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

[Seelroy]

This is my first season so me having an opinion on the exclusivity of the feast rewards is probably pretty yikes. That said, I believe that this is one of the bigger nails in "set up to fail" coffin. For a competitive game mode having exclusive rewards for reaching higher ranks is basically a given, which is probably why they went with it. However, I think this was a mistake... kind of. I think it's important to reward players who attain Top 100, Top 10, and Rank 1. But, I believe the reward model could've been done in a way that both respects the time put in by players achieving Top 100, and incentivizes new players to come in and play the Feast. This is what I think could've been done to improve the reward structure.

Season rewards would be exclusive to Top 100 winners for 2 to 3 seasons, after which they are placed into a shop and cost wolf collars.
Prices ranging from 10-20 wolf collars, requiring either a Top 10 placement or multiple season investment to achieve. Potentially have these versions be undyeable or recolors of the original Top 100 reward.
Wolf collars would only be awarded to players who hit at least Gold OR Plat. Silver and Bronze would not award wolf collars anymore. Possibly adjust rating distribution so that it is more difficult to get into Gold and Plat with lower winrates.
Rank 1 rewards would never be introduced into the shop.

I think these changes alone would be a great step in the right direction. Depending on the direction taken reward exclusivity could either be kept or reduced slightly. The added bonus of having recolors/undyeable versions in the Wolf Collar shop is that those that won the original versions can also snag a recolor variant if they so choose. But, this also incentivizes new people trying the Feast in order to get rewards. Right now when you come across someone with a past season reward and ask how to get it people will be told "It's from the feast, but it's unobtainable now." That doesn't exactly inspire me to go out and play the mode. But, if you put a version (Original or Recolor) the answer might be more like "It's from the feast, it'll be in the shop next season" or "It's from the feast, there's a recolor variant coming to the shop soon." Now I know it's at least obtainable and I might be more inclined to look up what the Feast is and how I can participate in order to get the reward. Even so it's important to respect the original Top 100 players time investment to get their reward, so if you're going to have it go into a shop it needs to be costly enough that it may take either a similar or longer time investment (Top 10) or require multiple seasons to get the wolf collars necessary to purchase the reward. However, getting Bronze 5 seasons in a row isn't exactly respecting that time investment, so removing wolf collar rewards from Bronze and Silver (Possibly Gold) requires people to put in some level of effort to get into mid to high ranks.

[Seelroy]

This would hopefully mean more players would be playing each season, which in turn could be incentive enough for the dev team to give Feast the time of day with balancing and map rotation, and hopefully mean proper moderation to prevent cheaters. Once I gave Feast a true try, I found it to be quite fun and I've met some really awesome people in this small community. It's a shame the mode is going away and I agree it was destined to fail with SE's approach. Great post Momoko!

[Commander_Justitia]

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?

We often meme about JP getting the better treatment, often it is not the case, but sadly here you can see guides for jobs explained on their semiofficial japanese pvp specific stream, when you change the language of the website to JP.


This stuff is over 3 years old, but for english players they community had to help themselves, because it didn't get such resources.

It is better if they make such knowledge and links available to all languages in the future, there were capable people who could have taken the job in that timeperiod of 2018/19 like Frosty/+One/Clem or other people of the community to create something similar for the english audience.

Every speedhacker I met didn't even make it in top100 I think, but it was still bad if SE really had no will or tools to go after them, a PvP mode can't flourish if nobody watches over the game rules.
Many of those cases ironically later got banned for chat related stuff like spamming, harassment or similar, it showed us a weird perspective of their priorities in the ban process. Ala 'Cheating OK - Harassment Not OK'.

While I agree that buffs and debuffs or skill chain skills don't need all multiple buttons like in the past. I really liked niche skills in the old PvP and I don't think a bit RNG dependence was bad like having crits or evasion,parry chance. Nowadays you know its impossible to still win last 20s, it wasn't back then.
I liked that all jobs had support and cc abilities and more defensive opportunities. That just offered way more variance and surprise. I also liked the trinity of tank/healer/dps that seems to be gone in the new mode.
Seeing a blm have more effective support (the last several seasons) than a tank was a sad image of its 'supposed to be' - role.

Regarding the new mode, I am not sure if there is enough incentive for PvP players in Ranked if you are unable to carry matches anymore. I dislike the trend to make modes so simple and uncommunicative that tactical play is impossible, it is just a hot mess then, where nobody can outperform others anymore. More like the current frontline experience, just without chat.

[Divinemights]

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?

What is the point of that?
All the illustrations listed by you are nevertheless fighting against programmed AI and that is called PvE.
It does nothing when players are not programmed AI.

Also, I am amused that this community always blaming SE for not providing tutorial when none of the MMORPG is offering that, ex. Guild War 2, and even those fast food Korean MMOs.
That is not the issue of why Feast got nuked.
A lot of time players also brings up Adrenaline Rush TV as example to support their idea of SE cares of JP more than EN and ignore the fact of Japanese gaming culture never associate with player vs players.
Most of their MMO rarely have player vs player aspect.
The sole reason that program exist is to encourage Japanese players to participate in Player vs Player and once they see the population rise and stabilized, that program stopped (last updated is back to 2018, almost 5 years ago).

[Ixon]

What is the point of that?
All the illustrations listed by you are nevertheless fighting against programmed AI and that is called PvE.
It does nothing when players are not programmed AI.

Fun fact, most tutorials are against AI, from fighting games to fps's, so this isn't anything new. Take the Hall of Novice, drop it into a Feast or Crystal Conflict arena, and boom, you have a player who now knows the basics and won't get roflstomped their first 50 games. Feast in general is fairly complex compared to the rest of FFXIV content, even compared to some end game raids, due to how unpredictable and dynamic the encounters in Feast can be. So asking for a single leg up to help users integrate into PVP isn't a large request when there are even tutorials in game for something as simple as Triple Triad or Chocobo Racing. Just because some other games don't do it, doesn't mean it can't be done here.

Despite the Adrenaline Rush last being updated 3years 7months* ago(which is accurate considering almost nothing with Feast has changed since then), the fact that it exists shows more involvement SE has with the JP PVP community for one reason or another. It's a running gag that nothing changes unless it appears on the JP forums because well, for the most part it's true. SE having a stronger connection with the PVP communities across all regions, assigning personal to be the leads of those communities, and having meaningful, constant, communications with those leads for them to feed that information back to SE headquarters would serve only to improve the game mode for the better. This isn't a huge thing to ask for, and the small steps here and there would help strengthen what is arguably the weakest part of FFXIV when looked at from the perspective of an MMO, lackluster PVP.

[snipski]

Feast had it's high point in Stormblood it was talk about being an Esports game and stuff back then they also had a Feast tournament back at the Fanfest in Paris. Sadly Feast got old and i dont know anyone who actually enjoy the mode for what it is anymore.

Hopefully the PVP revamp will bring some life back into PVP in this game.

[Divinemights]

Fun fact, most tutorials are against AI, from fighting games to fps's, so this isn't anything new. .

Fun fact, most of AI programmed is for PvE only, in which, it is not player vs player.
Programmed AI is not going to try to los when its HP is low isn't it?
Programmed AI will not able teach you anything about situation awareness isn't it?
Fun fact, the only way you learn about PvP is to let other players face-rolling you and yet you still have to will to learn how it happen and try to overcome it.
Anything other than that is just crybabies.
This is not your elementary school where you still get a medal for being last place.

People from first three seasons don't even have a PvP guide like the following and they are usually now the successful bunch.
How did they do it?
https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...uide/pvpguide/
Please stop shifting blames on a scapegoat.

Yeah and people always assuming every other gaming culture is going to be like NA gaming culture, unfortunately it is not.
The sole reason why Adrenaline Rush TV is there is because SE need to encourage Player vs Player to Japanese players.
In Japanese online gaming culture, they don't call PvP as Player vs Player, they are calling it as Player Killer and often organize groups to hunt down these player killers.
It is different gaming culture and Adrenaline Rush TV is dead because it has serviced its purpose: JP PvP community stabilized.

[Ixon]

Programmed AI is not going to try to los when its HP is low isn't it?
Programmed AI will not able teach you anything about situation awareness isn't it?

I think you misunderstand what a tutorial is for because the items you mentioned go a little past a basic tutorial. Tutorials are the basics, the 1,2,3's. Examples would be, "How do medals work? How do medal drops work? How to burst with the countdown quick chat? How to CC for a burst? How to use your pots and additionals?", all of these I could easily write a basic synopsis for equivalent to the Training Hall that would still be miles better than what we have now, which is nothing more than a website. Do you even know how to get there from in-game? It's a tiny button almost hidden away. The least they can do is make it a pop-up ad in your face everytime you enter The Wolves Den so there isn't any reason to NOT see it.

Yes, people from previous seasons didn't have guides, I don't see why it's a bad thing to want to have them now? This is some "back in my day" boomer thinking. There is absolutely nothing wrong with guiding the introduction and understanding of PVP for those completely new to it. I'd rather SE take a week to scramble up a basic tutorial to make unranked a little bit more tolerable than them do nothing at all. Not having a guide or tutorial doesn't automatically make you a better player.

That's great that it's a cultural thing, still better than what they did for the other regions. Do we really have to hunt "Player Killers" in NA and EU to get the same amount of attention?

[OskarXCI]

The first signs of SE giving up on expanding the playerbase for Feast were;

1. They made it so you won't be reset back to zero at the beginning of a new season. You were just downgraded two tiers.
2. Only your highest recorded rating matters, not your current one.
3. Never adding rank decay.

This, to me, was the developers going "all right, let's cater to the small dedicated playerbase that exist and eventually develop a new mode where healer stress doesn't exist".

As for the seasonal rewards, I think they should have been percentage based rather than a fixed amount. Instead of top 100 only getting the rewards, it should've been top 20% of all players. More people playing, more people having a better shot at getting the reward. 100 players would have been the minimum but if the percentage exceeded 100, more people would get it. Unranked players would be ignored for determining the top percentage of players.

[Ixon]

1. They made it so you won't be reset back to zero at the beginning of a new season. You were just downgraded two tiers.
2. Only your highest recorded rating matters, not your current one.
3. Never adding rank decay.

1. Without skill based matchmaking, this was the best move they could make to limit how many previous Diamond level player would be teamed up against brand new players in the next season. Imagine people queueing up for the first time and getting demolished their first 100 games because they have to go against previous top100's. Was it perfect? Not a chance. Hopefully the "skill based matchmaking" they mentioned will help fix this.
2. Agree and disagree. It being the highest helps promote people to queue even if they are on a loss streak, which makes queues pop more. This can be both a good or bad thing imo.
3. This wouldn't fix anything. The players who stop queueing because they are "safe" would still only queue the bare minimum amount, and that would not affect the board as much as people think it would.

Top 20% sounds exploitable. Just have your FC queue for one ranked game so the margin for the top 20% gets wider and wider till you only need gold to make it, but I do think it should be updated. I am still of the mindset that they are getting rid of the "top" thing and just making it achievement based per season, but we will have to wait and see.