Thread: Patch 7.5 Discussion Thread

Originally Posted by MisterNublet

Matches are now even more one sided than ever before. Before the patch, PvP-centric players knew that building BH at the beginning of the match gives the highest chance of winning, the BH change makes it even more-so. The team that pushes for early aggression (usually due to having more knowledgeable PvP players) get to run away with the match.

That is what I have noticed in FL also. Had a match yesterday where 20+ BH happened on a team within minutes and ignored the objectives just by wrapping around and pinching one team from behind.
Guess which team won in total domination shortly after.
The fact that ignoring the objective, in an objective based pvp mode is just so significant to winning seems wrong.

At least with the loss of BH on death you could potentially de power an overwhelming foe. Its rare but it was interesting when it did happen.

Edit -> Not to say that the aggression from before was bad, i actually like it, but now we are seemly ignoring objectives at the start of the match, where as before the aggression was more focused on getting objectives even at the start, and hanging back to make sure it was captured wasn't as large as a personal determent as it seems now.

Originally Posted by ThreeBeastSmile

They sound even more scared to play melee than over here, and they have a strong preference for ranged. Still, the lack of confidence in their words for the melee position is perplexing. Could be a translation limitation though.

tl;dr Reading that they like the changes based on the spooks around playing melee is just sorta disheartening, that's all.

I did read over the thread that you linked, I've not checked any others though.

I still wouldn't say they sound even more fearful of melee than here (quite frankly, I don't think that's possible!), just that they have a similar ratio of ranged:melee to here. Many seem to view the change positively, saying it's led to more aggressive games and they seem to hope that this will encourage more players to try melee.

What did surprise me, though, was that Swift was so popular there? I'm genuinely baffled as to why because, while helpful in some scenarios, it seems the least useful of all three - even before the update. Unless it is the differing playstyles between the communities? The more aggressive, commanded, flank-heavy games may make an emergency exit button more valuable. Whereas here, it's not really warranted.
Similarly, using Bloodbath or not, if focus is extremely heavy even a class like VPR might not live out their scales for the HP gain to even apply. So, if it is a more generally aggressive and coordinated playstyle there, perhaps that's another reason they didn't value Bloodbath as much as it's valued here.
As for Smite... it's more for use in picking off single <20% HP targets. If everything is quickly wiped in a flank, you're not really going to be using it all that much beyond deleting the few remaining survivors.

That said, for any of these possible explanations to apply, I'm probably seriously overestimating the coordination and aggressive play on JP.

Originally Posted by Alahard

That is what I have noticed in FL also. Had a match yesterday where 20+ BH happened on a team within minutes and ignored the objectives just by wrapping around and pinching one team from behind.
Guess which team won in total domination shortly after.

In all honesty, this was able to happen anyway, even before these BH changes. One coordinated team flanking and wiping the other two would've got to BH5 in no time and with the two wiped teams still likely to be low BH, it would've been hard then to catch up.

The BH change, while not perfect, was supposed to help by:
1. Rewarding the victims with more BH points when they did kill one of the coordinated team (whereas before they would just get a set amount)
2. Allowing the victims to keep their BH if they got wiped again, still maintaining their chance to regroup and counter (whereas before they would've been 'reset')

Where the theory falls apart is that the victim teams often become victims through their own passiveness. They don't push to gain BH, so they don't gain it. Partially because of this:

The fact that ignoring the objective, in an objective based pvp mode is just so significant to winning seems wrong.

It is a PvP duty. I'm not saying that objectives have no place or value, as they can heavily influence a game, but they are somewhat secondary. Dominate in PvP, farm your BH, and the objectives tend to come easily.

Too many games have ended in a loss because the team were focusing on a long fight with 3rd place over an S-Rank, while the winning team were allowed to take an A rank unchallenged. Why? "S is worth more".
How many times have I read the phrase "Let them fight"?
Or "Ignore mid" in Onsal, despite the mid node being the one to hand first place the win, while they went off to fight 3rd place for another node because "mid is a waste of time".
Entire teams running back to get an uncontested node just outside of respawn.
Teams just running to whatever objective spawns first/closest, again, with no attention to score
And that's not to mention the objective-focus in Shatter...

Edit:
For example:


First Seal Rock game of the day. Yellow on the edge of winning, they're pushing red back, farming them for points. Meanwhile blue.... yep, they just sat there.

At least with the loss of BH on death you could potentially de power an overwhelming foe.

You could, true. But, if they were that overwhelming, chances are they'd regain that BH pretty quickly anyway. It'd be a loss for them sure, but unlikely something game-changing.

The change seems to have been intended to hand casuals more support. But, as usual, many of them aren't bothering to use the gift that's been given to them.

The no loss of battle high doesn't seem as big of a deal as the insane battle high swings that occur now.
A team could be losing a match all game, then they get involved in a pinch or some situation on the leading team, and they'll suddenly go to half their team having BH5.
The acceleration is so incredibly fast, that it can easily swing the match on a dime. It does sort of make the no bh loss make sense, in this way. If it was just the bounty, the swing would be almost a certain defeat for the leading team in an ambush.

My personally feeling is the game feel of it is bad right now in frontlines. The zero death timer combined with more death ball and more BH eveywhere has made the pace too fast for my taste. BH5 has always been very hard to deal with anyway, due to its increased heal potency. Recuperate is overpowered enough at base strength, so dealing with more targets with it makes everything feel even more volatile with the heavy swings of damage and heals.


Seems as if this version of PVP is being shuttered with changes like this. if I had to guess, we might just have the evolved mode jobs as the PVP mode next expansion. Perhaps with some effects of actions are added or subtracted, and we have PVP actions instead of the PVE role actions. We could go back to a more balanced healing system like having the healing jobs do the heavy lifting for sustain.

FFXIV could be headed towards making PVP be a more legit, integrated, and equal mode, rather than this pvp system that makes it feel lesser and alien for most players.
Or maybe that's just what I'd like to happen.

Battle high doesn't even mean anything anymore, they might as well just add culling time to frontlines.

Battle high should only be given to players that deserve it. It was a visual feedback that you are playing well, as well as feedback on what players were a threat. Now everyone has battle high at the end of the match. It isn't even worth noticing anymore.

Not to mention the mechanics of it, like some jobs are just made useless at the end of the match cause they can't survive against a blob of battle highs to even engage.

There were complaints in the past that people were not getting enough kills in The Feast for a pvp game mode. I think they've swung way too far in the other direction on this feedback now. Kills are now way too easy, undeserved, and uncounterable, which leads to changes like this battle high change because people were losing the battle high to uncounterable attacks. And now the whole mode is just a faceroll, you can't predict anything anymore with the wild damage bursts and BHs.

I think the desire to make any casual player be able to come out the game with several kills, along with the fear of premades or good players controlling the game has made them design the mode into something that is more of a coin toss. The truth is the casuals never cared as long as they get their tomes, the only people who cared are the actual pvpers who want to see skill expression rewarded.