Remove the Grand Company aspect entirely from Frontline

Who doesn't love playing a dozen games on Seal Rock day and not winning a single one. Getting a tooth pulled without anesthetic would've been more enjoyable. And productive.

Yeah, it takes a lot of skill to actually focus fire the marked enemies, especially with a bunch of ranged dps in a call, vs randos, trying to work with a mix of people who don't pay attention to constant notices in the chat/people who actually are willing to cooperate/bots here and there.

It doesn't help that you're often facing a cluster of BRD/MCH who can pick off opposition easily from afar with minimal risk to themselves and they're then rewarded through battle high/battle fever which gives them increased damage.

Even when people fight well, if they're not running the same setup they're at a major disadvantage right away.

Tfw I once had a group in an alliance with 6 brds and one sam
Two of the brds had battle fever and a couple others had battle high, the sam ended up asking if brd is that awesome or something like that. This was from just my group, there was at least one other battle fever brd and battle high brds too. At this rate, melee is basically "Lol get your lb in and book it from the ranged sniping you" (I'm half joking btw).

Problem with outdoor/open map, there's not enough indoor fights. If you do plenty close-match feasts, melees rule in there if they're allowed to pair. Astralagos has somewhat melee advantage too with base and mid. On topic, there should be a non-GC faction so only people with no need for GC achievement can go. Middle ground, if it's too much to remove GC entirely.

I don't want to switch factions but after two weeks of trying to get 10 wins it's getting old. I'd like to get at least the easy pvp mount sometime this century. For the last two days I haven't even seen many healers in Twin Adders. Just did thrre in a row without a healer. Really lame. Not having much fun at all. Just wanna get my mounts and quit pvp altogether until they think things through a little better. I tried Rival Wings for the Wonderous Tails entry but absolutely nobody queues for it. They need to just remove it from the journal and possibly the game altogether if it's never going to have a single player.

You know you can switch to a healer for your team. If you are wanting to win, it means playing the role least played and doing whatever it takes to help your team win.

As an Adder, I absolutely agree. I can either fight and lose for my free company, or freelance and have a significantly higher chance of winning.

The only other option I can see to help the situation would be if people playing in GCs that lose frequently get some sort of extra reward for supporting an underdog. Not sure how much it would actually help but it might make losing almost every match a little less painful.

Queue for Rival Wings on Saturday nights

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Originally Posted by Hazmick

The only other option I can see to help the situation would be if people playing in GCs that lose frequently get some sort of extra reward for supporting an underdog. Not sure how much it would actually help but it might make losing almost every match a little less painful.

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you get increased wolf marks if you are a on a losing streak, but the problem is virtually all the achievements require wins. Up to 200 or so.

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Originally Posted by Kai_Lee

You know you can switch to a healer for your team. If you are wanting to win, it means playing the role least played and doing whatever it takes to help your team win.

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...you really have to like healing to do it, healing in fl is often watching your team go off in four ways and there is only one of you.

I like to win and if it helps then yeah I will switch to a healer but I also can play brd if we have to many healers on our team. I also do call outs and Mark targets. I do know the pain of playing with adders and flames, even with call outs and marking targets they tend to not care and go do their own thing. But you be surprise you might get lucky with a competent flames or adders group.

Getting people to listen is like trying to herd cats. Every Flames and Adders team I get put on I see so many comments of "I'm just here for the glamor" in response to people trying to organize them so they aren't running around like headless chickens. I can understand you're only doing this content because you're "forced" to, but you can at least try if someone's taking the time to provide direction.

I'm also convinced SE just likes to troll me. It'll put me on Flames 90% of the time, and the one time they actually manage to win, I'll be on Adders instead that game. Well played, SE. Well played.

From Lace Valeria:

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I've had my eye on this thread for some time, and I do share some of the frustrations here. I would like to say the answer isn't to simply remove the GC aspect from Frontlines, as that's not really a fix for the bigger issue, but perhaps an enforced Freelancer is. Yes, it sounds bad. It sounds like you're losing even more freedom of choice, but consider that people who already choose to queue with friends or as a full premade already have Freelancer enforced on them.
What's been happening - more so on Primal than Aether, but I'm aware it happens on both, Aether to a lesser degree - is that people have convinced themselves that they have to swap to a GC (in this case, Maelstrom) and turn Freelancer off, effectively creating a "stable" pool of players that will consistently fill the queues for that single GC, which effectively force filters anyone and everyone else (except premades) into the other two, in a way, taking advantage of the premade concept, but bypassing Freelancer entirely. Not really a foul, but it's a tad underhanded when an actual premade is still bound by the Freelancer rule.
Plus, let me say this now, and the next time you hear someone looking at GCs/the general team designation (i.e. Ravens/Falcons for Rival Wings) as the big issue when it comes to overall success: THERE IS NO SUBSTITUTE FOR SKILL OR KNOWLEDGE.
Let's rip the bandage off here; if you're not good, switching to a GC that is filled with good players will not simply make you good. You're just being carried at that point. Carried, or dragging down those good players by relying on them to do what's right and make the right moves while you perhaps continue to not do so. And I'll say from firsthand witness, I've seen a LOT of people make a LOT of bad calls, avoidable mistakes, attempt to play passively from a losing position, and generally not make the right choices that could turn a match around. Swapping GCs to bypass the random matching of Freelancer or removing GCs entirely will not fix these fundamental issues. Learning what to do and how to do it, exercising better situational and map awareness, and being proactive rather than reactive in combat is a big step toward solving the bigger issue and closing the skill gap.

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Originally Posted by Rhekshi-Ehki

From Lace Valeria:

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In response to Lace, that's what people want in general. Not to be good, but to win, and victory to them tastes sweeter than being skilled can do. It's like RMT in Feast for wins, win-trading, content selling, etc. People like to go the path of least resistance, regardless of what they have to do for it as long as it's the easiest way to get what they want.

The only times I been able to win consistently in Chaos DC is with a premade, as I am an Adder, Mael has the far greater hand here if there's only randoms in the match, and I am forced either to either queue as Freelancer and potentially be stuck with Flames (who are like the worst GC currently in Chaos) or turn it off and stay in Adders, so I at least have a chance to win. That's what the situation is causing, it has a knock-on effect to those in other GCs, where if you want to bypass the ridiculous win-rate Mael has you either gotta get enough skilled people together to effectively guarantee a win (think Mr Burns All Star Softball team) or just swap to Mael and enjoy the higher win-rate without needing to rely on premades to win. Mael has lost, but it's like every 7-8 games, which is too high of a win-rate and it has to be balanced. You can't argue with statistics and evidence that's been shown to be the case.

There will always be people who won't ever learn PvP and just want it for rewards, and unless you literally have a school to force them to learn, the won't choose too.

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Originally Posted by Kai_Lee

If rival wings is so great, why did the queue die for rival wings?

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Because the Frontline Daily Challenge came out and revitalized Frontlines. Why would anyone bother queuing for Astragalos and get half the rewards? If they introduce a new Rival Wings map and Rival Wings Daily Challenge, people will flock to that mode again. Heck, even putting in a Rival Wings Daily Challenge without adding a new map would probably get lots of people queuing for it again, since a lot of people never got achievements for Astragalos.

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Originally Posted by Zalestra

Why is everyone hating on pre-mades when that is clearly not the problem! Pre-mades are forced into freelance status, which arguably means any pre-mades should be placed into a random GC.

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That's not how pre-mades work in this context. Frontline pre-mades consist of 24 people of the same GC (Adders) queuing individually for Frontline at the same time (with Freelancer turned off) and hoping to get into the same match. The majority of the time this works, and allows a full alliance to queue together, instead of being limited to parties of 8.

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Originally Posted by GenericMagus

I would just like to add to the myth of the pre-made, the only reason why those pre-mades are successful are because they're skilled and communicative. The average PvP player is unskilled, and that's a fact

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A pre-made using voice chat (and especially a pre-made of 24 people) is going to have a large advantage over pugs using text to communicate.

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Originally Posted by Cidel

Are there ever people making call-outs on Adders and Flames (especially Flames) on objectives?

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On Aether, Flames often have callouts, but they play much more conservatively. They know they'll get slaughtered in an outright confrontation with either of the other GCs, so they'll get the objective and then run away as fast as possible. Very occasionally they can be talked into trying to pince the pre-made Adder Battle Highs/Fevers, but they'll usually break the assault as soon as a couple of people on their team die.

For Adders, I've only been in the non-pre-made groups, and those do have callouts, but play nothing like the deathsquads of the pre-mades.

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Originally Posted by RiyahArp

Nimue, its been this way on primal for at least a year. Since the tail end of HW, when they nerfed exp, if I remember. There's been zero migration, and mael has been having 80% win rates for that long.

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The exact same thing happened with IF, back in the day (on Aether). Flames won the vast majority of matches for ages, but eventually they got inundated by bad players who switched to IF for easy victories and IF became the worse GC in Frontlines. It may take awhile, but Maelstrom won't stay on top forever.

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Originally Posted by Beckett

That's not how pre-mades work in this context. Frontline pre-mades consist of 24 people of the same GC (Adders) queuing individually for Frontline at the same time (with Freelancer turned off) and hoping to get into the same match. The majority of the time this works, and allows a full alliance to queue together, instead of being limited to parties of 8.

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If that is the definition of pre-made you are using, then there is nothing SE can even do about it. ASIDE FROM removing being allowed to queue for your GC. Which is what I am already for. So that just supports my argument further.

There is literally no reason to keep GC PVP queuing anymore. It is only being used for trickery at this point.

I still prefer removing freelance. You can't get any consistency from Adders or Flames otherwise. It still tipped Mael, but both were much better off before people were freelancing. In time, that could ahve changed. Now I see Adders and Flames not even try to win half the matches they are in. They just fight for second. However, removing grand companies removes the whole point of frontlines. It supposed to be a friendly competition... a bragging right thing. But there are no bragging rights for Mael here. Some of the people they are beating were Mael from the start.

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Originally Posted by Zsolen

I still prefer removing freelance. You can't get any consistency from Adders or Flames otherwise. It still tipped Mael, but both were much better off before people were freelancing. In time, that could ahve changed. Now I see Adders and Flames not even try to win half the matches they are in. They just fight for second. However, removing grand companies removes the whole point of frontlines. It supposed to be a friendly competition... a bragging right thing. But there are no bragging rights for Mael here. Some of the people they are beating were Mael from the start.

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No, then we get back to those obscene wait times and broken teams.
How removing GC queue will remove the point of FL? It's just novelty.

If everyone is freelancing, the game would queue up much faster, it could even balance roles much better between teams as it would draw players from the same pool.

Not removing FC queue means people will keep changing to the FC with higher win rate.

If queues are longer, those with the ability to actually win will move to GCs with faster queue times, because they don't need 'the best GC' to win.

From Lace Valeria:
The Frontline Roulette didn't kill Rival Wings. It died LONG before that due to players adopting poor strategies early and stubbornly clinging to them, exploiting job balancing (i.e. healer stacking), poor sportsmanship (giving up early, afking, being "just here for XP/wolf marks/tomes"), and some of the poor changes made to the mode itself. Skilled players got their wins for their mount, and left the players who didn't want to listen or cooperate to deal with each other and the mode died as expected.
Now then, as for the matter of GC/Freelancer queues, as I previously said both here and many times on Reddit, since 4.0 we've had a compounding issue of people believing they have to be in one particular GC - let's not be coy: Maelstrom - in order to win. They'll switch to Mael, turn OFF Freelancer, and never queue in a full party, so they'll only ever be on Maelstrom in a match, which basically lets them apply the premade concept, but bypass forced Freelancer status. There's nothing saying they can't, but it's a bit underhanded. This problem has truly snowballed in Primal data center, while it's come up in Aether, but hasn't been allowed to grow nearly as much.(edited)
It also doesn't solve the core problem that the remaining teams face: People largely just don't know what to do. Nor do they seem to care to learn, and being forced to always be on a team that wouldn't have the coordination shown by people who exclusively queue for Maelstrom and do know what to do would only serve to further demoralize and either drive people away from Frontlines altogether, or worse, resort to things like botting/afking just for XP "participation" rewards.

The answer isn't to remove GCs. Honestly, they could change the colors and call each team the Temple Knights, the Doman Liberation Front, and the Ala Mihgan Resistance and it still wouldn't matter. I personally am in favor of a forced Freelancer for all, and I say this because not only does it immediately erase the placebo fix of piling into one GC, it would hold every player personally responsible for knowing what to do and push them to work together if they want to win, rather than trying to stack one team favorably. That too, is part of why others premade. It's time to really, properly look at things.

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Originally Posted by Zsolen

If queues are longer, those with the ability to actually win will move to GCs with faster queue times, because they don't need 'the best GC' to win.

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No because people will stop to que up completly. We've already been there for a long time.

remove frontlines in general

I just think adders and flames players are all stupid.

Well I mean, premade is auto freelancer there's no option for party q

So what's your point

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Originally Posted by Kai_Lee

I just think adders and flames players are all stupid.

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It is usually freelancing that is the problem. I've had a lot of Mael players either inexperienced or not learning enough play for Adders. I look at people's GCs, sometimes.

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Originally Posted by Cidel

Serious question, as someone who has always been on Mael from the very 1st Frontlines- probably can count number of freelanced matches on one hand (and that was just out of curiosity when it went live): Are there ever people making call-outs on Adders and Flames (especially Flames) on objectives? It appears that Adders probably do, as they always tend to be our biggest threat in most games; but Flames really look like they spend most matches actively spoiling the game for another GC rather than play around objectives and trying to win. At least on Primal, anyway.

There's truth to Zalestra's observation that Maelstrom frequently has players calling shots (with <se.#>'s: this is crucial because the tunnel vision is real), constantly observing the map and actively reeling-in (with varying success) overzealous aggressive chasing at the expense of favorable map positioning. Premades on Mael really aren't a thing (and I think most stigma about them prior to freelance were overblown), and I say that as someone who religiously solo queues and would notice if a constant group of people kept being in the same party.

I do think abolishing the GCs in Frontlines would see a better distribution of skill and probably even speed-up queues. But somehow I feel that the devs are too invested in the shallow "lore" of Frontlines to outright do anything about it. That and they've put a good amount of achievements into it that I don't think they'll want to have to adjust/abolish.

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I play Adders, and haven’t ever freelanced. I go through pvp phases, up until this most recent patch my percentages for 1st 2nd and 3rd have been pretty evenly split, last week was pretty rough for us. I’ve noticed a distinct improvement in communication, calls, and teamwork for the adders this week. It’s been great to see, to me it always seems like the flames work to let Maelstrom win (not just this patch cycle). I’ve seen Maelstrom fall apart, and melt under attack enough to feel they aren’t unstoppable. The flames seem to be playing very sub par lately as well.

I personally enjoy the Grand Companies, and the challenges it brings, I think pvp would be worse off, if they somehow removed that facet of it.

If you want to prevent people switching grand companies for wins, the easiest thing SE could do is make the timer to switch back longer, and put in a serious penalty for switching, which would deter people who are just chasing wins.

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Originally Posted by Ariel_Valmont

I play Adders, and haven’t ever freelanced. I go through pvp phases, up until this most recent patch my percentages for 1st 2nd and 3rd have been pretty evenly split, last week was pretty rough for us. I’ve noticed a distinct improvement in communication, calls, and teamwork for the adders this week. It’s been great to see, to me it always seems like the flames work to let Maelstrom win (not just this patch cycle). I’ve seen Maelstrom fall apart, and melt under attack enough to feel they aren’t unstoppable. The flames seem to be playing very sub par lately as well.

I personally enjoy the Grand Companies, and the challenges it brings, I think pvp would be worse off, if they somehow removed that facet of it.

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Interesting. What exactly do you feel GC adds to the Frontline? At least when it comes to game play, not lore. I'm mostly interested in why you think things will be worse off if hey removed GC from Frontline.

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Originally Posted by Nova_Rox

Interesting. What exactly do you feel GC adds to the Frontline? At least when it comes to game play, not lore. I'm mostly interested in why you think things will be worse off if hey removed GC from Frontline.

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I feel I probably chose my words poorly with the “worse off” comment. I am not sure not having GCs removed from frontlines would make the gameplay worse.

It does seem to completely negate the lore surrounding it, and it’s obvious that GCs are an important part of FFXIV as a whole. I also don’t see how having GCs attactched to frontlines “ruins” the gameplay, if you remove them, frontlines will still be the same, it just seems to remove the choice from people who are more interested in participating under the banner of their GC, than chasing easy wins.

As to the topic of the thread there are ways to prevent migration solely for the purpose of winning. We have two pvp modes that aren’t grand company based, and I would rather see effort towards making them more accessible with daily challenges. And adding new pvp modes, with and without GC relevance.

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Originally Posted by Nova_Rox

I'm mostly interested in why you think things will be worse off if hey removed GC from Frontline.

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Simple, It is not Malestorm always win the Frontlinebefore 4.4; it is the premade. In matter of fact, everyone will intentionally to keep Malestorm lost every game.

Although, 4.4 also open the flood gate of people who don’t know how to play to each GC; but because of 72 men mode, the chance of Malestorm getting those veteran premade is increased. This creates a fakest image that Malestorm is always winning

Throughout the history of Frontlines, Maelstrom has not always been the dominant force. Most times yes, but then there's waves of times when others join for easy wins and it floods the team with less skilled players. I've seen 'seasons' of Flames and Adders winning almost always.

Some people like representing their FC, be it Maelstrom or otherwise, changing it now would be kind of a kick in their pants.

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Originally Posted by Canadane

Throughout the history of Frontlines, Maelstrom has not always been the dominant force. Most times yes, but then there's waves of times when others join for easy wins and it floods the team with less skilled players. I've seen 'seasons' of Flames and Adders winning almost always.

Some people like representing their FC, be it Maelstrom or otherwise, changing it now would be kind of a kick in their pants.

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Yes, this.

To the OP:

The GCs are an integral part of the lore surrounding the Frontline... in fact, that's the reason why various Frontline battles exist. The three main nations needed a 'passive-aggressive' method of gathering Allagan tech for research without having to outright declare hostilities amoungst one another. Hence, their respective GCs "fight" these proxy-like battles to gain a fair chance at obtaining these artifacts.

Gameplay wise, you just have to keep playing or transfer GCs as needed to whatever suits you. Just as Canadane said; when Frontlines first started, Maelstrom dominated so strongly that many players began transferring over... and to be honest, we were just exceptionally skilled at winning. The running joke at the time was that Adders and Flames were only participating to find out who would not come last... I still have several screenshots of this from back then.

Eventually, many of the great Maelstrom players stopped playing once they got their achievements, wins, mounts etc and Flames rose in prominence... they had their era for a while, then Adders, then Flames, then Maelstrom again and after that, dominance just kept on shifting depending on the lull or surge within the playerbase numbers.

Malestorm tends to lose in secure a lot because of the way they behave: use number to overpower other GC and cares about Middle too much. All you need is 2 to 3 to harrass manor and their OP you will see their entire group waste time in reining between two nodes

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Originally Posted by Divinemights

Malestorm tends to lose in secure a lot because of the way they behave: use number to overpower other GC and cares about Middle too much. All you need is 2 to 3 to harrass manor and their OP you will see their entire group waste time in reining between two nodes

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Ahhhh... I think I need to clarify.

The period that I'm referring to is around the summer of 2014 when patch 2.3 brought Frontline Campaigns. I remember that particular patch... it remains one of my favourites in FFXIVs history because it was densely packed with so many new features to the game-- Hunts, Housing, Dyable AFs, more Hildy stories, more treasure hunts with Hidden Maps, Winebaud's Riddles and some great dungeons .

Back to my point, when this patch released Frontlines, I believe back then there were three main elements that made "MaelstronG" dominate very strongly from the onset (my mind is a bit fuzzy on this one but I'll explain as best as I can):

• There was already a great surge of Maelstrom players who were Warriors. This was in part due to the fact that when 2.0 released, Yoshi himself said that the WAR class was arguably one the Devs favourite during development; and this was proven when players tested it out and confirmed it to have great DPS even back then. Since the Marauder class begins in Limsa, one could see the correlation and as such, many players who started out in Limsa went ahead and joined Maelstrom.
• Secondly, "Maelstrom" had an ample number of truly brilliant alliance leaders who called out the strategies in very clear steps. The key was to function as a unit with great focus on speed, proper healing and great timing.
• Thirdly, when patch 2.4 brought Ninja, Maelstrom were the first to really utilize their hide ability to snatch bases.

There are a few other factors but these were amoung the main reasons why Maelstrom did so well back then. The joke back then was that Adders and Flames could only win on Tuesdays and maybe on Wednesdays because all the great Maelstrom players were in Syrcus Tower trying to get their weekly drops.

And yes... the trash talk back then was the stuff of legends.

The long and the short of it is that lore should not ever alter the chances of winning a PVP match. And unfortunately, our "lore mechanic" of choosing to fight only with your Grand Company is doing just that.

There is no reason to remove the lore backstory which revolves around the the Frontline modes. There will still always be Maelstrom, Adder, and Flames fighting each other. That lore backstory will remain there.

However, because it is a mechanic which is able to be exploited to rig matches, the queuing with your Grand Company must go. Freelance for everyone, or Frontlines will never be truly fair.

Concerns over pre-mades can wait until after this obviously exploitable issue is addressed.

Yes, freelancer for everyone.

This will make people do premades instead, which is much better than only one GC having winning streaks. If premades have too much sway, they can limit them to light parties only, 4 players, like in Rival Wings.

Hello Frontline (and Rival Wings!) enthusiasts,

I'm posting this here since that looks like the most recent/active thread about all things Frontline.

We are aware of a long-time request regarding melee DPS in Frontline and Rival Wings. Melee DPS have a harder time than ranged DPS in these contents since they have to constantly be in the heat of action and put themselves in risky situations.

Well, I'm happy to announce that we're looking into some adjustments to melee DPS only for Frontline and Rival Wings, coming in Patch 4.5.

The Feast won't be affected by these adjustments.

Details will be shared at a later time so... please look forward to it! :D

Melee DPS should just get a gap closer like lunge.

As for GCs, maybe we shoukd get new Frontlines that arent GC focused.
One in Allamigo that pits the three main settlements afainst each other.
One set in Azim with three tribes.
These arent GCs so it would force everyone to freelance.