Small easy improvements to Crystal Conflict

[PotatoTree]

I'm not going to talk about the bigger issues already mentioned by others here (ie: balance, people cheating, ranking, etc). Here are some very minor low hanging fruit improvements that I think would make CC a lot better:

1. Some moves need better clarity on friendly vs enemy attacks. A big example is the SMN wind DoT on the ground. There's also the SMN bahamut (which SMN has baha up is unclear) and the DRG LB (if both drg do the LB which one is the friendly).

2. The icon for Guard should change once it's used since in the middle of a big battle with a lot of CCs it's sometimes unclear if you used it or not as it is hard to see. But if you did use it and you press it again it turns Guard off which may not have been the intention. There's also certain situations where Guard at the same time as some CC puts you in the Guard animation but without the bubble. This is kind of confusing, was the Guard put up or not?

3. The starting screen (right before the portraits) animation should be sped up, that's like 20s of wasted cutscene time. I'm not talking about the portraits themselves, that's fine. Just the transition screens and the zoom around the map.

4. Picking up the choco feather's timing is a bit too tight, sometimes I'm dead center in the middle of the choco circle and it still doesn't give me the feather.

5. On the fire map the bomb shouldn't be able to hit you while you're still running out of the base.

6. The roles should be balanced in matchmaking. I know the roles technically don't matter, but you can never perfectly balance each job/role, but you can at least make it more even if both sides have the same number of melee/ranged/tank/healers. It's really frustrating otherwise.

7. Plat 1 players should not be able to be in Crystal games. Neither should Diamond 5. Ranking up is just too easy and the skill disparity between some high Crystal players with low diamond players is too big.

8. Diamond tier should have no streak bonus, and probably needs 7-8 tiers. Crystal is way too easy to zerg into.

[Emitans]

1. AoEs have either white (friendly) or red (enemy) lines on their edge but I agree this isn't clear enough. Maybe make the entire spell a different color if its an enemy AoE.
2. Agreed.
3. Agreed.
4. Sometimes the feather straight up isnt there for me, even if I'm the only person in the circle. I hate this mechanic.
5. Unsure.
6. Agreed. I play healer 99% of the time but whenever I don't it feels like im always on a pure dps team versus one with healers and/or tanks.
7, 8. I'm stuck in silver so I can't comment.

[Iyrnwaen]

Right on. I agree with everything you said.

[Rynhardt]

For roles it should at the very least require each team to have at least one tank, one dps, one healer. I get not wanting to enforce a meta but since we can't change jobs in instance at the very least it's a reliable safety net.

[geminipestdeath]

Rank up being easy works both ways - I've gone from Gold 1 to Gold 4 on a string of losses this morning that frankly I can't seem to reverse. I'm sure being paired with Silvers against a near full stack of Platinums has nothing to do with it though lol. EDIT: String of losses has continued since the time of this post and I'm about to be knocked down to Silver 3 with one more loss so I guess I'll be contributing to the issue I raised in a way.

Role balancing is.... I dunno. I think that there's too much of everything going on and the fights are often far too intense to react and strategize around. The amount of crowd control, healing, and sheer damage all feels very high in group fights but in duels it feels next to impossible for anyone (skilled) to win without a five minute fight. The disparity between being zerged and not being able to react to dueling and both players literally being able to hold ground until the rest of the team arrives basically means that close matches are a rarity. You either wipe the floor or get turned into a mop to clean up your teammates.

Being able to look at a team comp and immediately know if you're going to win/lose should not be a thing. If I see any combination of Dragoon/Samurai/Summoner/Warrior/White Mage on the enemy team I immediately have an idea of how hard of a fight its going to be. Conversely, I have seen exactly ONE Gunbreaker all the way up to Series Level 24 - Black Mages and Bards are pushovers and I typically just ignore them until the heavy hitters are dead. Which, frankly, feels really bad to even admit.

The game mode is skill based in the sense of "How well can you coordinate targets" - apart from that there ain't much to it. If you're all attacking the same target you're going to win, hands down. And there isn't enough of a disparity between heavy hitting skills and low/mid-level potency skills to change that. I've had matches where I (as a Warrior) basically die faster than I can hit Guard/Recuperate and then the enemy team proceeds to do the exact same thing to each team mate in succession as if there was no cooldown on heavy hitting abilities. Therefore the winning strategy is: Bring good roles, hit Shift+M and put a marker on one player. Annnnd I don't enjoy that. I had more fun in Silver matches where people still didn't really have a good idea of that. At the very least I certainly spent a hell of a lot less time in the respawn screen.

[aeoncs]

Rank up being easy works both ways - I've gone from Gold 1 to Gold 4 on a string of losses this morning that frankly I can't seem to reverse. I'm sure being paired with Silvers against a near full stack of Platinums has nothing to do with it though lol. EDIT: String of losses has continued since the time of this post and I'm about to be knocked down to Silver 3 with one more loss so I guess I'll be contributing to the issue I raised in a way.

? You can't drop down an entire tier, so how exactly did you drop to Silver from Gold 1?