Failing to address multiplayer in PVP is a mistake

[Ath192]

I have one question for the people here. Does anyone think League of Legends would be the juggernaut title of a game it is if it never allowed people to play with their friends? I'm sure the answer is no. By logic, this feature draws in way more people to play than it pushes away. Some people may not like it but I'm more than convinced its a net benefit to the health of PVP.

People here are acting like this is an open world pvp gank fest that is being requested. The worst part is that after farming for all the rewards recently I maybe had 2 matches that seemed contested. It was always a steam roll one way or other depending on who got people that either AFKed or didn't care to play other than moving and pressing a button.

It got so toxic in fact, that in a few matches tilted players stayed in the base because they got paired with someone who wasn't putting in any effort and they weren't going to spend the effort to even try since they knew they were going to lose. But I'm beating a dead horse, I just think they should be looking into making the mode more enjoyable for people.

I had to farm the rewards real quick not too long ago and it was always the same 20 people or so in casual. I couldn't do ranked due to it being completely dead. It's clear not a lot of people play this. So keeping it as is isn't a win for the devs or the players.

At least if I had a friend or two I could queue with I'd have someone to laugh with.

[Mistress_Irika]

There's never going to be a compromise. Smh...I'll say my last thoughts about this before letting the community pvp with itself. I don't feel like participating this expansion.

A lot of people are already okay with casual being strictly solo. Other than the very few people that wants high ranking players out of casual and only into rank it makes no sense to change the mode. Folks are too scared to add a separate queue for the thought that it may not pop. If you don't take the risk nothing will change, and we'll be dealing with the same problems. Either add a separate queue or make the current 5v5 premade have an undersized option. Like seriously, regarding premades I'm sick of the 2 sides of the argument. It feels extreme. All sides are right.

Most premades are there to have fun. This does not exclude the top players. They are there to have fun. No one wants to sweat 24/7. Not everyone is here to make your lives miserable. At the same time, premades have a natural advantage over soloists. If there was a 2v2 and everyone has an equal skill advantage the duos will have a slight advantage over the 2 soloists. There is something that premades has that soloist does not, and no, it is not voice chat although it contributes to that one thing. Both things need to be taken into account. Both.

We already sacrificing small groups just for the game to be made a certain way. We sacrificed the late-night frontline players by snatching away 24 man frontlines just to make sure that 72 man stays active for most of the day. We chased a small group of people away by cutting down premades from 8 to 4. We even sacrificed a small group of healers away putting the power of healing in everyone's hands and snatching majority of it away from them. Ranked players? No meaningful rewards. They're all in the battle pass. Your 5v5 customs? Locked to those who don't have a big group of friends. You a duo that wants in? Better sync queue. But don't get caught, or you're sitting in time out. Can we not make any more sacrifices? PvP is already restricted as is. Your raiders have more freedom than the pvp players, and the raiding scene is usually restricted to premades only based off of what I'm seeing from the outside. I'm tired of rules being changed and being told either to accept playing this way or go away. Can we start making things have more options? If queues get smaller for more queue options, so be it. At least majority will be happy over their chosen queue instead of having to pvp about what we can or cannot have as one big group. Work on more custom options, split the queues for those that wants pure solos, and be done with it. This was way more tolerable in Stormblood than it is now.

[Mawlzy]

snip.

Completely agree that risks need to be taken, even if it's only to discover that certain things won't work.

It's understandable that players want to play with friends. But solo vs premade creates problems, both real and perceived.

Bring back 8v8v8 in FL. Experiment with separate queues to see if they still pop, allowing those who want to play with friends to do so, and solo queuers to have balanced matches. Crude tier matching so rookies aren't placed against premade meat-grinders in FL.

And dump Shatter.

[Aravell]

I'm maybe missing something, but I don't really see the harm in allowing a maximum of a duo to queue into casual CC provided they also balance it on the other team?

If it's just a maximum of 2 and they always queue against another duo, 2+1+1+1 vs 2+1+1+1 seems fair enough, and if there's no other duo, the duo queued will stay in queue until another duo they can match against is found.

I don't see any potential harm in such a system for casual queue because the reason you lose in casual queue is so varied that it cannot be pinpointed on one factor alone, it could range anywhere from simply being outplayed in a fair match to losing because of that 0/8 MNK with 0 healing done.

Sure, 2 people coordinating is good enough to wipe the other team out in some cases, but the other team would also have a duo that can do the same thing.

[Valence]

League of Legends and similar titles also *try* to put teams against teams (with varying results)

That's literally what everyone has been suggesting to do.

I'm truly asking to people that continue to write about premades, what is the problem you have with a system trying to balance both teams, especially when it's just about duos?

[Valence]

Alright, so if I understand correctly, you're not against the principle, but deviation of the concept and bad execution.

[Ath192]

All I'm going to add to this is a simple question. Do you think League of Legends would have become as popular as it did if it never allowed players to play with their friends? I'm sure the answer is a big fat no. Game would've died a decade ago. I'm still waiting for someone to name an exclusively solo PVP game that's popular here...

[Ritsugamesh]

SNIP

I feel like you're using your experience and supplanting into the discussion as a fact. Can you share honest data that this is occurring in games such as LoL? I've had plenty of bad LoL matches in my time, but I have never thought 'oh this duo queue game has mismatched teams'. I feel like you've been stomped and are just extrapolating that to failed systems.

DPS players have sat in PVE queues for 30+ minutes, SE are capable of forcing things. And look, if they enforce that a duo HAVE to be pitted against another duo (as they should!) and the queues don't pop for those duos, literally nothing changes for the rest of the community. It's a no brainer. FFXIV's main problem is the lack of innovation because of fearmongering. It's always the horrors that will befall a change, meaning nothing changes, and then those same people are upset at the situation they literally dug around themselves.

It is so simple. Why is this even a discussion anymore. Allow duos. Every pvp game does. EVERY PVP GAME DOES. (I literally feel like I'm losing my mind).

[Swordsman]

All I'm going to add to this is a simple question. Do you think League of Legends would have become as popular as it did if it never allowed players to play with their friends? I'm sure the answer is a big fat no. Game would've died a decade ago. I'm still waiting for someone to name an exclusively solo PVP game that's popular here...

Definitely not. What's funny is that arranged teams used to exist back in the day with the Wolves Den or The Feast, but SE removed it I think because there just wasn't a big enough pvp playerbase to justify having both a random solo queue and an arranged team queue. But I do support your idea that arranged teams should make a comeback at some point.

[Valence]

Pretty much, yes. Consider that premades in other PVP-centric games have been brought up but I didn't respond to their presence with anywhere near the amount of vitriol I have for when they show up in Frontlines here.

Smite, Paladins, Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch, League of Legends... encountering a premade is a fluke during peak hours/bad luck during off-hours. But in FF14, a premade is positively suffocating during all hours of the day depending on which Discord group started queuing up and when (at least on NA side).

Hells, that 3 or so weeks when Dynamis was locked down during Dawntrail release was the worst PVP I ever experienced in this game (including where my screenshot came from), because nobody from Dynamis could data center travel out, but anyone could come to us. Suffice to say, a *lot* of groups (mostly from Aether) practically drooled at having a bunch of fish in a barrel to shoot at because they had a whole data center with little to no PVP experience being pushed into a mode if they wanted to level or get tomes (doubly so with Road to 90 being active) with literally nowhere else to go.

I mean, we're at a point that when most players see they have a premade on their side, they start coasting because they know they've already won, and if they're up against a premade, they can faff about because a loss is inevitable. A whole data center was taught this for nearly a month and I'm afraid it may have outright ruined the mode for all of those new players because they either don't take the mode seriously, they don't bother to queue at all, or they did the smart thing and deleted their fresh-faced level 30 and re-rolled elsewhere.

Premades, at least in FF14, do not inspire other players to "git gud" they encourage them to stop trying.

The problem I have is that you conflate FLs with CC in your reasoning where FLs have nothing to do with CC at all. And the premades in FLs isn't the problem, the problem is combo abuse based around a mode that's a dumpster fire of balancing, unlike CC. Nobody denies that the current state of FLs is lamentable, but it's not tied to people playing with their friends: as an example, when I party up with my friends and don't abuse DRK, then, strangely enough, we don't nuke the entire enemy party, what a shocker.