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

[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.

[WhiteFlow]

Well after the first replays i think it makes barely sense even talk about this topic here or ever.

Not sure how to close this thread? Maybe some Mod can do this?

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Well after the first replays i think it makes barely sense even talk about this topic here or ever.

Not sure how to close this thread? Maybe some Mod can do this?

Why close it? Thread seems fine as a public place to discuss opinions on the past season. No harm in just leaving it there, is there?

[MilkieTea]

Why close it? Thread seems fine as a public place to discuss opinions on the past season. No harm in just leaving it there, is there?

I get the feeling that OP does not like disagreement

[AnotherPerson]

I've climbed and got stuck on multiple tiers (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Crystal), but I also played a lot of different jobs to get to where I am. I can give a somewhat more indepth review on the overall state of PvP for Crystalline Conflict.


Class Balance for Crystalline Conflict overall:

Black mage is still too overpowered. 6.11a -> 6.15 didn't change Black mage's effective potential output too much. In the hands of good Black mages, it's still ridiculously strong. Even when you're losing, you can still hit top DPS (meaning all the time you stayed dead didn't do much for your overall contribution to putting pressure on the enemy team compared to other players). This is while you're only using Ice (Crowd-Control), not Fire (DoT). A slight nerf to Freeze/Flare, as well as a nerf to the max potency of Burst would be ideal.

Red Mage might need a slight buff to its survival in Corps-a-corps, but overall it's doing good. Switching between Black and White Shift is a very interesting mechanic, and one that I like a lot.

Ninja - Shukuchi has issues -
1. The stealth doesn't activate as fast as it should, causing the stealth to break before you even dash away.
2. In addition to everyone having infinite sprint duration, forcing sprint to remove the hidden effect makes no sense since the hidden effect is tied to a very potent 12000 damage weaponskill (18000 under Bunshin) -- and has to be used under 5 seconds. People can just start sprinting away, forcing you to not be able to target with Shukuchi. Plus, people can tell your general direction when you dash if they were targeting you with a ranged attack since the attack follows your location. Shukuchi is already punished if you use it to run away, but now there are even more punishments on top of the already clunky skill since enemies can now catch up to you by using sprint. The hidden effect no longer serves any purpose.

I assume being hit by stray AOEs is intended to break Shukuchi by design, but having all these other problems make the skill very bad to use. Other than that, the job is fine.

Reaper - doing well. Very strong in terms of survival with a well timed use of Arcane Crest. It has great burst potential when deciding to accumulate charges for Plentiful Harvest, but is heavily punished upon death. There's not much that needs improvement here. It's a well designed melee job.

Dancer is overall okay. Honing Ovation feels still a bit too problematic to use as it locks your other skills, making it take a while to build up a burst combo synergy for Dancer. Overall, the job is in a very good spot. It's unique compared to Bard or Machinist because it has instant cast weaponskills + lots of mobility with En Avant.


Machinist is overall good. The damage from Analyzed Drill + LB is very strong and can guarantee a kill, especially when used with Wildfire. This makes Machinist one of the strongest ranged DPS (selfish DPS acquired!). The bioblaster makes it feel weird to use at times since you can't reset it unless you run into melee range, but I assume this is intended by design because having bioblaster automatically reset to Drill is too overpowering. Likewise, skipping a skill makes it very difficult to depend on a weaponskill of choice. It's still very good because of the synergy with Scattergun in close combat with Bioblaster for Crystalline Conflict. The RNG for Chainsaw feels strange since you're basically praying to get a 3% effect, so it's not something you or the opposing enemy can really predict. Overall though, still fine. Player Skill issue for the enemy team who can't predict Analyzed Chainsaw and lost to 97% Survival rate, Player Skill issue for the Machinist using it for wasting an Analyzed charge if Chainsaw doesn't activate the kill. Overall, Machinist is fine.

Bard is almost perfect. Maybe needs a slight buff to it's main attack skill Powerful Shot (Potency increases up to 6,500 the further you are from the target, reaching its maximum value when the target is 15 yalms away.) Other than that, the job plays perfectly fine.

Sage has some issues with Kardia. Dosis is too underutilized and doesn't heal enough to facilitate its use enough. This is because a Sage is most likely busy weaving Toxikon and target-swapping Kardia around while using Eukrasian Diagnosis (a stronger shield + grants Toxikon II). Otherwise, they are using Phlegma and Pneuma. Attaching the effect of Kardion to Phlegma and Toxikon with lower heal values and increasing Dosis to heal slightly more would be better. That way, there are costs to decision making on Sage while keeping its identity in-line with heal by DPSing. At the same time, it will not overwrite the other healers in overall effective healing potency / burst healing potency.

Astrologian is probably near perfect or as good as it can get. It has solid healing toolkit and a diverse usage of Double cast to fit your needs. I can't find any complaints. Even the RNG aspect of the cards is good because no matter card what you get, there's at least a reason to use it at any given moment.

White mage is in a good spot. Has a solid healing toolkit with some CC and DPS. Miracle of Nature may need to be adjusted for Sage to not cancel its Limit Break on using it, but other than that, the job is working as intended. Very strong offensively.

Scholar is also in a good spot. The pressure, DPS, and healing it does is solid. Gameplay feels different from all the other healer jobs. It has offensive burst recovery with their LB.

Match-making, Climbing Tiers:

For ranked, it's overall okay. As I got stuck in each tier, I realized there was something I'm lacking that prevented me from playing at the same level as others in a higher rank (sometimes it's coordination, sometimes it's positioning, other times it's damage rotation, pushing the crystal, special map condition awareness, or adaptability on the fly). Sometimes it gets discouraging to be unable to climb a tier repeatedly (I remember getting stuck on a tier for 20+ matches until I stopped to realize what I can do to improve as a player). Sometimes I feel like I'm just good enough to compete with players at that level... but that's just it. I'm only -average- so there are times where I would lose a game against players of equal skill level. After looking back, I realize that's normal.

I think the only real big PvP outlier in match-making is during Diamond 3 to Diamond 1, when you get matched with a full team of Crystal players. From my personal perspective (and from many people I played with at this tier), generally... the team who gets the Diamond player has the highest Crystal tier-ranked party member in their team (generally 3000+ credit onwards). They will fight against a full team of Crystal-ranked players (0 to 2000 credit). Generally though... because the average Crystal tier player skill level is that high, there is a lot less mistakes that these players will make that the Diamond 3 player cannot keep up with, so they become a huge liability because most mistakes suddenly become glaringly bright for the enemy team. For the most part, I don't think this needs to be addressed since there is definitely a lack of players climbing up from Diamond tier onwards that most Diamond players just adapt to Crystal tier-level gameplay eventually. I personally climbed up from Diamond 4 to Crystal in a day when facing against mostly Crystal tier players after getting stuck on Diamond 5 to Diamond 4 for a while ... then again I might be the outlier here due to my rate of improvement?

However, as a person who climbed up and have seen multiple people who also created a second alternate character to climb ranked back to Crystal again in a couple of days to a week, I know for sure there's not really much of an issue with climbing itself. It's really a skill issue that creates a barrier between players, and this is fine because this is what ranked PvP is about. You will definitely win more games than you lose if your skill level and knowledge of the game mechanics is high enough. As long as your own skill level is high enough, you can offset your losses enough to climb up to the next tier easily.

For Casual mode, I'm thinking whether there should be a second mode. One for "actually casual, play with anyone mode". The other being "Practice Ranking", one for practicing in matches with players at a similar rank as you, but not directly affecting your ranked score overall. On one hand, this will separate players who want to improve themselves before going back into ranked, giving them time to accumulate their experience in matches without worrying about losing more points if they are in their promotion matches. I feel this might be a good implementation for those who would get discouraged from climbing a tier repeatedly.

I think I can speak from experience to anyone who reached a high tier and realized that they cannot really improve in Casual matches because of the skill difference. When we join, matches usually end in 2 minutes, or there is a significant disparity that your team is almost always winning and the enemy team barely can put a dent to pushing the Crystal. Yes, even if PvP has fixed stats, the difference in player skill level is actually THAT high that matches can end very one-sidedly. For that reason, I've been leaning more heavily to wanting a "Practice Ranking" match-making mode.

On the other hand, I'm not 100% with this idea-- while PvP has been improving immensely, this is only a part of the game, not the entire game. The larger portion of the game revolves with PvE. I'm not sure whether there would be enough players to implement such a function. It would be ideal if players can check how many players are queued up for "Practice Ranking" at the current rank if such a function existed.


Rewards:

The good thing with the current reward system is that PvP incentivizes simply playing it with the Series malmstone. However, that only incentivizes playing PvP in one form - which is casual matches. It does not help with the overall state of PvP enough other than dipping in the toes of PvP. However, it is a good starting point for those who don't want to be too immersed in PvP. It is a good indicator that if there are more rewards added each minor patch / major patch to keep the rewards fresh, more players will join. The portraits being added was a definite plus to having people interesting in Adventure plates. Having old rewards eventually come back into the Crystalline Trophy store after obtaining it once would be a good start for players who missed some of the old rewards. For gear unlocks via the Series Malmstone, I'm thinking whether it would be more beneficial to put it in the Crystalline store after unlocking it once. That way, if the gear is somehow lost or thrown out, you can pay more Crystalline Trophies to re-obtain them. For example - the Archfiend PvP gear. There is currently no way to re-obtain this gear from my understanding. Perhaps unlocking it once and then placing it back onto the Crystalline Trophy shop would be a good way to reward old gear obtained via the Series Malmstone.

There is a considerable lack of repeatable rewards, actually. Most rewards are all one-time unlocks in the Crystalline trophy vendor. The other rewards are simply glamour for gear - which may not always be applicable for the player if they don't want the glamour (most of the glamour rewards is class-locked and the same old gear from previous expansions, only dyeable). There's really nothing else in the Crystalline trophy vendor to buy for me since I bought all the one-time unlocks that I'm overfilling with Crystalline trophies.

As a start of the new season and the first time implementing Crystalline Conflict, I can understand that there aren't as many rewards in PvP since everything is new. However, I do think there should more repeatable rewards or more varied rewards to continue to incentivize Crystalline Conflict on the start of Season 2. Plus, there should be a unique reward for reaching a ranked tier besides just the background portraits. These rewards are not repeatable for Season 2 for anyone who has played Season 1 and reached that tier, so I am worried there won't be any incentive for people to continue trying ranked PvP otherwise.

This is just an example. Perhaps introduce a new minion / title / varied adventure portraits for the next season starting onwards from Gold that is immediately unlockable after obtaining that tier? Each higher tier will give the same reward immediately in addition to the other rewards at lower tiers. So in Gold, you get [Minion 1] as the tier reward. In Platinum, you get Minion 2 as the tier reward. The higher you climb, the more immediate these rewards become, becoming "small incentives" in each tier that encourage the player to continue climbing higher. This will also increase player participation in "Practice Ranking" match mode as well. Players who gain these rewards can also "show off their rewards" to their friends, encouraging more people to try climbing PvP. This solution should also help solve the issue with the lack of players in ranked PvP and lack of players who want to "Practice Ranking" match mode.

Of course, for tier rewards, after a season has ended, it should go on the Crystalline Trophy store at a very high cost. For the long term, I was thinking whether these rewards should be purchasable for Crystalline Trophies only after reaching the desired tier in any season. So in Season 3, as long as you reached Gold tier, even if you weren't in PvP or reached Gold tier in the previous Season 1 and Season 2, you can still get access to Season 1 and Season 2 rewards through the Crystalline Trophy Vendor as long as you have the required Crystalline Trophies to purchase them. This way, rewards are never permanently time-locked, but the player are still required to achieve the same tier as the previous seasonal players to gain access to these rewards. Considering the amount of time players who have to climb each season to get this reward versus the amount of time players who have to climb the most recent season to get everything available in the Crystalline Trophy Vendor, I think it is only fair to make the cost of the reward equal to the amount of Crystalline trophies awarded in that rank for that season.

I think it would be better to get more players to participate and want to participate to reach a higher ranking. After all... not everyone does Savage and Ultimate level content in PvE because they like it... they also do it for the glamour and unlockable items!

Due to the nature of PvP, the difference in difficulty never really diminishes because it's always determined by average level of skill of players at that level. I think that's fine as long as everyone can eventually get access to the rewards as long as they perform to the standard of what is required to unlock that reward like everyone else before them did. The only big exceptions to this would be the rewards for the Top 100. Reaching Top 100 is an achievement in itself and cannot speak for the amount of dedication, commitment, and time required to sustain that placement, way more than the average Crystal tier player at the very least.

[Havenchild]

Main Issues imo -

- Stun chaining and Purify: Still feels like stuns are too consistent. Purify could use a second charge or a lower cd.

- Matchmaking: Needs a big adjustment in ranked.
Bottom tier of a rank should match with the top tier of the previous rank. (Gold 5: Pool of players is Silver 1 -> Gold 1)
Middle ranks should match within the same rank. (Gold 4 -> 1: Pool of members is at least Gold rank)
Top tier of rank can match with rank above. (Gold 1: Pool of players is Gold 5 -> Platinum 5)

None of this gold matching with Bronze people. The other issue is one side getting lopsided pairings. Gold + Platinum on one side versus Silver + Gold on the other.

Lopsided pairings on class roles. One group getting full DPS, while the other gets 3 healers a tank and a DPS. This should be even to some extent. If a healer or tank is present on either sides "queue", then the opposite teams needs to have at least one healer / tank.

- Allow two people to queue together in ranked and no more than that.

There's some skills that need to be tuned here and there but we'll have to see what the 6.2 PVP Reform will do first.

[Ravenwatch]

Soultions:

- Best soultion would be just remove the ranking mode. The mode iteself is ok. Sure nothing special at all but it makes fun if you dont care about the ranking.

- Remove PvP. Already in the past only FL was played and only because of the daly reward for leveling. Same for Feast to it reward system and limitation with lack of intress sides of community. If a PvP mode dont give good enough rewards it die out in most mmos.

- Elo Boosting/Wintrading: i just mention it is quite easy to achieve to the current mode.

So if I and others enjoy CC/PvP and you don't.. rather than you simply opting out of it and doing something else, it should be removed from the game?