[Suggestion] PvP battles

[Onisake]

I love PvP. I don't live and breath it, but I greatly appreciate when PvP is done well.

In MMOs, the PvP i've had the most fun with is small scale skirmishes. large scale PvP is great, but it's too chaotic. too hard to figure out is going on.

PvP in FFXI was fun and all, but there was clearly no character balance. there were team objectives, but except in rare instances most people just went around killing each other.

RDM was the clear king of PvP with PLD/RDM a close second.

However I'd love to see PvP in 14 be engaging and fun. the concept art has me very much intrigued, as it looks like a siege battle. IT would be pretty awesome to have a team based PvP where you are defending a stronghold against an attacking force, or vice-versa.

assumptions:

1) i'm assuming GCs will be a fairly large part of PvP. it's the only way it really makes sense to me right now.

that being said I would suggest that the party leaders GC be the one chosen for the instance. this would allow friends of opposing factions to play together. to keep rewards consistent, all members receive seals from that faction. this would allow players to purchase items from a different faction.

2) for PvP I prefer team based objectives. I love League of Legends and think it's been beautifully done. people have set roles, and it's not just a deathmatch. it's not about which team has the best DPSers. real strategy comes into play.

That being said i'd like to suggest that NPCs play a significant role in PvP as well as 'map objectives'. this would add a strategic aspect to the battle. it would also keep 'support' heavy teams relevant and allow several strategies to come forward without one necessarily being better than the other.

IE: escort a group of NPCs to an objective. the opposing force tries to kill the NPCs before they reach the objective. once at the objective, players must either 1) perform some sort of action or 2) defend NPCs for a given amount of time (such as putting a bomb at the base of the wall, or defusing said bomb)

3) Not everyone has an interest in PvP. That being said I don't think players should be forced to PvP and rewards should reflect that.

I suggest scaling to the battles. IE: options for 2v2, 4v4, 5v5, 8v8, 16v16 etc. you could use the same map, but populate NPCs based on number of participants. If someone disconnects or leaves, replace them with an NPC after X seconds. upon reconnecting have the NPC despawn.

additional Rewards (aside from seals) should be mainly vanity. Chocobo armor, town gear, maybe crafting/gather gear, respec pages, etc. or maybe triggers to spawn NMs to get gear. (like a BCNM, smaller scale ifrit battle, etc.)


anyone else have suggestions? or things they would like to see?

[Jinrya-Geki]

Stun effects shouldn't be allowed.

And if it's added later, no shadow (Utusemi effects).

Never enjoyed PvP in any games: fightining/mmo/rpg/shooters. Always lag and brings all the fighting down to bare luck and who can get stunned first.

[Shurrikhan]

I usually enjoy PvP outside of small arena fights. Don't especially care one way or the other as to whether FFXIV gets PvP. But, that's assuming 2.0 response time changes; in the present stationary-attacks scheme it'd only infuriate me.

But, seeing PvP is already being considered for 2.0, unless you predict that what they make for it is going to be mutually exclusive (i.e. they build a system that won't be able to include your ideas without going back and taking additional time to rework it), the discussion seems a bit early.

That aside, I don't honestly see much by way of GC vs. GC PvP outside of tournaments, which wouldn't be much like your typical PvP. What I do see for PvP is stuff like three different groups booking ships for an island confirmed to have treasure. They sign on for the voyage, book a ship, arrive at basically the same time from different places. The setting, within the island's dungeons, would be something of a labyrinth, with increased complexity and difficulty (breaking down barricades, solving runes, fighting monsters or even mini-bosses, such that it's almost always less viable to just gun straight for the center, or wherever the treasure is kept, as opposed to circumnavigating the instance and trying to sabotage the efforts of the other teams as well. Smaller treasure deposits might also be hidden around the instance. It might even be worth making it so they're picked up by the individual who loots them, rather than being split by the team, just to add a little more disorder for the less honorable teams, increasing the gap between those who work as a team and those who... act like mere pirates (?).

Edit: when it comes to sieges, I'd rather just have it be a raid against NPCs -- the Imperials. Unless we're actually able to switch to the Imperial side (and as more than just a fight), it doesn't make much sense to be fighting each other in those war-scale encounters.

[Onisake]

hmmmm

what about magitek armor or jousting on chocobos?

that could help eliminate the stun problem. it could make it more like a snare.

or better yet, i don't think stuns are a problem. it's chain stunning that is a problem.

---------
The island race sounds fun.

GCs still make the most sense to me. there's a lot of ways to spend that. anything else (excepting allowing players to join the imperials) is just wanton violence. that doesn't make a lot of sense with the current lore. early in the CS quests its pretty well established that the GCs don't really like each other but are banding together for a common cause.

the fact that PvP will not likely be a large part of the game, it will likely be somewhat 'light hearted' to support/maintain rivalry among the GCs.

[Calevr]

I would be interested in seeing this in FFXIV.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWSPdINFddI

[Soukyuu]

Stun effects shouldn't be allowed.

And if it's added later, no shadow (Utusemi effects).

Expanding on that, PvP should have their own ruleset and damage formulas, separate from PvE.
Let people enjoy PvP but don't cripple PvE in its name.

[Onisake]

I would be interested in seeing this in FFXIV.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWSPdINFddI

that could help keep the DoH/DoL relevent. i dont' think it can be quite as RTS like though. the current engine can't support that easily. but they could make recipes for build-able structures.

Expanding on that, PvP should have their own ruleset and damage formulas, separate from PvE.
Let people enjoy PvP but don't cripple PvE in its name.

if anything it will be PvP that gets broken not PvE. if it's like FFXI, the formulae will favor tanks heavily. that's why i said it should be NPC based. you support NPCs. it's not 'true PvP' for some people but you could easily just attack the players and win if its set up correctly.

[Soukyuu]

if anything it will be PvP that gets broken not PvE.

I disagree; In most cases, it's the PvE that suffers (Aion, WoW, PW, a couple of others). With YoshiP admiring Blizzard, I see PvE being crippled in favor of PvP being a more likely result.

Separating PvE from PvP won't hurt any of the content, though.

[Ruisu]

Never enjoyed PvP in any games: fightining/mmo/rpg/shooters. Always lag and brings all the fighting down to bare luck and who can get stunned first.

It's clear that you've never played Quake/Unreal Tournament.

Also, it's one of those things that you can ignore, if you don't like it. You know, not everything in this game is being made for a single audience.

[Jinrya-Geki]

It's clear that you've never played Quake/Unreal Tournament.

Also, it's one of those things that you can ignore, if you don't like it. You know, not everything in this game is being made for a single audience.

Oh believe I do ignore it. It when PvPer's see something as overpowered, such as an attack, they want it nerfed. Then it is nerfed and it effects PvE, that's where I get annoyed.