1558: PeeVeePee

I’m not a huge fan of competitive play, be it online or on the tabletop; I generally prefer cooperative games. This explains why I’m generally drawn to theme-heavy games on the tabletop — they often tend to be cooperative in nature — and why I’ve been enjoying Final Fantasy XIV so much to date — most of it is cooperative.

Tonight, though, a couple of members of my Free Company in Final Fantasy XIV said that they’d been trying out the game’s PvP (Player vs. Player) area, known as The Wolves’ Den. And they’d been enjoying themselves a great deal. So, curious to take a look at this part of the game that I had, to date, never touched despite having ploughed an unspeakable number of hours into the game as a whole, I decided to join up with my comrades Avexxis and Emma and jump into The Wolves’ Den.

Before I go on, let me explain a little: I’ve played a number of MMOs in the past, and given the PvP experiences a go in most of them. And I’ve never really had a satisfying experience with them. In World of Warcraft my main experience with PvP was being ganked when I’d forgotten to turn my PvP flag off for whatever reason. In The Secret World the areas were too big and it couldn’t seem to make its mind up if it wanted to be a fast-paced shooter or an RPG. Star Wars: The Old Republic had the same problem; sprawling areas and a feeling of extreme unbalance. The closest I’ve come to having a good time with PvP in an MMO was in Guild Wars, and coincidentally that’s probably the closest equivalent to Final Fantasy XIV’s PvP.

PvP in Final Fantasy XIV isn’t about huge, sprawling battles that inevitably continue into a stalemate because no-one knows how to work as a team and accomplish objectives together. Rather, it’s about short, snappy, four-on-four battles in a small, enclosed arena that nonetheless has a number of convenient walls and pillars around the place to block line of sight. And it’s a completely different experience to playing the normal “PvE” (Player vs. Environment) cooperative game.

The biggest difference is that you can’t rely on your usual MMO setup of the tank maintaining the attention of all your enemies while everyone else knocks them down one by one. In PvP, your opponents are controlled by actual, real people so a tank’s aggro-management skills are utterly useless. More often than not, you’ll see the enemy team making a beeline for the opposing healer, who will find themselves having the most to do in the fight — usually in the form of running away and trying to get out of sight for long enough to catch their breath.

I was playing as the healer using my White Mage class, and it was a lot of fun. PvE White Mageing involves a lot of standing still and casting Cure on the tank, with occasional breaks to heal the party when a wider-range attack hits them, or to cure status effects when they crop up. In PvP, however, I was constantly using the Sprint ability to put some distance between me and the enemies chasing me — usually the opposing tank — and doing drive-by Regen casts on anyone I happened to be in range of. There simply wasn’t time for the lengthy casting of Cure and its ilk, except when I had the opportunity to make use of the Black Mage skill Swiftcast and quickly drop in a Cure II on someone whose HP had reached critical level. It was extremely satisfying to bring someone back from the brink of death — even more so than in PvE.

The second battle we fought this evening was my favourite. I saw the enemy team heading straight for my comrades rather than me for once, so I hid behind a pillar, hoping they wouldn’t see me for a little while. But then out of the corner of my eye, movement: a tiny Lalafell black mage, creeping towards me. Before I could react, I heard the telltale sound of the Sleep spell, and I was completely immobilised for 30 seconds. Fortunately, the Black Mage chose not to get a quick hit off on me — that would have woken me up — and instead fled to return his attention to the rest of my party, but later returned to fling a Thunder (damage over time) spell at me just as the Sleep effect was set to wear off.

I started running around the arena, hoping I wouldn’t bump into someone who could stun me or do significant damage. I passed the opposing healer, who was fleeing in the opposite direction around the arena. I did a complete lap, and by the time I reached the rest of my party there were three members of the opposing group lying dead on the floor. I stopped running and watched them finish off the last. While I hadn’t done any damage directly, I had evidently proven distracting enough to help win the fight, if only by dropping a few Regens and helping keep everyone alive.

Overall, a thoroughly pleasant surprise, then, and I can see myself indulging in it a little more often, particularly if I can get together with some guildmates and form a team.