PvP is BROKEN and needs FIXED

[PixelLatte]

As someone who's been playing PvP since 6.1, I'm finding the ranked experience this season to be quite frustrating. While I appreciate the effort put into the recent rehaul, I feel matchmaking could be vastly improved. Roughly 70% of my matches I often find myself in matches where my team's composition or individual skill levels seem significantly different from the opposing team, which leads to unbalanced matches that feel more determined by luck than skill.

Also, I believe allowing players to queue with at least one friend would greatly improve the social aspect of ranked PvP and provide more strategic opportunities. Many other competitive games offer this feature, and I think it would be a valuable addition to FFXIV. In this current state, ranked PvP is a very lonely and frustrating activity because it often feels like 80% luck, 10% teamwork, and 10% skill. It would be nice if we had some sort of control over the match. Another problem we have is with win-trading at the higher levels. In the end, most people end up sync-queueing and getting into matches together anyway. This is also frustrating because sometimes it feels like my teammates give up because they don't want to fight their friend.

Suitable Fixes:

• Allow for someone to queue with you that is in your bracket.
  (e.g. Bronze player wants to queue with someone so they must be Bronze-Gold
  Platinum player wants to queue with someone so they must be Gold - Diamond
  Crystal players must queue with another Crystal player).
  
• Fix the matchmaking so it measures your skill and pairs you with people of equivalent skill (currently tier DOES NOT EQUAL skill).
  
• Create a new ranked section for Duos PvP if you are worried about solos being upset.
  
• Lastly, fix issues with unbalanced classes. (e.g. RDM)

[Commander_Justitia]

80% luck, 10% teamwork, and 10% skill

Better matchmaking wont change that. It is pretty ridiculous that some of the former or current best players die like wet noodles in 1s, because they get meme killed while trying to hide behind a wall. Your assumption might be wrong that the devs want tier to equal skill - I think they don't. They want it to equal time spent. Because then everyone is happy and spends another month on the sub. So everyone can rank up, no matter how unskilled. Mahjong is more complicated, Minion battles are more complicated, Crafting/Gathering rotations are more complicated. For some reason PvP has to be stupidly fcking easy to play. For some reason almost every skill is offensive, defense and has utility at the same time - see you can't do wrong - just press a button, it will be okay. You can't make a mistake.
Why do you not see your winrate anymore?
Why is the winrate no longer visible on the ranking board?
Why can't you even know how many games you played, it just shows victories now. So many victories. No defeats I guess.

So nope, diamond games can feel like bronze-crystal games, can't fix matchmaking if you can't separate good players from bad players efficiently.

Like, if a rank1 player from an older season, and there are many that I saw last days, sometimes even 2 in one team - and they are unable to carry the semi-bad player. Then a rank1 player is worthless. Then ranking makes no fcking sense at all.

I don't think there is another MMORPG PvP or RPG PvP, that is less complex than FF14 PvP.

Just make the mode casual only, and then you should be able to duo queue all you want.

[PixelLatte]

Better matchmaking wont change that.

It may not change it drastically, but it would definitely feel a bit more fair like you have more control rather than just hoping you are lucky enough to get good teammates or not. If they do what most Battle Royale games do by giving your character a matchmaking rating value and if you do really well, even too good for your tier you get more stars because you are being pitted against stronger players so it weighs more heavily. I would like SOME sort of matchmaking system at least. As you said, it is probably about as basic as it gets at the moment. I think it would also be better for new people because they won't get put with experts right off the get-go, so if they rework the matchmaking system it will make the experience much better for everyone involved and subs would probably last longer. My main thing in FF is PvP so it's a shame things are the way they are. Let's cross our fingers and hope things get better soon lol

[Commander_Justitia]

I mean you can see older seasons before CC. They had a rating system throughout from unranked to diamond. You lost like 5 points at bronze and like 30 points at diamond, while getting 20 for a win. That kept people with low winrates permanently in gold at least if they didn't perform well (like this was their limit, they didn't get further). Now you have your lucky streak system, which only works 1way, in the positive way up. So people are getting way higher than they should, just by chance. Though if you use the old system for the current game mode, I still think everyone would become at least diamond, it would be the new gold.

They let your ranking fall after each season again, step by step, I think they shouldn't tbh. Then good players won't have to be in lower tier games at least. But it requires the player to play every season right now to stay like that.
They could use other metrics like damage taken, dealt, healing done etc. if it is over 20 games at a high level than others - it should mean at least something. Similarly they could reward people more in frontline who perform well like that too. But it would be a complex system, and they want to keep it simple.

They could also go back to only allow same tier to play against same tier. As there are enough players now. But they prefer fast queue times over better matchmaking. Because in the past, queue times were an issue. Because people were afraid of playing healer or melee - too much responsibility. So they made healing meaningless.

Good thing you have hope, I have none after the years lmao.

[spoo]

i'd like for CC to be the one place where they enforce anti-cheat and then implement a system where all the people running bots and scripts only queue in together, while the rest of us can play fair.

[Mistress_Irika]

Honestly, if you want to fix majority of the problems that ranked CC has including matchmaking and queue times stop setting the bar to platinum and let the community find the average rank to be at themselves. In other words: bring back the punishments. Let folks keep a low rank if they cannot grasp the basics. It's why you still have a few people at platinum who doesn't use Recuperate at all waiting on a healer to heal them.

[spoo]

Honestly, if you want to fix majority of the problems that ranked CC has including matchmaking and queue times stop setting the bar to platinum and let the community find the average rank to be at themselves. In other words: bring back the punishments. Let folks keep a low rank if they cannot grasp the basics. It's why you still have a few people at platinum who doesn't use Recuperate at all waiting on a healer to heal them.

lol. technically, there are no healers in CC - there are support classes. you have your heal. use it or run and elixir. id rather have my AST using their double cast to help with bursting down a target than ot aspected benefic x2 someone who is gonna die anyways.

[Valence]

You'd think people would have learned not to rush ahead one by one after a team stagger in crystal either and yet they do. Not sure if removing the glass flooring in platinum is gonna magically fix it. Not opposed to it though.

[AlliciaCapulet]

Honestly, if you want to fix majority of the problems that ranked CC has including matchmaking and queue times stop setting the bar to platinum and let the community find the average rank to be at themselves. In other words: bring back the punishments. Let folks keep a low rank if they cannot grasp the basics. It's why you still have a few people at platinum who doesn't use Recuperate at all waiting on a healer to heal them.

Even in diamond this happens.

Anyway, many players here didn't understand that it's a team game and not a solo one. Even in diamond you still see about 1 match out of 2 of people who just go chase in solo to try to get the most kills that they can. They are never close to the cristal, or to help their backline of getting bullied. So in the end they lose and then will come to cry here in the forum because they are stuck and will blame everyone else than themself.

Also, many people don't know when to fallback and regroup. Let's say you have an huge advantage, pushed the cristal up to 90% but now someone died or need to back because he used all their ressource. It's normal, that will happens, because the other team respawn and is close to the cristal. Well, you have the % advantage : Back off, regroup, and let them push back the cristal a bit so it's at your advantage, anyway they can't win if they don't push it more than what your team did. But no, many player will stay there, even when a call to retreat is said, die, and then, the team never recover because they never wait to regroup.

And, there is many exemple of bronze play like that in plat/diamond. You just need to get a bit lucky even if you are unskilled and you'll rank up.

[Mawlzy]

Even in diamond this happens.

Anyway, many players here didn't understand that it's a team game and not a solo one. Even in diamond you still see about 1 match out of 2 of people who just go chase in solo to try to get the most kills that they can. They are never close to the cristal, or to help their backline of getting bullied.

I typically play one or two unranked CC games a day, and I'm really surprised by this. Sure some games in casual are a bit of a mess, but for the most part, players seem to understand the team nature of the mode. Specifically, I rarely see people dying sequentially and feeding themselves back into the enemy one by one.

Do you suppose this is a consequence of low-skilled players seeking rewards? Or has the unfortunate padding tendency that is so prominent in FL (which Discord FL mentors actively promote) infecting CC?