry". I'm pretty sure 90% of PvP drama could have been avoided if there was a "Sorry I messed up" chat option.

[PotatoTree]

On this note, things that I think aren't really an issue:

1. Rank decay. A lot of PvE players say they will never touch PvP because of the lack of Rank Decay. When you say Feast needs rank decay, what is your reasoning? Do you think it will help with queues at lower levels? Or will it help with queues at top 100? How much decay will there be? How many games is needed to avoid the decay, or is it a constant amount? Can people circumvent the decay by just playing the last 2 weeks of the season? Right now it is true that queues slow down and even die completely at lower ranks later in the season, primarily because most people have ranked into gold-diamond leaving unranked queues dead. Ranked decay will not pull gold-diamond back down to unranked, making such a heavy decay is unreasonable and nobody would ever queue up until the last week if that is the case. For the top 100, yes people do sit on their ranks but the floor rising is just a different form of rank decay. If you sit, the top 100 floor will eventually rise above your rank. Also, anyone good enough to get to top 100 won't be bothered by playing one game every few days to keep the decay away, it won't solve your issues at unranked and it won't help you get into top 100.

2. Exclusive Rewards. This is probably a touchy subject since I'd assume if you can't get the rewards, you'll obviously want to have the rewards made available, and if you already have the rewards you'll be on the other side of the fence. I don't think exclusive rewards are an issue, it's what makes top 100 worth playing for. Perhaps a middle ground is allowing older top 100 rewards to be available, but you only get a token for a single reward for every top 100 you get. In this case the reward is no longer FOMO, yet still requires skill to obtain. That being said, it's still kind of unfair to the players that worked for that particular season. For example the season 1 coat is very prestigious while the random Magna Roader from some other season that no one played on is not.

3. Rotating old maps. Yes I know we all want Lichenweed back, but that map and some of the other older maps need some tweaks before returning into a rotation. They were built for a different time aka everyone had safeguard and there was less defenders advantage due to heavy medals. Right now, without heavy/light medals, the big wall in Lichenweed makes it such that once you get the first kill it's very hard for the losing team to make any play since your defensive position is so strong. They can probably tweak it by changing the big wall into one horizontal and vertical wall like in the crystal tower map.

[PotatoTree]

TLDR Conclusion:

I think the Feast was pretty fun, more fun than a lot of the other content like dungeons in my personal opinion. It required some skill to play, it required some braincells for strategy, and it spawned quite a few communities.

However, SE decided to nuke the feast without ever really cultivating it. Without moderation, without giving newer players help, and without any dev communication the Feast never really had a chance. This was not a failure of the Feast gamemode, this is a failure from SE.

SE has unironically made a pretty good game mode by most objective measurements. I'm sad that instead of improving on the Feast, SE has just decided to wipe the slate clean and replace it. I don't want to be pessimistic, but while the recent live letter gave us more PvP information and communication than we've got in the past decade, it was still very lacking. It showed no gameplay footage, no information about the compressed roles, and very ambiguous information on the reward structure. The only reason it was ok at all was because we compare it to other LLs where we got NO information at all. We're literally salivating over scraps.

I worry that even the small things we take for granted in the Feast like counting medals, positioning, or even role differentiation will be gone in Crystal Conflict, where it'll just be a bunch of AFK bots standing on the crystal like in Frontlines.

[Nanne]

I am scared about the new roles. I want to play a healer not a copy of a red mage

[SPYX]

I have spammed Feast ranked and Feast customs since December of 2019, haven't even been doing the story or any pve at all since then. I really like the game mode but this post is very accurate on many issues related to the game mode. At the end of the day Feast has amazing potential, but SE doesn't care enough about it to nurture it.

Planning your seasons and rewards and announcing them ahead of time, listen to community feedback when making balance changes and most important of all, banning/punishing cheaters, would all be expected by any pvp community of any game, but sadly did not happen with Feast. These could all be issues for the new game mode as well.

I am still very sad to see the Feast go. Theorycrafting comps and strategies with your team, practicing them in scrims and then play the tournaments organized by the community (imagine if SE was the one organizing) was probably the best gaming experience I had, sadly cut short by the removal of Feast.

I am curious to see what the new pvp mode brings but:
- Adding another player to each team could end up making people feel like they have less carry potential;
- Game seems to be oriented towards objectives, this can be ok if killing is still important but if game encourages ignoring pvp for the sake of objectives then it sounds unappealing;
- Removing role restrictions could help queue timers but sounds like a hell of a balancing issue;
- Making everyone heal themselves more and not need a healer seems to go against the playstyle the existing community enjoys and wants. For me personally, the dedicated mandatory healer is a playstyle I greatly enjoy. There is indeed an issue with new healers not being able to handle the game mode and losing interest, but even so many new healer players have managed to adapt and improve to the point where they became very reliable, by seeking guides and help from the community.

[rofland]

2. Exclusive Rewards. This is probably a touchy subject since I'd assume if you can't get the rewards, you'll obviously want to have the rewards made available, and if you already have the rewards you'll be on the other side of the fence. I don't think exclusive rewards are an issue, it's what makes top 100 worth playing for. Perhaps a middle ground is allowing older top 100 rewards to be available, but you only get a token for a single reward for every top 100 you get. In this case the reward is no longer FOMO, yet still requires skill to obtain. That being said, it's still kind of unfair to the players that worked for that particular season. For example the season 1 coat is very prestigious while the random Magna Roader from some other season that no one played on is not.

The random magna roaders aren't prestigious because no one bothered to play for them for self evident reasons. If you made a token for any previous t100 reward, each season would be extremely competitive.

[Ixon]

Agreed it wasn't as bad as others make it out to be. Medals added a mechanical layer to keep track of, and led to rotating targets based off medal count rather than just spamming the squishiest target like if it was more like TDM. Though I think I would have enjoyed it more if the buffs/debuffs medals gave stayed, if even at half potency, as I felt it led to more kills which was more engaging and helped negate tunneling as much.

Hot take, but I still think the button squish was a good thing for PVP. In PVE everything is pretty static, you're occasionally reactionary, and usually you can plan most things out enough that nothing really surprises you unless you're a healer and someone takes a hit they weren't supposed to. In PVP though, it's highly dynamic. You have to watch your screen at all times because even a single slip up can lead to a death. The tempo in PVP is also really fast in comparison to PVE. This leads to most people using macros to keep up with the pace. Target macro's, healing macro's, cc macros etc. This isn't even an issue of 'skill' it's just the optimal way to keep up with the speed of a match. Not to mention you have to communicate more in PVP, and because SE hasn't implemented Voice yet, you have to use almost half of the given Quick Chat buttons given to properly communicate. All this would be a nightmare with an entire PVE toolkit. Plus the squish makes some(some) job actions better. For example, like how Rough Divide on GNB in PVP gives a cartridge so you have to keep in mind not to overcap, while also being able to rely on this if you have no cartridge available before a burst, which is way more interesting than a simple gap closer. Combing 1-2-3's just gives me more hotbar room, so I still see it as a gain even if that's all that changed about them.

That said QC could have been way better, the level of responsibility and difficulty of the roles wasn't balanced with the players in mind(melee and healer are the hardest roles by far), and the zero moderation given even with slideshows and video evidence of the actions against ToS was huge WTF. The idea of a self healing action with pots wasn't a bad idea but why an "item" with a 2 second delay? Same map sucked especially when I have to zero out my brightness just to play without needing eye surgery later.

The biggest issue I had though was not enough ranks with the current system or just a lack of skill based matchmaking(that they say is coming but, :copium, and that there was no incentive to play once you were "safe" in top 100. That's why most seasons sucked, was because people would freelo their way to Diamond, and not queue at all unless they were concerned for their spot. Their was no reason to play past the "safe" mark in unless you really wanted r1-10 or were achievement farming. Hell, even adding actual useful items for wolf marks would make me keep queueing. Or give me a currency for winning ranked games that I can spend on a golden fenrir pup that I can sell on the market board to give me any reason to keep playing. I fear this will continue into next expansion. Finish the series battle pass? Did enough for the Season reward? Why bother to keep queueing? Hopefully they will address it, but at least I shouldn't have to sit in hour long tank queues anymore *inhale*.

[PotatoTree]

Hot take, but I still think the button squish was a good thing for PVP.

I think I kinda mentioned this but I probably should have elaborated more. I also completely agree with the button squish. I don't think using 5 buffs instead of one buff was any better for gameplay, so consolidating them was good. And I completely agree there is no extra skill in pressing 1-2-3 instead of one button 3 times. We meme on the 9 button thing but right now it's just right in terms of complexity vs speed for the current server infrastructure, plus all the extra buttons for macros.

Also with more buttons and more options, IMO it would make it less conductive for team play. If a single player can do everything why would I ever listen to the team? Also if there are a lot more abilities and options, the state space would just be huge. With the current pace of the game, it would be hard to mount an effective defense against an attack if the opponent has a million options.

More buttons would raise the skill ceiling, which is good but for our current amount of players and ranking system it wouldn't work well. We don't have enough players for a "grandmaster" mode. Right now the skill ceiling offered by the buttons feels just right for matches that are plat-diamond.

Basically TLDR I think the button squish was ok. Any more skills at the current pace will just make games RNG. We don't have enough players and ranks to justify raising the ceiling further with more skills.

Or give me a currency for winning ranked games that I can spend on a golden fenrir pup that I can sell on the market board to give me any reason to keep playing. I fear this will continue into next expansion. Finish the series battle pass? Did enough for the Season reward?

Yea feast would have been way more popular if it wasn't mostly just top 100 or bust in terms of rewards, like with the whole Garo thing. Some more extra rewards sprinkled along the way would have been nice, but right now it's just like 2 minions for kills and assists and 1 tiny mount among a few other meager rewards. The wolf collars don't even trade for much. Maybe Feast with the battle pass would have worked well, but we'll never know cause SE never really tried.

[Mistress_Irika]

I've invested into either 10 or 11 seasons. I didn't see anything wrong. In fact, I didn't questioned anything until the beginning of the Shadowbringer's expansion. My 2 worse seasons was season 7 or 8 when people respawn right where they died and season 14 where no one was getting wolf collars.

When I first started feast 3 years ago I was hesitant simply because I couldn't chat. Quick chat wasn't enough to pass on whatever message you needed to say then. Then the 2018 tournament came, and I was bought in instantly. After the tournament is where SE simply dropped the ball in my opinion. Lack of updates and communication from there as OP mentions. Stormblood era was a fun experience. I can't say the same for this expansion.

Being a low rank player in Shadowbringers wasn't fun at all. I went from having longer queue times in in the previous expansion to being in dead queues halfway through the season. It didn't help that the time I lost waiting in a dead queue the top players were getting more games in. So I felt crappier knowing that I had to deal with being a diff the beginning of next season simply for lack of experience. I got the message then: "Learn fast, or get left behind." For a long time I simply blame myself and my lack of concentration. Now, I wonder why it was made easier in the first place to get to diamond. I can accept that I'm bad. Yet, I can't personally accept my results because of how inflated the rating is. Let me take a full penalty instead of a soft one, so that I know where I'm truly at.

I'm happy that certain problems are being solved. I just hate the fact that those fixes are being ported over to the new game mode. I'll give the new mode a try. I'm just not that excited about it. Shadowbringers basically killed majority of my motivation I once had for pvp. My only concern right now is how rating is going to be done. If it's made easier to climb the rank with this new mode I don't think majority of the problems are going away. That's just me though. I hope everyone's expectations is higher than mines.