Open World PvP

[StarRosie]

I think many of you are seeing this through a very narrow minded point of view.

I'm going to be brutally honest here. I think you are as well, and you're ignoring the mountains of data and past examples. I'm sure you and others here have good intentions, but if we look to almost any game that has had open world pvp, the thing they all have in common is high level players hunting and ganking low level players. And putting in some sort of barrier or opt out sort of thing to protect those who don't want to deal with the open world pvp, will just kill the whole idea before it even has a chance to take off. We can look to Red Dead Online, which has open world pvp, for a good example of this. At the start, RDO was plagued with people riding around the starter town and other parts of the map, using deadeye to headshot instant kill people. Even after several nerfs to deadeye, as well as a few other things, people were still riding around ganking low level players. So the devs put in an option you can toggle at your camp that basically did what you're suggesting as a countermeasure to high level players ganking low level players. The vast majority of players for RDO turned this option on, because they just wanted to have funny cowboy adventures with their friends without some jerk riding in and killing them all. So now, most people just ask why the open world pvp is there in the first place. And that's not even getting into the bounty system...

A rework would he needed or course, since there exist specific PvP abilities, but why not just merge the two together?

This just won't work. Several PVP actions are either entirely unique to PVP or are a job's high level ability, split off to be something else. Examples being WAR just having Primal Rend as an ability in PVP but also requiring their LB to go into inner release and use Fell Cleave. DRG being able to use Wyrmwind Thrust after backflipping, or unique things like WHM's Afflatus Purgation or Miracle of Nature. Would I have to hit some sort of toggle to swap between my skills being in PVE and PVP mode? Or would I just not have inner release available to me while on the overworld? Would I need primal scream to gain access to Fell Cleave again? And what about the PVP limit breaks? This is all the sort of things that pop up with trying to merge these. And this isn't even getting into the under the hood technical nightmare of trying to merge these two systems, I can easily see things like "Due to how MoN is programmed, it can still be used on players who opted out of open world pvp and makes them killable." happening. Or Horrid Roar, Onslaught, and Orogeny working on PVE targets.

And again, I really, really think people are overlooking a key factor here. Everyone flies everywhere on their mounts. So unless you are suggesting we take away mount flight, the only people who would be left on the ground for the open world pvp, would be either those who want to take part in it or low level players who haven't unlocked flight in that area yet. Also you would need to IMMEDIATELY shove into new players faces the option to opt out of open world pvp, else they just won't know about it and get ganked 20 times while doing their starter quests. You could have it be opt IN, but then only the small niche this would appeal to would be the ones opted in.

I get wanting something to break or shake up the formula. I really do. Like, I really, really, really do. But an idea like this would only apply to a very small niche of the community, require an enormous amount of work to enable it to work the way you seem to want it to, and just wouldn't be seen as a really viable thing. We also have to look at the devs and realize, this was probably considered multiple times and agreed upon that it just wouldn't work. Yoshi-P has said he is a big WoW fan, and has even borrowed ideas from WoW. So he's likely thought of open world pvp before and decided it just wouldn't fit FFXIV.

The idea might work with an instanced zone like a Bozja for PVP, but then it's not true open world pvp. It is just a system that I do not think can be made to work in FFXIV. For a multitude of reasons, not just that high level players would gank low level players. But also it would be a technical nightmare, require doing some things that may upset the overall community, and possibly scare off new players. Again, I get wanting to shake up the release and content formula, I really really do. But in my honest opinion, this ain't the way. And I'm sorry if any of this has come off harsh.