Feedback From a Longtime PvP Enjoyer

[MetalMonad]

Crystal Conflict is pretty good. Like its not perfect, no MMO pvp has ever been perfect, but for what the devs have given us, its pretty good and I am very satisfied with it because there really is a lot to like, and a few things to dislike, here are my pros, cons, and changes after grinding to crystal

Pros:
- The class balance is actually great. There is only a few classes that are a balance mess (WHM chief among them) but most classes outside one or two feels more or less viable even if others are better.
- The matches are nice and quick. Ain't no one want to spend 10-20 minutes losing, you get stomped, you get right back in there.
- The class identities in pvp are actually pretty amazing to be honest. I personally play 4-5 classes in pvp and they all feel unique and fun in their own way.
- Every class has something satisfying to its kit to pull off, Samurai's instant gib, Ninja chain killing people, Warrior's control, etc.

Cons:
- WHM. Fast charging LB that hits for a good chunk and stuns everyone a football field away is stupid and just too strong. Polymorph getting rid of other classes LB is the worst thing in pvp in my honest opinion, nothing feels worse than getting turned into a pig as a sage and watching your bubble vanish
- The death process should be revamped. If you die, you wait 10+ seconds, which is fine, but whats not fine is when the timer is up, the load screen is punishing if it takes longer for your game to load in for whatever reason, losing 1-3 seconds may not seem big, but it can absolutely matter. Loading screen also takes away your ability to communicate with your team, which probably no one has anything super relevant to say anyway since you looking at an all black screen.
- The obstacles on the maps can be pretty dumb. The wind map in particular I find grating as it forces everyone to use their guard and save it for that special time. Sure you CAN get in the chocobo marker to break your fall and even get a little buff for it, but while you doing flips in the air your team is still down there fighting and you are taken out of the battle, so the risk / reward aspect isn't very rewarding.
- The bots and win traders are going to stop anyone from actually caring about working towards the top of the data center. Multiple players and streamers have been reporting a person who is using two accounts to boost himself up by matching them against each other and sabotaging the other team. This person is currently #5 on Aether because of these methods with nothing being done

What I'd Change:
- You die, get your loading screen after 2-3 seconds, then get "locked" inside spawn room while the counter is still going down.
- Sprint is automatically applied whenever you are in spawn
- Make DRG LB marker more noticeable
- Nerf WHM LB charge speed and polymorph getting rid of opposing LBs / abilities
- Increase CD of primal rend by 5 seconds (reward to holding it for big moments and not using it on CD)
Only put a few balance changes because I've only played a few classes

[Rufalus]

I'm shocked at how popular CC is right now. It was popping all Friday night through to Saturday on my world. I've never seen pvp go a full 24 hours in the history of ffxiv before. The queue was still less than 1 minute at 4am GMT lol on an EU datacenter. I know it won't last forever but I think that shuts down any opinions that pvp isn't viable in this game. There just usually isn't enough new content and rewards to sustain it, but you can see what happens when they add a new mode + new currency type + return of garo at the same time. Praise aside yeah this thing needs some serious balance changes and more noticeable visual indicators of certain things asap.

[Ransu]

-The game has zero matchmaking leading everything to be streaky wins or losses.

-You can't derank.

-Purify needs to be on a shorter CD or give a longer immunity and it needs to work on everything. Getting silenced or polymorphed and being unable to purge it is ridiculous.

-WHM is straight up broken.

-One shot LB's should not be a thing. Going from 100% HP to 0 with no indications at all of what happened is asinine and shouldn't be a thing.

-The respawns are horrid. Either the timer needs to be reduced by 6 seconds or they need to completely eliminate the slow load to black and rez animation.

-Getting matches with multiple tanks and healers on a single team is straight up unfun.

-One and done 2 minute matches are horrible, especially with LB's causing the match to constantly snowball.

-Overtime is a HORRID mechanic. Either the crystal reaches the end or the match keeps going.

-The crystal moves too fast. Either the crystal needs to move slower or they need to give us a proper ranking system with best out of 3 rounds.

-If they want this mode to be role agnostic then they need to REMOVE the roles. They tried to make tanks and healers "flavors" of their roles but they just made the mode a broken mess by doing so. Either significantly reduce healer dps output and make them actual healers or completely abandon the concept of roles and make a truly role agnostic system which includes reducing tanks damage mitigation.

The mode was fun at first, but as I made my way to plat 1 I found myself no longer wanting to play the mode anymore. Its frustrating and no longer fun. I'm tired of getting stunned every 15 seconds by a warrior and beamed by a WHM 3 or 4 times match.

[DaulBan]

-Purify needs to be on a shorter CD or give a longer immunity and it needs to work on everything. Getting silenced or polymorphed and being unable to purge it is ridiculous.

Having an uncleansable debuff on its own isn't necessarily an issue. The only debuff in PVP that's relevant enough for this is WHM's, and WHM's poly needs a longer CD. Silence on BRD and RDM I think is fine.

-One shot LB's should not be a thing. Going from 100% HP to 0 with no indications at all of what happened is asinine and shouldn't be a thing.

-The respawns are horrid. Either the timer needs to be reduced by 6 seconds or they need to completely eliminate the slow load to black and rez animation.

-Getting matches with multiple tanks and healers on a single team is straight up unfun.

-One and done 2 minute matches are horrible, especially with LB's causing the match to constantly snowball.

-Overtime is a HORRID mechanic. Either the crystal reaches the end or the match keeps going.

-The crystal moves too fast. Either the crystal needs to move slower or they need to give us a proper ranking system with best out of 3 rounds.

What do you even mean dude.

'It's too fast'
'It's too slow'
'it's too slow'
'it's too fast'
'it's too slow'

Do you want the matches to be 10 minutes or not? If all the damaging limits go away you're never going to clear the damn point. If people can respawn after only five seconds you're never going to clear the damn point. If the crystal moves too slow nobody can score a point, the games will always go into overtime, YOU GOTTA DEAL WITH THE PREVIOUS TWO ISSUES EVEN MORE. If damaging LBs don't exist to break attrition the only thing that's going to exist at most ranks are tank stacks filled with healers to out-bore-to-death the other team.

[Ransu]

Do you want the matches to be 10 minutes or not? If all the damaging limits go away you're never going to clear the damn point. If people can respawn after only five seconds you're never going to clear the damn point. If the crystal moves too slow nobody can score a point, the games will always go into overtime, YOU GOTTA DEAL WITH THE PREVIOUS TWO ISSUES EVEN MORE. If damaging LBs don't exist to break attrition the only thing that's going to exist at most ranks are tank stacks filled with healers to out-bore-to-death the other team.

This is complete and utter nonsense. There's more than enough stuns and burst abilities that focus fire can cover. You don't need a damn 1 shot from 100% hp LB that takes ZERO skill to use.

As for the crystal, I hate how fast it moves because if one team is winning the majority of the match and pushes it all the way to the end but then gets LB'd and stunned to death from a WHM/WAR combo you can literally have the crystal at your end of the map before the team can completely respawn. THAT is dumb and shouldn't happen.

[IDontPetLalas]

-The game has zero matchmaking leading everything to be streaky wins or losses.

-You can't derank.

-Purify needs to be on a shorter CD or give a longer immunity and it needs to work on everything. Getting silenced or polymorphed and being unable to purge it is ridiculous.

-WHM is straight up broken.

-One shot LB's should not be a thing. Going from 100% HP to 0 with no indications at all of what happened is asinine and shouldn't be a thing.

-The respawns are horrid. Either the timer needs to be reduced by 6 seconds or they need to completely eliminate the slow load to black and rez animation.

-Getting matches with multiple tanks and healers on a single team is straight up unfun.

-One and done 2 minute matches are horrible, especially with LB's causing the match to constantly snowball.

-Overtime is a HORRID mechanic. Either the crystal reaches the end or the match keeps going.

-The crystal moves too fast. Either the crystal needs to move slower or they need to give us a proper ranking system with best out of 3 rounds.

-If they want this mode to be role agnostic then they need to REMOVE the roles. They tried to make tanks and healers "flavors" of their roles but they just made the mode a broken mess by doing so. Either significantly reduce healer dps output and make them actual healers or completely abandon the concept of roles and make a truly role agnostic system which includes reducing tanks damage mitigation.

The mode was fun at first, but as I made my way to plat 1 I found myself no longer wanting to play the mode anymore. Its frustrating and no longer fun. I'm tired of getting stunned every 15 seconds by a warrior and beamed by a WHM 3 or 4 times match.

No thanks, there is no "broken mess". Healers are support roles and it is definitely more fun that way. I', not speaking exclusively from the WHM perspective, I'm talking about the other healer jobs. Having them as support rather than the classic heals with debuffs and DPS skills and the option to use some heals and buffs makes fore much more interesting matches.

if there is a "broken mess" I would look more towards those skills that can one-shot players- either nerf those skills or make those skills more visible so that other players are more aware with all of the visual mess that's onscreen.

[Nav_Fae]

-The game has zero matchmaking leading everything to be streaky wins or losses.

-You can't derank.

-Purify needs to be on a shorter CD or give a longer immunity and it needs to work on everything. Getting silenced or polymorphed and being unable to purge it is ridiculous.

-WHM is straight up broken.

-One shot LB's should not be a thing. Going from 100% HP to 0 with no indications at all of what happened is asinine and shouldn't be a thing.

-The respawns are horrid. Either the timer needs to be reduced by 6 seconds or they need to completely eliminate the slow load to black and rez animation.

-Getting matches with multiple tanks and healers on a single team is straight up unfun.

-One and done 2 minute matches are horrible, especially with LB's causing the match to constantly snowball.

-Overtime is a HORRID mechanic. Either the crystal reaches the end or the match keeps going.

-The crystal moves too fast. Either the crystal needs to move slower or they need to give us a proper ranking system with best out of 3 rounds.

-If they want this mode to be role agnostic then they need to REMOVE the roles. They tried to make tanks and healers "flavors" of their roles but they just made the mode a broken mess by doing so. Either significantly reduce healer dps output and make them actual healers or completely abandon the concept of roles and make a truly role agnostic system which includes reducing tanks damage mitigation.

The mode was fun at first, but as I made my way to plat 1 I found myself no longer wanting to play the mode anymore. Its frustrating and no longer fun. I'm tired of getting stunned every 15 seconds by a warrior and beamed by a WHM 3 or 4 times match.

I agree with this list to an extent. I'd rephrase some of it myself but more or less on board with it.

[Tobias_Azuryon]

snip

1. I don't think you should be deranked so long as the nonsense that is current matchmaking and job balance is a thing.

2. Purify being on a 2 charge system would allow for us ONE single allowance for server ping screwing us without becoming too overpowered. It would also counter the constant spam of CC abilities that is free to do and unpunishable in many cases currently.

3. One Shot LBs aren't "awful" so much as there's no way to know when/if they're happening. Can't see DRG LB, SMN can bahamut you from a mile away out of nowhere, NIN can chain kill you at half health meaning all they have to do is sit back and let the rest of their team dps you and then just go in for the kill. Having no way to punish and/or escape LBs outside of people cheating is really not great.

4. Respawns feel like they take an eternity yeah. Especially in a mode this fast if even some of the party wipes at any given time in the intro it might as well be over in casual.

5. Getting matches with multiple tanks and healers is indeed unfun, especially when you're a team of 5 dps vs a healer 2 tanks and 2 dps. One could argue the lack of burst would balance it out but if one of those tanks is WAR you can pretty much just get destroyed anyways.

6. I don't mind quick matches, I do mind that they're usually that quick due to the job balance issues.

7. Overtime is fine but it needs tweaking. Over time basically MAKING everyone stack on crystal to be fish in a barrel sucks for everyone.

8. I used to think the crystal moved too fast until I got higher in rank and saw a more "balanced" match in play. It's intended to be fast runs the issue is the res timing and cc locking that makes those seconds feel more lost if server decides to screw you.

9. Roles are agnostic they just need finetuning. Things like WHM and RDM are overtuned, WAR is close to what I'd want all tanks to be aimed around in terms of the "on paper" concept. Being able to control the battle and guard the point is good but more people would play tank if they didn't all have to play WAR to do so.Fewer kits need to have the answer to EVERYTHING while some have the answer to nothing. If they fix this it'll work.

From another thread:

I see the a sort of categorization of skills to make this possible:

Mitigation = Keeping yourself/allies from dying.
CC = stun/silence/bind/heavy
Utility = Buffs/Debuffs both to targets and to allies.
DPS = obvious

In a more balanced world to me the roles would be:

TANK = Mitigation/CC
HEALER = Utility/CC
RANGED DPS = DPS/Utility
MELEE DPS = DPS/mitigation
MAGIC = DPS/CC

All of them would still HAVE dps and personal utility, but some would excel where others do less. Some kits have literally everything you could need and others have baffling lack of options.

[Akantorz]

What I'd Change:
- You die, get your loading screen after 2-3 seconds, then get "locked" inside spawn room while the counter is still going down.
- Sprint is automatically applied whenever you are in spawn
- Make DRG LB marker more noticeable
- Nerf WHM LB charge speed and polymorph getting rid of opposing LBs / abilities
- Increase CD of primal rend by 5 seconds (reward to holding it for big moments and not using it on CD)
Only put a few balance changes because I've only played a few classes

All CC should be able to be removed by purify or shield, the fact that white mage has the ONLY CC that is not an LB with that strong a CC is busted. You should be able to remove it too, White mage needs to feel some pressure.
Just make LBs immune to CC, it's their ultimate ability, let them fire it off, it's kinda BS to have us fight against LBS that can be fired around a corner while others require you to walk in the fire.
Remove ground potions from ranked. WHY ARE THEY EVEN THERE, SWEET JESUS THAT IS DUMB. Imagine punishing ranged classes for being ranged by letting players scoop up free full heals.
Improve or fix server tick issues. Server ticks can destroy LBs far better than any CC, I've lost so many kills due to: HP going over 50% despite being way under while pressing Ninja LB, similar issue for MCH LB, Zantetsuken NOT EVEN HITTING ANYTHING if the server feels like it, and CC applying to you once your in shield because it hit you while in shield.

I feel like adding on these basic solutions would solve MANY problems PvP has at the moment. Also: keep transmog/mounts out of top 100. If they won't go hard on cheaters for cheating, then give them the same rewards each time and they'll leave and let those of us that actually want to have fun, have fun. (Currently top 100 rewards are only Adventurer plates, if they keep it that way, then maybe cheaters will get bored and leave.)

[ThaCa]

They need to do some tuning and maybe even a rework or two (RPR is badly designed and GNB is horribly undertuned)

Stop people from respawning after game is over, make the respawn actually work as timed and intended.

Remove or shorten the swooping in camera to the zone, make the plates show bit longer, shorten the start idle time by at least 10 seconds.

There's a lot more to be done, but hopefully they will commit to making it better.