Recommended Crystalline Conflict changes after a month of observation

[Gserpent]

CC is pretty good, overall, but it needs some work. Most of that work needs to be on the actual systems and UX, and not really on class balance. After the 6.15 BLM nerfs, I don't think there are any classes that are *so* overpowered that you basically get free wins along with your middle school graduation ceremony, though there's certainly more work that can be done. This'll be multiple posts due to the 3000 character limit. The issues I've seen, and proposed solutions, include:

Improve UX for Clarity and Readability

There's several things here. In no particular order, they would be:

- Add a countdown timer to the last 10 seconds of a match, and again to the last 10 seconds of Overtime (see below.) There shouldn't really be a case where players forget that time's about to end because they're so busy actually playing the game, but it's something that happens quite often in games. I've been guilty of it myself. Not only does it address that problem, it also reminds players that they can/should be looking to setup bind/heavy CC chains to keep players off the point. There's a reason UT, Quake, and so many other games have a countdown.

- Switch the scoreboard to a sensible, immediately identifiable layout. Right now, the scoreboard is "backwards" - your progress is on *their* side of the board, and theirs is on yours. It makes immediate reading of your progress vs theirs (important for OT) take longer than it should, even after several hundred games. I'd also appreciate a "simple" layout for the scoreboard that does away with the graphical representation of the crystal's progress in favor of a simple numerical readout with highlighting indicating which team has possession. The scoreboard should be simple and direct and instantly readable.

- Your team is always blue. The enemy team is always red. It doesn't matter if you're Astra or Umbra, and it's not like they adhere to their "team" colors anyhow (Umbra is silver/white and Astra is gold according to the plates.) This further assists in making things easier to read.

- Enemy LBs, ground effects, etc will take on a red tint (adjustable via color blindness settings.) You should never, ever be unable to instantly determine whose DRG's death puddle is whose, which Bahamut is your team's, etc. Making the enemy Garuda donut a little bit spiky isn't as easily sight-readable as just tinting the dang thing red.

[Gserpent]

Rework Ranking System, decide between "casual" or something more "competitive"

It's no secret the current Ranked mode system sucks. I think the only reason it continued forward largely intact is that it was... okay... for Feast when like 200 people per DC even played Feast consistently and only for like two or three weeks. But people are playing CC consistently (because, unlike Feast, it's actually fun! Most of the time...), so we're really being made to see how poorly thought out the ranking system is. But before we change it, we also have to decide, do we want a more "casual" experience, or are we trying to push for a more skill-based "competitive" experience?

If we want a more casual experience, then you should never lose points or risers for losses. Observe *any* PvP discussion board, server, whatever for any length of time and you'll see casual players (as well as experienced ones) complain about losing points when they played very well and their teammate(s) let them down and threw the game. It sucks, it's demoralizing, and if we're going for a "casual" interpretation of ranking (where rank is mostly just an indication of how many games you've played/won, which is largely what it is now), it's plain unnecessary. So remove it. Shift the algorithm to reward far fewer points for a win as you pass certain credit thresholds, but remove the loss of points from losses.

If we want a more "competitive" system that tries to approximate skill-based matchmaking... well, you'd just friggin use Elo. But I guarantee SE will never spring for that, for whatever reason. A stop-gap measure, then, might be to simply cut the amount of credit per win in half while retaining current amounts for losses, allow players to de-rank out of Crystal (starting over at Diamond 5), and change it so that only Crystal can be matched against other Crystal. This will inevitably lead to longer queues, but if you want a more "competitive" experience, that's the price - it's inevitable that the higher you climb, the smaller the player pool is, even if you aren't using an Elo-based system.

Furthermore, rework win streaks - instead of bonus risers (and nothing for Crystal), change it to bonus EXP, PvP EXP, Series EXP, and tomestones. You gain a stackable 10% bonus per win (starting at +30% on your third win in a row), and it can stack as high as you keep winning games.

Allow players to change class during the setup period (Casual only?)

Limit it to Casual only, if they believe it would cause issues with Ranked. Especially for Casual queue, we can level any class we want in Frontlines without having to actually play it, so why can't we do the same for Crystalline Conflict? If I'm screwing around in Casual instead of Ranked, why can't I continue to get XP on Monk while learning to play Dark Knight? It seems like a bizarre holdover from Feast, which had rigid role limitations. But why keep those?

[Gserpent]

Allow queuing with one friend (Casual only)

There are some very obvious reasons we can't queue with our buddies in ranked mode (Team Ranked when?), but I don't think they should necessarily apply to Casual. Tune DF to try and avoid placing 5 randoms against pairs of players, but otherwise let people play with their best friend. Dunno about y'all, but I got a long list of players that keep asking me for advice and I'd love to be able to just friggin play games with them (without having to go through the hassle of using custom matches.) Casual's supposed to be for fun, right? What's more fun than playing with your buddies?

Limit Overtime to 3 minutes, and identify and resolve remaining bugs

On the subject of bugs, it's no secret that OT is still pretty buggy. QA didn't have enough time to test everything, I imagine. I've had multiple games where both teams were at 50%, neither team had taken the checkpoint, and combat had been back and forth through mid (not on a checkpoint) for several minutes. Then one team is off the point for literally a second or less (typically falling back to potion/let team push while they wait on respawns) and the game instantly ends with a win for one side and not a draw. The specific location of this happening has varied, but I've seen it happen in over a dozen games - neither team has a lead, and the game ends *instantly* instead of 3 seconds after team B is no longer touching the point.

Specific to the changes to OT, it would simply add 3 more minutes to the game clock, after which the game ends. There would be no requirement for the losing team to hug the point (meaning no more Reaper-related bullshit) during Overtime, it would simply mean that whichever team is in the lead (taking checkpoint progress into account) at the end of the additional three minutes is declared the winner. If both teams are somehow at identical checkpoint progress after 3 minutes, the game is declared a draw.

Removing the "stay on the point" requirement alleviates several of the balancing issues current OT suffers from (namely, that many LBs and spells are balanced around the "well don't clump up, stupid" concept) and greatly expands the tactical options both teams have. It *should* also eliminate that "early ending" bug I mentioned above, and makes OT crystal clear for everyone involved.

[Gserpent]

Reduce Purify cooldown, and add priority to Resilience

CC spam in CC is a problem. Not the least of which reason is that Resilience, for whatever reason, seems to be delayed in activating. XIV sure seems to operate on obsolete spell batching mechanics, and it seems like Resilience is treated like a normal spell for some reason. That ought to change - Resilience should be made as instantaneous as possible. Getting stunned, breaking out of it with Purify, and then getting silenced only to watch the Resilience buff pop up *after* you ate the silence is just dumb. We know from the previous system's automatic protection buffs, it's possible to do this. So, however that system worked, its speed needs to be present with Resilience.

Further, I would recommend reducing Purify's cooldown. I would recommend 20 seconds, but reducing it to 25 and seeing how that adjusts things would also work. If we reduce it to 20 seconds, we would also likely need to reduce the duration of Resilience at the same time (likely 3 or 4 seconds.) MMO PvP is very reliant on careful and precise application of CC effects and things that break those effects - we don't want players to be *too* resistant to it, but neither do we want players spending seemingly half their playtime stunned, slowed, or whatever.

I do *not* think that Purify should affect or protect against all forms of CC. Miracle of Nature, RPR and DNC ult, etc are all balanced around being able to bypass Purify (and Guard in the latter cases.) Allowing Purify/Resilience to affect them would effectively be severe nerfs to these classes, none of which are in need of nerfs at this time.

[Gserpent]

Class Adjustments

Actually, not very many that I feel are necessary. Particularly if we're assuming we get that HP bump (I'm assuming it would be in the 10% range.) The only remaining outliers that I really feel exist right now are:

- Gunbreaker. No Mercy back to 10% damage/healing *or* 20% damage and 10% healing. Draw and Junction may target allies.

- Black Mage. Revert all Ice spells back to original potencies *or* change Deep Freeze to a bind effect, rather than a stun effect.

- Astrologian. Draw will never draw the same card twice in a row. Aspected Benefic no longer has charges; instead is a single cast at 10 sec cooldown. Aspected Benefic restored to 6000 base healing, 12000 maximum *or* 4000 base, 8000 maximum with 2 charges at 15 sec.

- Ninja: Revert Shukuchi sprint change. Nerf Shukuchi cooldown to 20 sec. Seiton Tenchu snapshots enemy HP earlier in the "cast time." Execution threshold lowered to 35%. Seiton is a tad too unreliable for an LB, in my opinion. Making it snapshot earlier/more reliably and reducing the threshold seems like a good idea.

- Samurai: Kuzushi only activates on direct attacks against the Samurai, not AOE effects. Kuzushi duration increased to 5 sec.

- Dancer: I feel like they could use some love, but with how widely DNC's performance varies based on whether or not they get competent teammates, I'd frankly be worried about creating a new overpowered meta-monster. My gut tells me that they're perfectly fine, just not suitable for solo queue environments. I don't like the idea of creating "overpowered with friends" classes for the sake of solo queue.

[Lammas]

This'll be multiple posts due to the 3000 character limit.

You can circumvent the ancient forum software by editing your message. Write something up to 3000 char and then edit > copy-paste whatever didn't fit in afterwards. SE really should make their forums less clunky if they insist this as being their platform of choice.

Improve UX for Clarity and Readability

Mostly agree. Visual and audible signs are some of the things this mode most sorely needs. A chime at 10 seconds left would do a lot to remedy needless losses. I'm fairly certain that your team is always blue and enemy is always red. As for ground effects I'm just gonna nope out of that all-red thing. Enemy DRG LB being red would make sense but an enemy Slipstream being red along with everything else would just make EVERYTHING harder to see. You don't need colorblind settings if you design your shit functionally to begin with and that's coming from a colorblind person. If anything turn the friendly slipstream blue but I'd even argue that there's no need for me to see the friendly slipstream begin with. It's not like it's offering a ton of synergy to anything with it's measly potency but in case that's buffed in the future I'd change the color of the friendly one. Having EVERYTHING the enemy does being red wouldn't really help anyone.

Rework Ranking System, decide between "casual" or something more "competitive"

There's room inbetween these two extremes. I've been ranking up an alt and I see people who were stuck on silver/gold/plat/diamond still being stuck on those ranks (and that's just the names I recognize and remember, there's plenty more) and I know they play a lot thanks to also seeing them on my friends rank up streams. The current system is not extremely effective at weeding out "undesirables" from crystal but it's doing something and just getting there with enough wins no questions asked is a horrible idea. I can't think of a single argument why anyone would want that to be a thing.
On the other hand I don't think the competitive option needs to be that harsh either. If you made each tier take 5 risers you'd already make people place a lot closer to where they actually belong without even touching win streaks. I don't really care for the idea of dropping ranks if ranking up was just made a bit harder to begin with. I really don't see a reason to touch win streaks as a PVP mechanic tied to PVP results instead of tying it to something completely else that I don't give 2 shits about. I don't really see the problem especially if risers were added. I'm quite fond of the mechanic myself. If you really want to push that back on top of that then I'd make the streak start at 4 wins tp weed out more people but I'd just start with adding risers before doing anything more drastic than that.

Allow players to change class during the setup period (Casual only?)

Honest question: Why? The fact that you can get exp on a job you're not actually going to play in some other mode seems more like an oversight if anything. Bizarre holdover as you say. Letting people change after queuing is just going to at worst make people expect that you'd change into a meta comp once you're in and at best you're gaining some measly extra exp that you can get so much more of elsewhere if leveling is your goal. The fact that you're getting what you see is part of the fun for me at least.

Allow queuing with one friend (Casual only)

Both agree and disagree. Early on not being able to queue with my friends was one of my biggest gripes about the mode but on those few occasions that I've ended up in the same match with people that I'm on voice coms with... whooo boy. I don't think casual is the grounds to introduce that kind of stomping. On the other hand adding it to ranked would be very unfair to solo queuers. I'm pretty sure that some live letter said that team queue is coming at some point and it's going to be against other teams. That's fair and I can wait for that. We got custom matches to scratch that itch for now although it's not super common for people to have 10 people to queue with I'd imagine.

Limit Overtime to 3 minutes, and identify and resolve remaining bugs

This I have a pretty large problem with. What your describing here is basically just saying make the matches last 8 minutes. Like seriously what's the difference between 8 minute match vs 5 minute match + 3 minute overtime with what you're suggesting? And how would that solve any of the things that overtime is there to solve, mainly people throwing once they're down in a match? Overtime as a mechanic is fine as it gives a team who's still in the fight a change to bring it back from a losing position. If anything make it so that the winners are in an even more advantageous position by nerfing or even removing the advantages that the losing team currently gets.

Reduce Purify cooldown, and add priority to Resilience

Purify / resilience needs an overhaul something bad and I'm more than surprised when that was not included in the 6.15 update. Resilience should be unconditional. That would remove the delay between pressing it and getting the buff and it would also allow you to use resilience pro-actively. 20 second cooldown might be a bit much but I'd personally agree that 25 seconds would be ok with maybe adding a second or two to the resilience buff timer. Also since better visuals have been discussed I'll just mention that resilience seriously needs some effect shown on the player model instead of having to scope for it on the buff bars. I do agree that DNC / RPR LB's should be unpurifyable and I'm not sure who's disagreeing with that anyway. WHM's I'm on the fence about. It doesn't bother me since it's one of the only things the jobs got going for it but I wouldn't mind making it otherwise more relevant while removing that either. I don't really care one way or the other on that one.

Class Adjustments

I really wish you hadn't written this stuff here at all. Your subjective list of balance changes looks quite different than mine so I disagree with it to begin with but also what use is throwing this stuff in here when the focus of every other post is on overall QOL changes and design philosophy? At best it's muddying up the perception of this topic, at worst it might end up derailing the whole discussion into job balance arguments.

[Gserpent]

Mostly agree. Visual and audible signs are some of the things this mode most sorely needs. A chime at 10 seconds left would do a lot to remedy needless losses. I'm fairly certain that your team is always blue and enemy is always red. As for ground effects I'm just gonna nope out of that all-red thing. Enemy DRG LB being red would make sense but an enemy Slipstream being red along with everything else would just make EVERYTHING harder to see. You don't need colorblind settings if you design your shit functionally to begin with and that's coming from a colorblind person. If anything turn the friendly slipstream blue but I'd even argue that there's no need for me to see the friendly slipstream begin with. It's not like it's offering a ton of synergy to anything with it's measly potency but in case that's buffed in the future I'd change the color of the friendly one. Having EVERYTHING the enemy does being red wouldn't really help anyone.

Honestly, I'd love a setting to just disable spell effects like in PvE. Imagine being forced to raid with full spell effects enabled. The ShB spells weren't too bad but the EW spells are *super* flashy and it just creates so much noise.

On the other hand I don't think the competitive option needs to be that harsh either. If you made each tier take 5 risers you'd already make people place a lot closer to where they actually belong without even touching win streaks. I don't really care for the idea of dropping ranks if ranking up was just made a bit harder to begin with. I really don't see a reason to touch win streaks as a PVP mechanic tied to PVP results instead of tying it to something completely else that I don't give 2 shits about. I don't really see the problem especially if risers were added. I'm quite fond of the mechanic myself. If you really want to push that back on top of that then I'd make the streak start at 4 wins tp weed out more people but I'd just start with adding risers before doing anything more drastic than that.

Literally the only point to having a competitive mode at all is that it provides something akin to skill-based matchmaking. Otherwise, it has no purpose to existing. So they need to decide what they want ranked to be - is it just how much you play and how much you've won, or do you want it to actually encompass player skill to some extent? That's why it has to be one or the other, if it's in-between then it's literally the crap we have now. I think the better solution would be the more casual one simply because of how "casual" the playerbase is. Judging from the amount of raging I see in games, I don't think the playerbase is mature enough for something actually skill-based because it inevitably means people have to sometimes admit they are not as skilled as they believe.

Honest question: Why? The fact that you can get exp on a job you're not actually going to play in some other mode seems more like an oversight if anything. Bizarre holdover as you say. Letting people change after queuing is just going to at worst make people expect that you'd change into a meta comp once you're in and at best you're gaining some measly extra exp that you can get so much more of elsewhere if leveling is your goal. The fact that you're getting what you see is part of the fun for me at least.


Both agree and disagree. Early on not being able to queue with my friends was one of my biggest gripes about the mode but on those few occasions that I've ended up in the same match with people that I'm on voice coms with... whooo boy. I don't think casual is the grounds to introduce that kind of stomping. On the other hand adding it to ranked would be very unfair to solo queuers. I'm pretty sure that some live letter said that team queue is coming at some point and it's going to be against other teams. That's fair and I can wait for that. We got custom matches to scratch that itch for now although it's not super common for people to have 10 people to queue with I'd imagine.

Because it's casual mode, and the XP from playing is the biggest draw for Frontline Roulette. It would be the same for CC. Ranked exists for if you want to take the mode seriously, casual is for everything else. It's the same with playing with your friends - 2 players allows you to enjoy playing with friends but doesn't completely control a game. It's an MMO. The idea of anything not allowing you to play with your friends is absurd. Ranked team *might* be coming, but it will likely be DOA because it will inevitably require PvP Teams, and that means forcing people to take PvP seriously - not something we can guarantee or expect with this playerbase.

This I have a pretty large problem with. What your describing here is basically just saying make the matches last 8 minutes. Like seriously what's the difference between 8 minute match vs 5 minute match + 3 minute overtime with what you're suggesting? And how would that solve any of the things that overtime is there to solve, mainly people throwing once they're down in a match? Overtime as a mechanic is fine as it gives a team who's still in the fight a change to bring it back from a losing position. If anything make it so that the winners are in an even more advantageous position by nerfing or even removing the advantages that the losing team currently gets.

The difference is that you can end the game "early" by having an advantage. Current overtime is garbage because the entire mode is balanced around not stacking up, but it *requires* you to stack up, which causes all kinds of major balance problems. Not to mention the bugs, of course. But we can assume those will get fixed regardless. The advantage lies with whoever gets defender's advantage. It's why you'll see so many games turned on their head in OT - if you can take a fight and wipe them out (ideally, not all at once because you want to force them to take bad fights afterwards), you can *easily* win the game. I'm pretty sure I've won more games as the loser in OT than I have as the winner. Probably because people are really stupid and don't listen to calls to back off, but... still.

Purify / resilience needs an overhaul something bad and I'm more than surprised when that was not included in the 6.15 update. Resilience should be unconditional. That would remove the delay between pressing it and getting the buff and it would also allow you to use resilience pro-actively. 20 second cooldown might be a bit much but I'd personally agree that 25 seconds would be ok with maybe adding a second or two to the resilience buff timer. Also since better visuals have been discussed I'll just mention that resilience seriously needs some effect shown on the player model instead of having to scope for it on the buff bars. I do agree that DNC / RPR LB's should be unpurifyable and I'm not sure who's disagreeing with that anyway. WHM's I'm on the fence about. It doesn't bother me since it's one of the only things the jobs got going for it but I wouldn't mind making it otherwise more relevant while removing that either. I don't really care one way or the other on that one.

Purify that always pops Resilience is no different from Guard. Resilience should only come from purging effects - you use Guard if you need to be proactive. Purify should remain as-is except for making Resilience actually work as intended, and probably a cooldown reduction. There's definitely a ton of times I kill people because they only had like 4 sec left on Purify, and they might have lived otherwise. 30 sec is simply too long for how short the maps are and how much CC is flying around (especially since you're often in scenarios where not purging the bind will kill you, etc... you can't always guarantee you can save purify for a stun or silence.)

I really wish you hadn't written this stuff here at all. Your subjective list of balance changes looks quite different than mine so I disagree with it to begin with but also what use is throwing this stuff in here when the focus of every other post is on overall QOL changes and design philosophy? At best it's muddying up the perception of this topic, at worst it might end up derailing the whole discussion into job balance arguments.

That's fair, but I think class balance *is* relevant. It's just the *least* important part, which is why it's at the end. Fixing core issues will alleviate most of the problems we currently have with class balance.

[TimotheusReed]

Class Adjustments

- Gunbreaker. No Mercy back to 10% damage/healing *or* 20% damage and 10% healing. Draw and Junction may target allies.

Really? There is already no one playing GNB at the moment. And I don't feel the GNB buff did make GNB overpowered.
I don't know why of all classes you suggested nerfing GNB again.

I still feel we should get CC-immunity on our LB. I also agree with being able to Draw and Junction friendly targets.

Edit: Also i looked at your profile and almost all classes you want to be changed are classes you either don't play or don't seem to main (because they are all beneath level 90).
I know people can still play classes in Pvp even though they aren't max level. But usually people main the classes they already played till endgame.

[Mahimahi]

- Add a countdown timer to the last 10 seconds of a match, and again to the last 10 seconds of Overtime (see below.) There shouldn't really be a case where players forget that time's about to end because they're so busy actually playing the game, but it's something that happens quite often in games. I've been guilty of it myself. Not only does it address that problem, it also reminds players that they can/should be looking to setup bind/heavy CC chains to keep players off the point. There's a reason UT, Quake, and so many other games have a countdown.

To be frank, watching the timer should also be a skill learned in PvP. I've matched with players who only seem interested in fighting rather than playing the objective and I've made this mistake myself many times because of hard tunneling. Once, I won a match when the entire enemy team was escorting the crystal and I just dived into the middle of them. By all rights I should have died, but they are so used to kiting melee that they ALL moved off the crystal and the match was awarded to my team, while our teams awkwardly looked at one another in the post match period.

If you make it very apparent that things are about to take place in the match, like the bombs going off or the winds are about to hit, then people will make fewer mistakes. And often what distinguishes good players from bad is how well they remember their mistakes.

[Gserpent]

Really? There is already no one playing GNB at the moment. And I don't feel the GNB buff did make GNB overpowered.
I don't know why of all classes you suggested nerfing GNB again.

I still feel we should get CC-immunity on our LB. I also agree with being able to Draw and Junction friendly targets.

Edit: Also i looked at your profile and almost all classes you want to be changed are classes you either don't play or don't seem to main (because they are all beneath level 90).
I know people can still play classes in Pvp even though they aren't max level. But usually people main the classes they already played till endgame.

And people who want unwarranted and overpowered changes are often people who "main" a class - such as wanting CC immunity on an already overloaded LB. If you don't think GNB is overpowered after the 20% hike, then you aren't playing it right. Try dipping out of DPS junction for once and seeing how broken 20% extra AOE healing is in a sustain comp or how 20% extra shielding makes you tankier than a paladin while also having much higher DPS. Particularly if we let D&J target allies, as it should, this would make GNB by far the strongest tank if it keeps the 20% buff.

To be frank, watching the timer should also be a skill learned in PvP. I've matched with players who only seem interested in fighting rather than playing the objective and I've made this mistake myself many times because of hard tunneling. Once, I won a match when the entire enemy team was escorting the crystal and I just dived into the middle of them. By all rights I should have died, but they are so used to kiting melee that they ALL moved off the crystal and the match was awarded to my team, while our teams awkwardly looked at one another in the post match period.

If you make it very apparent that things are about to take place in the match, like the bombs going off or the winds are about to hit, then people will make fewer mistakes. And often what distinguishes good players from bad is how well they remember their mistakes.

I will always favor clarity over "well you just have to learn how to overcome this dumb, pointless missing UI thing." UT and Quake didn't suddenly become less skillful because there was an announcer counting down the last ten seconds. Neither would this mode.

Like I said: people being made aware of the countdown *increases* tactical options because there's now a much higher chance of everyone noticing and being aware of it and positioning themselves accordingly. Even moreso if we revamp OT to not require teams to camp on the point and instead make it a flat duration, or some other similar overhaul that expands options.