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!
Continue reading...
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!
Continue reading...