How Square-Enix Can Improve PvP in Final Fantasy XIV

PvP as it currently exists in Final Fantasy XIV leaves a lot to be desired. Hostile to newcomers, one dimensional and incredibly grindy. I feel that if Square-Enix wants to fix their broken system, they should take a few queues from existing PvP competitive formats in games.

My opinion is heavily influenced from a near10 year history participating in, and running, fighting game tournaments. I began by playing Super Smash Bros. Melee back in 2006 and moved over to arcade fighters like Street Fighter IV thereafter. I also have been playing MMO’s beginning around the same time as well with Final Fantasy XI and afterwards dabbled in other games such as WoW and Guild Wars 2. I also have experience with other genre’s such as MOBA via League of Legends and competitive tabletop games.

The first issue I mentioned is that the PvP mode Wolves’ Den is hostile to newcomers. If a new player were to jump into PvP, of course they should not be expected to do incredibly well. However, 10 or 20 matches into the game, this trend does not tend to change save for the occasional win.

Implementation of Gear

There are several facets to this problem. PvP has it’s own skill progression where players have to effectively “Rank up” to add perks to these abilities to make them more effective either by giving them reduced cooldowns, bonus effects or other traits, also there exists and extreme raw attribute gap where players can equip themselves with specialized PvP gear that gives them a bonus to a PvP unique attribute named Morale.

The issue with these systems is that instead of allowing a player to customize how they are able to play, it instead boils down to a numbers game where the vast majority of the time the team which has the best gear or the highest rank simply wins despite player skill. And this is the main thing I take issue with, a PvP format should highly emphasize player SKILL. A skillful or experienced player should have the advantage over those who are less skillful. This is the basic mandate that many if not all competitive games, even those outside of video games, relies.

To mitigate the damaging nature of these problems, I feel that the statistics placed on gear should be uniform by class set. What I mean is that this gear there should be several sets of PvP gear per armor or class type and potentially even have variations in armor type therein (For example a Tank set that has higher STR alongside a tank set that has higher VIT) and that this gear should have Materia Slots to further allow a player to customize their gear’s statistics via the fusion of material.  This would allow player skill to have priority over character attributes while still allowing Materia to emphasize certain build types and avoid the basic numbers game where flat item level  tends to be the major factor. Guild Wars 2 does a good job in this respect where all gear is given uniform statistics relative to the class while allowing players to modify those statistics with the use of Runes.

As far as class skills are considered, I like the idea of having your character grow the more it is played with more PvP ranks to modify skills, and Square-Enix have regarded this as an important function of the design as well (The recent patch gives access to All PvP skills from rank 1). This system would benefit from a more streamlined leveling experience where players would not need to spend literally spend hundreds if not thousands of matches to gradually increase their rank.

Making PvP More Dynamic

Many have described the Wolves' Den as brief and one-dimensional. While my above suggestions do help alleviate much of which plagues the existing status of PvP they do not change the actual game play. Square-Enix could take a queue from the existing and thriving Fighting Game genre. In most games, any match is divided into rounds where a player has to win the majority of a series of matches (best 2 out of 3, best 3 out of 5, etc.). If they integrated this functionality into Wolves’ Den then it would greatly improve the playability of the content.

Why is this so important? The reason is because of strategy. In all fighting games, two players spend the first rounds of a match “learning” and “adapting” to their opponent. It is this dynamic nature of fighting games that makes them so completely engrossing and exciting to watch. To see when a player learns the habits of the opponent or their reactions and adapting to it is where the best players excel over good players and is a timeless feature of fighting games.

Practical Rewards for Skillful Play

I have seen many players moan or become unreasonably irritated due to a healer dying in the first few moments or the enemy executing a dirty tactic. Allowing best 2 out of 3 matches would not only extend the playtime for PvP (allowing DPS classes more time to play relative to their queue time) but also allow these teams to react and discuss strategy in the 1 minute “Preparation” timer before each round. 

“But Lex!” some will cry “What about the long grind for the awesome animal themed gear!” I agree, that the new PvP gear Square has introduced in recent patches are amazing, I think they should also be subject to the gear change I suggested. This gear should be reasonably priced and SHOULD NOT have a statistical advantage over lower tier gear sets. The reward should be the amazing aesthetic, not promoting the ever-increasing gap between veteran and amateur players, using the term “veteran” loosely as many of these players do not actually participate in PvP legitimately and instead win trade to divert the game play just to revel in the gear. Its these players that make the PvP content infinitely worse as they undermined the spirit of competition and seek to destroy newcomers and their weak equipment. 

What about Frontlines?

Square seems to have acknowledged many of the complaints I detailed from the rather loud response from FFXIV players. As a result, Morale will not have an impact on Frontlines. I have a feeling that Frontlines will turn out to be a much more rewarding experience as the format consists of three teams of variable uniform sizes (i.e. 8v8v8, 16v16v16, 24v24v24) and be much more political in nature. Frontlines seems to have more similarities with the MOBA genre as it is concerned more with objectives rather than just the killing of opponents. 

Here's Hoping!