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?