PvP in FFXIV - Conclution of First CC Season and future viewpoints

[WhiteFlow]

Soon the CC season end and i already put my experience (and frustration) from this season down. I do not include the pvp stuff from frontline matches which are unbalanced from the rework of PvP or RW which is disabled. (both still in work i guess?)

It would be nice if people share their experience with the first season or at end of it in one week.

For me i only have 2 maybe 3 poitns i give my feedback.

- Class balance: The blm changes from 6.15a showed that SE lacks the expierence in this topic. Even if they did in the past quite well (like for feast or the another older mode maybe?) this one was more a step in the wrong direction. But this isnt something new. Every company i saw with "competive pvp" (i wil go to this later) strugeled over time with balanceing even if they overbuffed or overnerfed stuff, at the end it was okish to play.

- Match Maker: Idk who in SE is responsable for this but he should be imedenty fired from his job.

I have no clue who thought its a good idea to put all players of different skill level in one poll. Even with the (bronze - crystal rankings) it dont filter the players out who lacks expierence or understanding to the game to be machtes vs +5k players or veterans over past 5-6 years of pvp in crystal games. It s like riot with Leauge of Legends would allow gold players who did thier first 100 games get matches vs Challangers top 100 and it will end up as a "nice" game.

I literally never saw so much incompetence in this one thing.

The diffrence in skill is SO HUGE that matches end in less than 150 sek... (The amount of time you need to push the crystal to the end, without any resistance). Its like a bot game.

I serious lost all fun out of the game, because of this one thing.

- Competitive PvP/ PvP in MMOs: The last point ... i got it that SE want satisfying "everyone" desire (like for me: a "competitive game" with difficulty and challenges wich rewards me for right playing) or the casual player who just want to do some 2-3 matches for fun after work just for the enjoyment and chill, but put both together will end up in a disaster.

At the end i dont see SE should put no more recoursss as now for this mode. Every mmo i saw who tried to get into PvP ended up in a failure. (i am sure there are some who do it well, just dont know them)

For me this was the last time i touch pvp or even the game if no radical changes are done.

Soultions:

- There isnt one all are happy. End of the Story. Same as Feast mode.

[DrWho2010]

the only metric you have is ranking tier for matchmaking. if you have to add more things like say damage done, kills, etc. it's more information that has to be stored on your character and would most likely lead to increased queue time which is what they probably don't want to happen.

this is only the first season, so yes hopefully they can refine things a bit more but it's still very much a work in progress so you can't really say things like like delete PVP.

[Vahlnir]

CC is probably the most fun I've had in PvP for a long, long time. Absolutely hate Frontlines, and not because of the mode, but the people playing it. CC rewards time and effort, and the rewards for winning and losing are different enough to encourage actually trying, but not punishing enough to feel like you've just wasted your time.

Thankfully they separated ranked/unranked play, so I'm not really sure what your point is with the ranking system. I do feel, however, that ranked matches should allow premades. The whole ranked path could use some tweaks though, for sure. It's not perfect. I also don't see how it is easy to boost/wintrade in this mode. Each match has 10 random people, and you can't queue with friends.

Class balance was a nightmare though, for sure, and Yoshi P's buffs to BLM didn't help. He can deny it all he wants, but BLM is his baby, and he wanted it to be as OP as possible. No one can convince me otherwise.

I also don't think it should be removed, but I do think it should be expanded upon. New courses, better rewards, etc. Speaking of rewards, let's shy away from recolored job gear please. Let's get some unique gear sets in those vendors!

It doesn't need to stick with the same overall map design either. They could design different paths and stuff, making the maps at least feel different from one another. As it currently stands, the paths are largely the same, give or take a corner or two. Nothing wrong with shaking it up a bit more. I also liked how 2/3 of the maps had a unique gimmick, like wind and fire. We need more of that too. The Ruby Sea map for example could have tidal waves or something that don't do a lot of damage but has a severe knockback, alongside the volcanic blasts.

But yeah, that is my feedback in regard to your posts and my personal opinions on the mode itself.

[BluexBird]

Yeah... I get it, you had some bad times in PvP. But then your suggestions were basically to just remove PvP. But you can already do that by yourself by just... not playing PvP?

Like literally, it you don't like it, then don't play it. For instance, my favorite thing to do in this game is raid. 90% of the time, I'm doing raids, trying out new jobs in raids, etc. But other than that, there are things I absolutely HATE. Some people do MSQ Roulette every - single - DAY! They basically spend an hour doing a dungeon that is filled with cutscenes they've probably already memorized. And don't even get me started in Eureka. I don't understand how people can stand grinding that shit for DAYS on end.

But do you see me making posts trying to get MSQ Roulette and Eureka removed? No! I just don't bother with them. Just like you can just simply not bother with PvP, and go do something else. There's plenty of people who enjoy it already. There's no point in ruining it for them, just because you don't like it.

Comr up with better solutions. If you think the class balance is off, that's what you should be trying to fix. And if you don't like ranking mode, then just play unranked. lol

[DrWho2010]

play late night/overnight enough when barely any *normal* people are on, you will find you run into the same people over and over if they are queuing or if you pre-arrange with people to play at these times you can guesstimate that your people will be the only ones on and pvp'ing, thereby creating your win-trading situation.

[WhiteFlow]

Yeah... I get it, you had some bad times in PvP. But then your suggestions were basically to just remove PvP. But you can already do that by yourself by just... not playing PvP?

Like literally, it you don't like it, then don't play it. For instance, my favorite thing to do in this game is raid. 90% of the time, I'm doing raids, trying out new jobs in raids, etc. But other than that, there are things I absolutely HATE. Some people do MSQ Roulette every - single - DAY! They basically spend an hour doing a dungeon that is filled with cutscenes they've probably already memorized. And don't even get me started in Eureka. I don't understand how people can stand grinding that shit for DAYS on end.

But do you see me making posts trying to get MSQ Roulette and Eureka removed? No! I just don't bother with them. Just like you can just simply not bother with PvP, and go do something else. There's plenty of people who enjoy it already. There's no point in ruining it for them, just because you don't like it.

Comr up with better solutions. If you think the class balance is off, that's what you should be trying to fix. And if you don't like ranking mode, then just play unranked. lol

As you metion i could just stop playing it (which i will definitely do if MM is not adjusted). For me i would like to get more "challenging" games instant of this or more community support for self organisation tournaments, wich by far are the best soultion.

Same as ppl who like Savage raids or Ultimates over the normal PvE stuff, but this mode cant justify them in the current stand.

It was imporant to see how the community thinks about this mode and ofc removal is are quite unlikey but the amount of recourses SE have and the effort put in to make it work proper is quite huge.

[WhiteFlow]

the only metric you have is ranking tier for matchmaking. if you have to add more things like say damage done, kills, etc. it's more information that has to be stored on your character and would most likely lead to increased queue time which is what they probably don't want to happen.

this is only the first season, so yes hopefully they can refine things a bit more but it's still very much a work in progress so you can't really say things like like delete PVP.

From my observation of Crystal matches, ranking don't matter, except the limit of Diamond 3. The only thing it cares it about your class/role.

Like you never see a full melee team vs full ranged team.

[DrWho2010]

Like you never see a full melee team vs full ranged team.

That's a fault of the pool of people queuing, not the matchmaking system.

[Jeeqbit]

CC feels good for the first row but it feels like it gets a bit steep for the other rows.

Climbing tiers is realistic but still very difficult. It took me a very long time to climb into Silver because one loss could reset my progress or cause me to have to win 2 matches to progress again. I bring victory to most of my parties but the amount of backtracking up to Silver put me off, especially with not as many people doing ranked anymore and the quality of players reducing nearer to 6.2. Fortunately, I don't need to do ranked which is good.

It's a much better reward system because everyone can get the rewards. I would not mind if all rewards were obtained with Wolf Marks or Wolf Collars instead of being time-limited by series. We would still have seasonal spikes of pvp if new rewards were added for Wolf Marks or Wolf Collars, but SE seems worried enough about it to keep it time-limited.

CC is better than the Feast and the only reason is because healers can't drag it out and prevent a wipe for 10 minutes. I don't find there to be much of a difference except that, but it makes a big difference. The queue times are better because it's not role-restricted.

[Flaws]

First, I think the ranking system is really bad and needs to be changed to something that actually takes personal performance into account, such as a point system. Giving and taking away a star per win/loss is quite bad because it is a 5v5 game mode with an objective, where teamplay is what makes all the difference yet you can only queue solo. Usually you will not be able to carry your entire team on your own in the highest ranks and especially not if the enemy team have any amount of teamplay. Very often you will either lose because of the jobs matchmaking or because of the huge skill gaps which are things that are pretty much out of your control. I'm sure some top 100 player will say that I'm wrong and that might be the case but I feel like this is the case for most players trying to climb.

Second, the lack of actual chat is only to the detriment of teamplay with randoms as it makes it so much harder to make a plan or a strategy. And even then people have found ways to be toxic even with the limited comms available. Spamming "Nice job" or "Good match", marking players on their own team with the Ignore marker, straight up going AFK, or like what happened to me once where a Crystal top 100 player from another server travelled to mine just to /tell me to stop queueing into ranked altogether because apparently I'm ruining his matches by just being matched on his team.

All that being said, I am not a particularly amazing player. I'm new to MMO RPG PvP in general and I've never played Feast. However, it definitely has felt like I've had way too many losses that have been entirely out of my control.

For the record - I made it to Diamond 1 on multiple occasions, even once with 1 win away from Crystal, and then I would proceed to go on a losing streak all the way down to Diamond 5, multiple times. Between people leaving or AFKing, to people being way higher rank than they should be and lacking any teamplay and the mental capacity to look at marked enemies or to step on the crystal in Overtime when its critical (yes, even in top ranks), through the jobs matchmaking deciding the match before it has even started. And then the matches where you'd get one or more top 100 players in the enemy team while you have Diamonds or low Crystals in yours are the absolute icing on the cake.

In conclusion for me, ranked has mostly been terrible but the mode is great for casual and for grinding out the series rewards and then just dropping it in favor of almost any other content the game has to offer. I will only consider climbing in the upcoming seasons if sufficient changes are made to the ranking and matchmaking systems.