Remove "Casual" from CC / CC needs another overhaul

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Can we please not merge them, thank you very much? I am not sure where this hellspawn of an idea came from, but I am opposed to the idea to merge Casual and Ranked into one abomination of a mode by pitting people who want to have casual fun with people who play for ranked performance. Leave the split where it is, Casual works perfectly fine as is. It is a good introductory mode and fantastic for just some casual PvP after work without having to worry about performance.

You want Ranked to work? Then work on the things that make Ranked "Ranked".
- rewards are dogwater and are an insult to be called incentive. "glory" and a number on a board are not enough in an incentive-driven game with an incentive-driven community, no matter how you slice it. It needs something you can only get in ranked and ideally something that incentivises ALL ranks to be active (i.e. tier-based rewards that AREN'T extra trophy crystals and bad borders, yet unique to ranked)
- map "pool" is on a rotation rather than random each game, leading to "oh it is <xy>, I don't like/am not good at <xy>, time to queue down"
- PvP used to have an actual community representative for transparency and mediation, this would be valuable if returning
- an overhaul to report systems for pvp cheating cases so extreme cases with extremely obvious things like speedhacking are taken off the census within the hour of the report coming in

And in general:
- Trophy Crystal vendor needs an update. BADLY. Four seasons and two series of Crystals is just a bloat of currency and nothing to actually spend them on. I currently turn them into wolf collars and use those for wolf marks to buy consumables. BUT OH WAIT IM ALSO GAINING THOSE EVERY MATCH. I have literally nothing to spend Trophy Crystals on. With how much I have with Collars taken into account I could probably buy out the whole shop 2-3 times.

[Araxes]

In a 6.1 live letter, Yoshi-P said that playing with friends would come "eventually." When that eventually is or if they just want everyone to forget they said that, only CBU3 knows.

Playing with Friends was removed from Frontlines, or rather, completely cut down, cause people complained about getting stomped by premades. So i very much DOUBT that we will ever be able to play with friends in CC. I had a linkshell of people doing pvp every evening and it was fun especially when we met another linkshell static.
Sadly, instead of building their own groups and getting better, people complained and got 8v8v8 mode removed + allowed groupsize reduced to 4.

There are some ToS violating programms out there that still allow you to queue with more than 4 people wich i abolutely advise to KEEP AWAY from. That can get you banned.

The point is: The complaints of a few NON-pvpers who wanted to get the farmable rewards more quick killed the fun and thus the modes for EVERYBODY else.

[Gserpent]

Can we please not merge them, thank you very much? I am not sure where this hellspawn of an idea came from, but I am opposed to the idea to merge Casual and Ranked into one abomination of a mode by pitting people who want to have casual fun with people who play for ranked performance. Leave the split where it is, Casual works perfectly fine as is. It is a good introductory mode and fantastic for just some casual PvP after work without having to worry about performance.

As far as I'm concerned, the people that want sweaty matches can just organize in discord servers or CWLS and use the arranged mode to play against each other. We're pretty clearly seeing that there's not enough of a playerbase to sustain two separate queues.

The solution to concerns about lopsided teams is to simply implement an Elo- or TrueSkill-derived system in the background. Never show this rating to players, because it's a well known thing that some subset of "casual" players are actively discouraged from playing if they see their score/they get anxious over their score (this is why most games have shifted away from proper, visible numbers/ratings into vague "tiers"... it's still all based on ratings, but you don't see them, only the "tier.") Same reason there's no inherent DPS meters or scoreboard at the end of dungeons etc. Some folks see performance metrics and get really anxious or discouraged. I don't understand it, but it's definitely a thing. In a game like this, those players are a considerable portion of your revenue stream so you can't risk alienating them.

As for lack of rewards... yeah... It's exactly as expected, Square-Enix just refuses to properly support their side content and it makes no sense to me. It's so absurdly wasteful of resources. I seriously doubt making new virtu sets for each series would consume *that* much of the art team's resources since it's just upscaling and occasionally editing old artifact armor sets, not creating something new. But it gives players something to pursue, being based on the more limited crystal trophies ensures they have to spend a lot of time on the content to unlock multiple full sets, etc.

I'd also recommend adding all of the poetics-dump components of relic weapons to Wolf Marks at a 10:1 ratio (2000 max poetics, 20000 max marks.) I would *much* rather do FL or RW or CC than grind MSQ roulette or whatever for poetics to move through a relic step, and I doubt I'm the only one. Relics, in general, should be all about driving players to engage in side content, and this seems like a completely brainless way of driving a little more activity to PvP.

[Sinstrel]

And if they are too lazy to create more re-skinned virtu sets, they could even more lazily create seasonal titles for various random arbitrary achievements. I'm under the impression that something like this wouldn't take more effort than a couple lines of code. I can't think of anything even more bare minimum effort.

[Nanne]

And if they are too lazy to create more re-skinned virtu sets, they could even more lazily create seasonal titles for various random arbitrary achievements. I'm under the impression that something like this wouldn't take more effort than a couple lines of code. I can't think of anything even more bare minimum effort.

They wanted to have unique titles for all the restoration seasons but people were against it so giving unique titles for all the seasons wouldn't probably work either

[Bobby66]

So the logic is to remove the one that pops? Maybe it is time to face facts ranked is just not in FFXIV cards? Play the mode for the sake of playing.

[Sinstrel]

They wanted to have unique titles for all the restoration seasons but people were against it so giving unique titles for all the seasons wouldn't probably work either

Ugh, I remember that. Why is our community so fragile?

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Ugh, I remember that. Why is our community so fragile?

Jealousy under the guise of hating on FOMO.

Sounds dumb and I don't mind the normal person hating on FOMO, but competitions having unique stuff has somehow been bashed regularly like "I am not good enough for xy, therefore I feel it is unfair that I don't have a chance on ABC".

Always wanting to deny others from having things instead of asking things to be expanded upon. A shame really.

[Gserpent]

Jealousy under the guise of hating on FOMO.

Sounds dumb and I don't mind the normal person hating on FOMO, but competitions having unique stuff has somehow been bashed regularly like "I am not good enough for xy, therefore I feel it is unfair that I don't have a chance on ABC".

Always wanting to deny others from having things instead of asking things to be expanded upon. A shame really.

Ultimates seem to be the only thing those folks don't whine about. Probably because they just pay for clears...

The reason the playerbase is like this is because Square-Enix has coddled and groomed them to be this way. Any time they were at a point where they *could* have implemented a knowledge check or skills test, they chose instead to allow people to bypass it, whether by adding "very easy" mode (which tunes things so loosely that you generally can completely ignore the intended method of completion) to solo duties, or designing Duty Finder with "stronger players will carry the weaker ones" in mind.

Bardam's Mettle proved that you can put knowledge checks into the game, and they don't even have to be hard. Why couldn't they put those into the solo MSQ duties periodically to ensure that players knew the basics of gameplay? It's actually kind of insulting, how stupid Square-Enix apparently believes the average player to be.

[Nanne]

Ultimates seem to be the only thing those folks don't whine about. Probably because they just pay for clears...

Ultimates don't go away