My take on why FFXIV PvP is unsatisfactory.

[Reese_Clairdale]

Shortly after ranting about the state of Monk in 7.1 and reading other peoples experiences, ultimately I realized picking apart any one specific job or skill is futile because there are a few long standing problems holding the game back that have only been revealed or intensified by the recent patch. My hope with this post is to clearly convey some of the feelings that myself and perhaps others have about the state of FFXIV PvP and provide a new perspective for people who may not have experience with games outside of FFXIV.

I'm not going to pretend to be a certified authority on PvP game design, and especially not FFXIV PvP as I rarely engaged with the ranked modes, but my experience with online PvP in general goes as far back as Infantry Online, Nox, Diablo 2, World of Warcraft, Guild Wars, Counterstrike, Team Fortress 2 and other assorted late 90's to mid 00's classics. More recently I claimed a top 100 title in Guild Wars 2 and the 2v2 / 3v3 Elite titles. None of these games are perfect by any means but one thing they all share in common is a solid foundation of unchanging fundamentals that set the baseline for which all other balance adjustments were performed. In regard to FFXIV, even though the 6.1 changes were massive, and more than a little upsetting especially within the various tactics developed for Frontlines, they still mostly built upon the expectations players have learned with FFXIV's combat as a whole, in addition to setting the bar higher in terms of job identity and flavor. After 7.1, not only were there sweeping and unexpected changes across jobs, but also the very core the game is built upon.

In hindsight, one of the primary issues that has been plaguing FFXIV PvP since the beginning has been that most animations and VFX are not designed with strict timing or combat legibility in mind, but rather to make the WoL look powerful for the player's own enjoyment and to look impressive for job action trailers and other promo material. Monsters lack the capacity to care about unfair damage snapshots, interrupts, mitigation, etc. But, if you're recycling those exact same skills for PvP then suddenly it becomes a major issue made worse by the fact that activation time has never been listed as part of the info displayed on skill tooltips. Even before the 7.1 PvP update, timing on certain skills delivering their damage or other effects had significant problems, but at least it was somewhat expected since it was similar or identical to their PvE counterparts so it was a behavior you learn to deal with over the course of your time in FFXIV.

Other games that were built from the ground up with PvP as a core feature either have consistent activation times across all skills, or animations and VFX tailor made to align with its effect, including the activation time listed on the tooltips in plain text. For example, animations that clearly show rapid attacks will hit multiple times through the duration of the skill. Animations that perform a leg sweep cause knockdown. Animations that strike with the blunt side of a weapon or towards the head cause stun. Spells or weapons that shoot a projectile don't deal their damage or other effects until the projectile physically reaches the target. Etc, etc. However, this is not so in FFXIV: The animations and their associated VFX combined with the final activation time on skills are mostly arbitrary, having additional effects or use cases that aren't consistent across PvE and PvP. A new player that spends dozens or hundreds of hours doing the MSQ and other PvE content before deciding to try PvP is going to be confused until they quickly realize most of the combat intuition they've built does not apply in this alternate reality. A veteran player can have large swathes of their experience erased by a single update. The rules of FFXIV combat are frustrating specifically because there really aren't any clear definitions, and some of the most vital information is completely hidden. The only thing set in stone is that the developers can adjust the rules on a whim without any regard to the cascade effect it will have on the whole experience. Descriptions of changes that can cause a fundamental shift in the entire game are conveyed in vague terms within live letters and patch notes. At best, this sends the message that SE is genuinely unsure how it will affect the game and are just experimenting. At worst, it feels as if players actually understanding the game is detrimental to SE's vision for the game.

While 7.1 did fix some timings that had extreme disparity, the problem is that it seems many other skills that could have been left alone just have new issues, or certain jobs had their identity shifted or mutated. The patch overall was heavy handed, changing far too many variables all at once, undoing a lot of the fine tuning that patches after 6.1 had brought. If SE is just experimenting, this is not a very scientific attempt.

Even if SE were to roll back the changes to 6.1 or to an even earlier patch, there is no quick and easy fix for XIV PvP. In my opinion, it requires many more changes to the nature of the game and visual design, which would naturally upset even more people. Each job would need almost an entire new repertoire of skills addressing the issues listed above unless it was one of the few skills that inherently had some harmony with its visuals and effect, like Shield Bash. Most of these new skills would also look very boring relative to PvE skills.

Understandably there are people that prefer the more fast paced and consistent style of 6.1 that rewards predictions, and there are people that prefer the more delayed 7.1 style that allows for more reactive counterplay. Both sides are correct in their own way, but I believe that the best PvP games I've experienced have a healthy combination of both sides and also a wider array of skill types to handle these situations, in addition to the ability to customize classes somewhat to fit your own playstyle or to develop counter strategies in anticipation of predictable tactics. Many people may claim this devolves into games that only have one correct choice per role, but from what I've experienced in high levels of play in other games, this claim is blatantly false as long as the choices available are carefully designed.

If there's any takeaways from this post, I think there's a few main things:

1.) Anecdotally, FFXIV combat, particularly in PvP, remains highly unintuitive compared to most other games I have played that also allow infinitely more freedom. This is also in spite of the many restrictions and eventually the complete removal of role customization that SE has claimed reduces the barrier of entry over the years.

2.) If you're frustrated with PvP, especially only after a very specific update, it's probably not your fault.

3.) Don't be afraid to try other games or genres if you haven't already, Even if it's just for PvE, you may be surprised and delighted at what you find.

Thanks for reading!

------ 7.16 Addendum ------

By adjusting the skill activation timing again in a minor patch, I feel this is a direct acknowledgement of how even small changes can have a huge impact on the overall feeling of the experience, but also continues to highlight why better communication of timing is still needed so that players can give more informative feedback.

This is precisely what I am talking about:

Patch notes as of 7.1 -

The timing with which certain PvP action effects trigger has been changed.

Hit detection of PvP actions has been adjusted to better match visual effects striking a target.
* Certain actions will continue to register hits at the time of execution.

Massive changes to old skills and expansion skills are relegated to a footnote, you could easily scroll past several times without even noticing. "Better" is also definitely a matter of opinion here in regards to many of these skills. "Hit detection" is a bit misleading as you might assume only attacks were affected, but defensive, restorative, and global PvP utility skills were affected as well.

Patch notes as of 7.16 -

The time between action execution and effect activation has been shortened for the following PvP actions:

To SE's credit, they do proceed to list the actual names of skills affected this time, and that they're quicker, but since no hard data on the timing has ever been catalogued at least officially, we cannot see at a glance the relative timing going from 7.0 into 7.1, and now 7.16. Having actual numbers to work with would allow people to communicate their feelings on skill responsiveness beyond comments that boil down to "Feels better!", "meh" or "This sucks."

I will concede that there are already ways to extract the exact timing of every skill, like comparing old and new footage frame by frame from the moment the hotkey lights up to the time the damage resolves, but this is a completely ridiculous task even as a community effort when it could simply be listed on the tooltip. There are of course other ways as well, I would not be surprised if people have already discovered precise timings and used them for nefarious ends in the process of all of the other datamining over the years, but that makes it all the more important for people who play legit.

[Archeron]

I play MANY PvP games myself, of varying genres. The spaghetti code and animation snapshotting are absolutely a major part of why I don't enjoy PvP in this game. It feels clunky, and it unfairly favors certain job abilities over others based on an animation that doesn't do anything except look cool momentarily.

Another overlooked part of why PvP is bad, especially in FFXIV is that they NEED to drive PvE focused players to engage in PvP. People who often have no interest in PvP, and just do so for quick rewards, and who have limited experience with PvP in general. This manifests in lack of map awareness, being unable to coordinate with their team, and not prioritizing high value targets. This may not be noticed so much in CC, but in Frontlines and Rival Wings (When it does pop) it's infuriating when you are trying to play to win, and your team is just running around aimlessly, or attacking third place for no logical reason. PvP in this game requires team based cooperation, and coordination. Something that NA players especially aren't capable of doing naturally.

An improvement I wish for is a wider variety of objectives that FORCE teams to split up into offensive, and defensive teams. Most of FFXIV PvP modes force you to work within a single "Deathmob". It's restrictive. I don't enjoy it. Maps similar to Warsong Gulch, and Arathi Basin on WoW I feel have potential to be highly successful in an FFXIV pvp format, if they had the balls to implement it.

[Mawlzy]

The patch overall was heavy handed, changing far too many variables all at once, undoing a lot of the fine tuning that patches after 6.1 had brought. If SE is just experimenting, this is not a very scientific attempt.

You're absolutely correct that a lot of variables were changed at once, and that this is a remarkably bad way of rebalancing the mode, or whatever they thought they were doing. Not only is it essentially impossible for the devs to make controlled changes like this (i.e., we don't like how this detail works, let's change it to this), it also makes it impossible for players to assess the changes. And while this is completely in keeping with SE's high-handed approach of "we've made this, it probably isn't what you asked for, but we like it so you should too," it also completely muddies the sort of feedback-->correction that a healthy game would encourage.

It felt like they had 20 faders on a sound board to play with, and set them all at new places because the resultant noise was, to them, pleasing. It may explain why the two major claims they made about the reasons for the changes have puzzled everyone. Specifically:

1. Changes in hit detection to make the game more responsive.
2. A shift from burst to sustained damage.

1. is the more subtle one. Clearly with such a significant change in the base algorithm, playing the mode will feel very different and thus strange. And because, as you emphasize, so many things were changed at once (more CC, potency changes, brand new skills), exactly what is strange about it is hard to break down. I've experimented with multiple jobs now, and some feel pretty good, whereas others including my previous WAR main are just horrible. It's sort of obvious: if your key skills have short or no animations, the hit detection doesn't matter. Similarly, if you're playing ranged, you just learn what 20 or 25 yalms looks like, and even with animation lock you have the time and distance to do something different.

2. This is just plain false and makes me wonder if the devs have the faintest idea how the game works, particularly FL.

On Aether we're nowhere close to establishing a new FL meta (any news from JP on that, btw?), other than it is much greener than it used to be.

More generally on the VFX, others have noted that should be a consistency with the visuals and the gameplay, including the idea that one purpose of VFX is to alert you to an attack so you can react/counter. This is fine in 5v5. In a FL zerg I don't think it works like that. I have all VFX on the middle setting which means: a) I can't see some attacks; b) it's still a complete mess in 95% of the encounters because 40+ players are pressing their buttons. So yeah, it looks kind of like a badly edited movie of someone swings a hammer and the target falls over before the blow lands, but equally I don't think "attractive animations" should be dictating the details of the gameplay.

[Mawlzy]

An improvement I wish for is a wider variety of objectives that FORCE teams to split up into offensive, and defensive teams. Most of FFXIV PvP modes force you to work within a single "Deathmob". It's restrictive. I don't enjoy it. Maps similar to Warsong Gulch, and Arathi Basin on WoW I feel have potential to be highly successful in an FFXIV pvp format, if they had the balls to implement it.

And also absolutely agree with this.

However, even if SE has the balls to implement, does the FL playerbase have the skill to operate it?

Now that I've found jobs that don't feel like my keyboard has wet sugar in it, I've had more time to get exasperated by the overall quality of play. It's conceivable that the competent commanders are all farming the chaotic raid, because those we have left are compounding the problem.

Example: every time a node pops, a shot caller drops the coordinates in chat. Most people don't know what those coordinates mean (which may actually help the situation), but enough do that the zerg drops whatever it's doing and does the lemming run to the new point. On Onsal in particular, this is invariably the wrong response. Moreover, if the zerg reaches the point and neither of the other teams is there, it just stops! "Dese are teh coords, Ralph, we haz arrived." Apparently they can't go anywhere else until the shot caller drops the coordinates for the next point, which is clearly visible on the map, but frequently not where you should be going.

So... sorry I came here from an Onsal session.

One aspect of FL that has never been utilized correctly, at least on Aether, is each team has three alliances. Even with the current objectives and maps, those alliances could often accomplish more by working independently. But how does one arrange that? You can encourage it with more interesting design, as Archeron suggests, but if a third of the team doesn't really want to be there anyway, I am not optimistic how it will play out.

[Exmo]

Many good points made in this thread but i want to specifically highlight leveraging the 24 player Frontline team as three 8 player teams. Dismantling the Zerg rush and emphasizing team play will naturally address problems like feeling you get obliterated out of nowhere, getting stun locked for 8 seconds at a time, players being afraid to play melee, etc.

I wonder if this could be addressed if they introduced a cap to aoe targets, plus diminishing returns to battle high depending on how many teammates outside of your own full party are nearby. But like others, I also don't like seeing too many changes at the same time.

[Mawlzy]

Many good points made in this thread but i want to specifically highlight leveraging the 24 player Frontline team as three 8 player teams. Dismantling the Zerg rush and emphasizing team play will naturally address problems like feeling you get obliterated out of nowhere, getting stun locked for 8 seconds at a time, players being afraid to play melee, etc.

I wonder if this could be addressed if they introduced a cap to aoe targets, plus diminishing returns to battle high depending on how many teammates outside of your own full party are nearby. But like others, I also don't like seeing too many changes at the same time.

Oh that's interesting. AoE cap has been suggested for independent reasons, but I've never heard anyone suggest a proximity penalty. Hmmm. I'm in favor of anything that promotes skirmishes over deathballs.

[Valence]

Death balls in FLs used to be a lesser issue before they increased mount speed, especially on maps that were especially designed with this in mind, mainly Seal Rock and Borderlands for the simple reason that teams had multiple positions with objectives to fulfill on the map at the same time. Fields of Glory somewhat but usually ended in 3 death balls looking at each other in the middle during ice inactivity.

I have always thought BH rewards shouldn't care about who gets the final kill (nobody cares, it's a team game and it's so random anyway). Instead it should award a fixed amount of BH points (to be determined) split evenly between everybody involved in the kill, down to a minimum of 2.

Anyway, I do agree with the OP.

[Archeron]

The Lethargic gameplay is much more of an issue than just Frontlines. It's widespread throughout the game. There are people half-assing rotations in Ally raids, people dying so they can respawn at the boss chamber and watch youtube for a few minutes while the boss is cleared for them. As long as the risk for lethargic behaviour continues to be minimal, it will never stop. I've played PvP games where Lethargic gameplay was an issue, and I saw the resolution to it multiple times. Enforcement. There are games I have played where even AFKing for 5 minutes was enough to get you a serious punishment, or sometimes just barred from participating in PvP for a prolonged time. I feel as though FFXIV needs to take cases of non-disputable lethargic gameplay seriously, and either drop the ban hammer on these people, or bar them from queueing into said content for several days. The account warning is too light of a punishment for these people.

The other problem that causes a third of people not to care, is the fact that the outcome of the match simply doesn't matter to them. They want the match to be over with so they can move on. That shouldn't be the case if you're looking to make a competitive environment, which its clear SE doesn't care for. It's optional side content they couldn't care less if people are really engaged with it. If it keeps people from unsubbing they'll put the bare minimal amount of maintenance into keeping it running, hence FoMo rewards. I do not appreciate non competitive PvP environments, which is quite possibly why I can't be bothered to play PvP on this game much, if at all anymore. The potential is there for PvP to be something truly amazing in this game, but they've continually wasted, and ignored the oppurtunities.

[Mawlzy]

The Lethargic gameplay is much more of an issue than just Frontlines. It's widespread throughout the game. There are people half-assing rotations in Ally raids, people dying so they can respawn at the boss chamber and watch youtube for a few minutes while the boss is cleared for them. As long as the risk for lethargic behaviour continues to be minimal, it will never stop. I've played PvP games where Lethargic gameplay was an issue, and I saw the resolution to it multiple times. Enforcement. There are games I have played where even AFKing for 5 minutes was enough to get you a serious punishment, or sometimes just barred from participating in PvP for a prolonged time. I feel as though FFXIV needs to take cases of non-disputable lethargic gameplay seriously, and either drop the ban hammer on these people, or bar them from queueing into said content for several days. The account warning is too light of a punishment for these people.

The other problem that causes a third of people not to care, is the fact that the outcome of the match simply doesn't matter to them. They want the match to be over with so they can move on. That shouldn't be the case if you're looking to make a competitive environment, which its clear SE doesn't care for. It's optional side content they couldn't care less if people are really engaged with it. If it keeps people from unsubbing they'll put the bare minimal amount of maintenance into keeping it running, hence FoMo rewards. I do not appreciate non competitive PvP environments, which is quite possibly why I can't be bothered to play PvP on this game much, if at all anymore. The potential is there for PvP to be something truly amazing in this game, but they've continually wasted, and ignored the oppurtunities.

In FL specifically, my feeling is the best solution is some kind of auto feature the penalizes anyone demonstrably not doing anything. I guess it might require checking for FL sprouts or connection issues, but for example if someone has restored zero HP as you'll often see, give then a 48-hour PvP ban. Extend for multiple infractions. Even the announcement of such a change would be a sign that SE does actually take the mode seriously, and people engaging with it are expected to participate. Other metrics like ground covered, offensive abilities used, etc., could also be employed.

[Toffa]

It's just never going to be good.

The game is made with japanese internet infrastructure in mind, on top of what you said with the animations

The vast majority of the playerbase play like Grandma Trying to Figure out the Nintendo.

It's going to take the devs until like 7.35 (a yr or more) to finally get the potencies and cooldown rates where they want them.

It's going to take John Casualmatch and Jane Frontline the entire expansion to figure out that you can make a long animation and a short animation proc damage at about the same time.

and I -still- see ranged players trying to mosh pit on the point like it's team fortress 2 the whole match, sam burst be damned.