PvP Ranked System needs addressing.

[Remiferia]

Hello everyone. Perhaps as a means to blow off some steam, I have decided to come here and offer my thoughts on the PvP ranked system.

Crystalline Conflict (henceforth 'CC') is, in a vacuum, an incredible minigame: it is quick, engaging, offers fulfilling rewards, and above all else it is fun. However, that is all it is. A minigame. The ranked system that accompanies it is simply not fit for purpose, and is totally at odds with the philosophy behind CC. By all accounts, CC is a team-based game mode similar to those found in Overwatch and TF2; however, the inability to form a team or use the chat box (I can't even type to my FC during the match???) makes the entire experience frustratingly isolated.

You have to engage with a team of other solo queue teammates using a strict set of template shot-calls such as 'Push the Crystal!' or 'Retreat!' but no one ever listens. The template 'Nice job!' gets spammed in bad faith whenever the team is performing poorly, which might actually be more aggravating than simply reading profanity from a tilted player because at least you can report them.

Not being able to communicate efficiently in a game that demands communication is absolutely awful, because each game becomes a coinflip on what kind of team you have and if they're willing to listen to generic shot-calls in the chat. As one might imagine, this doesn't make the Ranked grind appealing at all, and the ruthless system of losing a star for every loss does not feel good to play when you feel you couldn't have done anything at all to change the flow of the match. Games like Yu-Gi-Oh! Master Duel's ranked system is far from perfect, but only demoting you after a couple of consecutive losses offers an overall positive experience. Games like OW and APEX have a numbered score with thresholds, and they have measures in place to provide someone who performed well in a losing team with a smaller loss deficit than someone who monkey-brained the whole match. In this, it doesn't matter if you went 11/0/20 or had someone leave your team, you will still lose a star at the end of it, and I, personally, am really struggling to find any kind of flow with this setup.

If people get so frustrated with this solo queue/strict de-ranking, it means the people who make it to Diamond/Crystal will be so small that it will be just as easy to organise Win Trading as it was in The Feast. Why? Because Square Enix has decided to once again offer exclusive new items - for a brand new feature, no less - to the #1 player and Top 100 players. An absolutely insane decision that essentially brings us straight back to square one with curbing those problems in The Feast. This decision is especially baffling, because Yoshi-P made it very clear that the Saint/Beata of the Firmament titles were not intended to be exclusive and everyone would get their chance, but only win traders and streamers will have the ability/free hours to get this every season like they always have.

[Charlotte_Wells]

A contribution based system would be really good. Right now it feels like a
penalty for bad RNG when it comes to teamcomp and teammates.

Not sure how well it would work to allow chat again. Toxic potential asside:
The game is too fast paced to discuss things during the match.

[Qeilos]

A contribution based system would be really good. Right now it feels like a
penalty for bad RNG when it comes to teamcomp and teammates.

Not sure how well it would work to allow chat again. Toxic potential asside:
The game is too fast paced to discuss things during the match.

Ya but like having more Chat Actions on your bar than Job Actions feels really really awkward.

[Xel]

It's not a ranking system though, it is an RNG one, once that realization is made it becomes worthless. Do I think Diamond are good players? No! They got lucky with queuing, that's all.

No skill required, just grinding to cap season rewards and then heading elsewhere, like, uh, fishing...?

[Remiferia]

It's not a ranking system though, it is an RNG one, once that realization is made it becomes worthless. Do I think Diamond are good players? No! They got lucky with queuing, that's all.

No skill required, just grinding to cap season rewards and then heading elsewhere, like, uh, fishing...?

It is intended to be a ranking system, but in practice it just isn't. If removing chat functionality and stacking with friends was the perfect solution to cheating/toxicity then other games would have done this years ago. I have faith that they can tighten it up, but right now there's literally no reason to play Ranked at all because Casual is the exact same experience with less of the baggage.

[Qeilos]

I think the uncapped roles is as much at fault as anything to be honest. WoW used to be like this, it got changed. There was no worse feeling than getting into a WSG opening the scoreboard seeing 3 enemy healers, none on your side and going "well i guess this games a /afk" They eventually changed it to have some level of healer parity. I dont advocate looking to blizzard for a hell of alot in mmo design nowadays but they certainly have the best version of pvp on the market and if they abandoned complete RNG teams there might have been some kind of reason. I am comparing CC Ranked to normal BGs because frankly thats what they are closest to.

Edit: I used healers as an example but i dont necessarily think healers are the issue. Not having a tank seems to affect it more than healers.

[Xel]

They won't do role parity as they just removed it in a glut of brilliance leaving the wonderful (2 healers and 3dps vs 5dps) and (2tanks/1heal/2dps vs 5 dps) comps that dominate with braindead skill. It isn't rocket science to stay inside the glowing red/blue circle and keep everyone up while the enemy dps exhaust themselves and don't bother regrouping or using an elixir.

When you have no mortal strike effect on the healers, and they can top to full in 1-3gcd the game is entirely dependent on who has them, and if they are able to press buttons that is literally the only winning requirement now.

Do you have healers and enemy team doesn't? Grats you win.
Do you have TWO healers and the enemy team has one? Grats you win.
Do you have TWO tanks and ONE healer and the enemy team has...you get the picture. That's literally the hierarchy of ranked now.

Also wish I could understand how when my entire team is in the circle, one enemy holds us from moving it, but I'll probably never know how the math was done on that one.

[Sharindel]

Yeah, the ranks are a stupid idea. Who ever think that this is a good thing, needs a nice trip to "gamedesign and how you don't make your players hate you"

Why?

• The Rank is personal, the challange is you and 4 randoms. Only 1/5 is your doing, the rest ist random!

Problem

• You have the feeling that it is not your fault! Even if it is!
• It is not fair, to have a personal rank on with 4/5 random chance (80% is RNG)
• You mostly do the whole day.. get a star, loose a star and if this continue, you spent days after days with playing and you archive NOTHING. Because of RNG.
• Yoshida want a game that respect the time of players and what did they do.. another top 100. That don't respect the time, because you must play and play and play to get in the top 100.

Solution!

• Rank equals Personal Archivments. Big Archivments.. like Get 200m Damage or make 5m Damage with every Job (aka 5 million damage men/women)..
• Archivments is Damage total, healing, kills, wins and so on. But not compared to other players. Rank is a archivment for the player alone.
• Change the Top 100 in a Value that is based on match archivements. Like Top DPS, Tops Tank, Most Kills.. not WINs
• Top 100 get Titels not player pass design. Thats the same deal as with the old feast. Where most of the player don't want to do feast, because they need to play all the time
• If Top 100 only archive "Titles" other players have not the feeling that they miss something. Player Pass Designs that a player don't get because he has not enough time is the same bad thing as top 100 feast with items. Player don't get it so its not fair for them, because they have less time to play it!

The one dev who works on this system please top playing overwatch and lol. This systems are related to games where a singel player can outmatch a whole bad group with skills. Final Fantasy 14 is not so much skillbased that singel players can rule over bad players. Also competition is good, but to take something away and make it mostly impossible to archive with a normal timeframe of a working class player... its the same stupid idea as the top 100 out of the feast. Most player will not go ranked or will give it up, because they see, it is an impossible task that take to much time.

PvP Ranks is the worst idea ever if you follow yoshidas design of "respect the time of the player" do something! Stop this stupid challange... its like "only who do the most ultimate thordan will get the titel after 4 months"

[Xel]

Does the Ranked section of PVP even give anything that I can't get from casual? Cause if not they can make a PVP Duty Support to put it on the lifeline it'll need soon.

[Remiferia]

The #1 player on the Data Centre gets an Adventurer Plate kit, as do the Top 100, hence the head-scratching as to why they just repeated the same mistakes they made with The Feast. Exclusive rewards for the people that have more time than others creating another culture of Win Trading/Boosting.