Custom CC Games are way better than Ranked

[Mawlzy]

But it should be. The best analogy for it would be fighting games:

Online play and ladders are fine and all, but participating in your local community events and going to regional tournaments -- where you're engaging with people and forming friendships/rivalries -- that's the best part of playing a competitive game. Your team, your familiar regional faces, that one person you lose to so hard that you make a goal out of beating them, it's all the best part of playing seriously.

If you're dedicated enough to come to a forum for FFXIV PvP and discuss it, you're dedicated enough to find a community to play the game in.

I respect what you're trying to do, and as I've mentioned elsewhere, some prominent Discord members have worked incredibly hard (e.g. Primal's efforts with RW should give some of those guys lifetime free subs). But given the clout-chasing, padding, parsing garbage exhibited by some in Discord, they will never be a community I wish to join. Just an insular bubble dislocated from the real PvP community.