Welcome back to another installment of Eorzea Reborn, where the Feast is in swing, and the points DO matter! That’s right. The points are like the medals you’re aiming to collect in the new PVP arena: you need them to win big!
*crickets*
*ehem*
Enough of that Whose Line is it Anyway reference. Let’s get on to the business at hand of discussing the new Feast PVP arena as well as the upcoming Hatching-Tide shenanigans adventurers can expect from Final Fantasy XIV!
The Feast: How it Works
First off, you need to be level 60 and have activated the Wolves’ Den PVP mode to access the introductory quest for The Feast. This introductory quest – A Seat at the Feast – is basically your standard breadcrumb quest, providing zero experience and 957 gil, as well as access to this new PVP mode.
The Feast map for PVP is basically a team-based battle to collect medals owned by your opponents, which will eventually be lying on the ground after you’ve beaten them to a pulp.
Each player gets medals at the start of the battle, with defeated players dropping half their medals..Opponents can then interact with the dropped medals to claim them for their team totals.If dropped medals remain uncollected after a set amount of time, they’ll go back to the tally of the player that originally had them.
Each matchup is short at 10 minutes, and requires teams to amass a certain number of medals or get more medals than the other team at the end of the 10-minute timer.
Reports from the Field
The reports from players appear to be mixed, and I’m not sure if it’s more positive or negative. Perhaps it depends on the type of group setup that’s involved, so I’ll explain a bit further.
There are three ways to enter The Feast PVP battlezone, but two out of the three choices to get in require a bit of messing around with random players. There’s 4 on 4 where you sign in as a solo player, and everyone’s matched up as Tank, Healer, Melee DPS, and Ranged DPS. There’s also 8 on 8 where you sign in as matched parties – four pairs of players per side corresponding to two each of Tanks, Healers, Melee DPS, and Ranged DPS.
The last setup is 4 on 4 matched parties, where you can play as a premade party of four (still Tank, the DPS pair, and healer) against another premade party.
The first two cases appear to be the most problematic, as players are more likely to disregard strategy in pursuit of individual goals. Meanwhile, the premade parties appear to be the most stable of the bunch, as it’s more likely to be a truly team-based affair if everyone’s on the same page.
The result of this is a bit of uneven fun. As a solo player, someone could be part of a cohesive team on one match, and part of a mess on the next. In both cases, it’s still a toss-up depending on how messed up your opponents are when it comes to strategy. Looking at it from the outside, it seems hilarious how that works, as PVP would thus feel more like gambling than a game of skill, especially if you don’t have the support of your teammates.
Still, that’s probably why 4-on-4 matched parties is going to be the way to go moving forward.
Hatching-Tide
Also of note this coming week is the return of the Hatching-Tide festival beginning March 15, with the seasonal event site going live on March 14.
As you might imagine, it’s an easter themed event that lets players go through a new time-bound quest. The blog post on the FFXIV Lodestone indicated that a new mini-game will be introduced, so I’m hoping it’ll be a fun addition that may also make its way to the toy chest.
One of the prizes for the event is the barding you see above. Along with this, other prizes include Hatching-Tide themed furniture and a new roll for the Orchestrion: the fabled Pa-Paya song! If you’ve never heard this annoyingly catchy tune before, allow me to refresh your memory by linking a sample below.
Cheers to everyone!
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