Frontlines sucks Ultra megathread

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Originally Posted by Gordita

Frontlines is bad just remove and replace with something fun

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Savage raiding isn't fun for a lot of people. Should it just be deleted and replaced too?

Yes? They could use the Savage resources into PvP.

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Originally Posted by Gordita

Frontlines is bad just remove and replace with something fun

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Name another form of group content with queues that pop in less than 5 minutes 16 hours a day. (Even more remarkable given FL requires 72 players.)

The biggest problem with FL is that there are a lot of people in there that don't want to be. I'm one of them. Most people don't find it fun, but they still do it for one reason or another -- usually to level or to finish the series because it's limited time and FOMO is strong.

I usually fall into the second category. I used to do frontlines regularly before Endwalker because I enjoyed it, but now I just do the daily to get to level 25 in the series then stop until the next series comes out. I hate CC and RW and won't touch them. There are a lot of us who don't care how the fight ends up, we get good enough XP and series XP either way.

The first way to fix frontlines is to only push people into it who want to be there.

Aside from seasonal events, all other content in the game can be finished and the rewards can be gathered at any time. This needs to be the same with PVP. If nothing else, put the series rewards somewhere in the Wolves Den the following season so they can be purchased with Wolf's Marks or Crystals.

Yes, less people will play overall but that's not a bad thing as everyone who's in there will be someone who wants to be, not because of some sense of FOMO.

Next, XP rewards need to be adjusted. People will queue up for FL just to get easy XP on jobs they don't want to actually play. That's fine, makes sense. I do it too every time an xpack drops. But like with series XP, if I'm just grinding a job I have no intention of actually playing to get it to max level, I don't have any incentive to play well. To change that, maybe increase first place rewards while decreasing second and third place. Also change the daily so people can grind jobs in FL without having to rely on it once a day. Also it needs to be made clear to people that they can queue for FL on one job, then switch to another -- letting them still get XP for the job they queued as. Too many people go in as a job they have no idea how to play and don't swap because they don't know it's an option. Adding this as part of the FTUE for PVP is a must.

Third, adjust the amount of time Frontlines takes. Every match now comes down to the wire, taking almost 20 minutes because of "randomization". If someone knows that the first 15 minutes of the fight generally don't matter, why bother? It's not like people can easily stack up BH anymore unless they're playing meta-premades which need to be adjusted anyways. Let teams occasionally steamroll others. Since the big patch that nerfed FL damage, I've yet to see a fight end in 10 minutes. I'd rather get stomped in 10 minutes and let it end than let a boring, pointless fight drag on for nearly 20.

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Originally Posted by Bonoki

Battle High is also a problem. I get that it incentivizes faster games and to seak each other for kills, but once a team is dominating in battle fevers, the match is usually decided. There is just no coming back unless the Battle Fever team neglects the PvE aspects in favor of killing.

It's almost more optimal to ignore any of the targetted objectives at the start to rack of Battle Highs/Fevers and then storm the targets later when you can crush them with the power imbalance.

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Battle High is pretty much the worst mechanic in Frontlines and has been for a long time. If SE hadn't completely neglected Frontlines, I doubt the mechanic would have been in the game for so long.

Battle High needs to be adjusted so that vulnerability is added with each stack of Battle High.

Theres literally no excuse they have to NOT have implemented that in 6.1. That goes for a lot of things for Front lines. It just proves that the developers don't play the modes they make, or play test them at all.

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Originally Posted by lolnotacat

The biggest problem with FL is that there are a lot of people in there that don't want to be.

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You understand there's a simple fix to this problem that would benefit both you and the people who do want to be there?

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

You understand there's a simple fix to this problem that would benefit both you and the people who do want to be there?

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But that would be the easy fix and you cant have that lol


I do wanna be there, but at the same time i dont wanna as i know how many are only in there for the exp and dont give a sh### about anything and at most, run with the masses so they dont get kicked. Ive seen ppl with 0 damage done after 15 minutes of battle lol

What also ruins it for me are the meta stuff, ppl that abuse every little exploit or cheese possible... like that Pala BS back then in Onsai...

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

You understand there's a simple fix to this problem that would benefit both you and the people who do want to be there?

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I gave them. Incentivize only the people who wanna do FL.

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Originally Posted by lolnotacat

I gave them. Incentivize only the people who wanna do FL.

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Okay. I guess my approach to gaming is I only play modes that I enjoy playing. I can't imagine any of the FL rewards are sufficiently compelling to "force" someone to engage. But I completely agree FL would be way better if the whining rump was removed.

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Originally Posted by Archeron

Battle High needs to be adjusted so that vulnerability is added with each stack of Battle High.

Theres literally no excuse they have to NOT have implemented that in 6.1. That goes for a lot of things for Front lines. It just proves that the developers don't play the modes they make, or play test them at all.

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While that would help reduce the amount of BH on the winning team and any team that ignores objectives for BH cheese, I prefer the blue shell approach. Because having three teams fight each other usually ends up in the other two ganging up on one other team, I would suggest that the team with the lowest amount of points gains a battle high depending on the point difference between themselves and the second highest team. so if they were 0-100 point difference, no battle high. 101-200 would get Battle High I, 201-300 would gain a Battle High II and so on.

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Originally Posted by Niroken

While that would help reduce the amount of BH on the winning team and any team that ignores objectives for BH cheese, I prefer the blue shell approach. Because having three teams fight each other usually ends up in the other two ganging up on one other team, I would suggest that the team with the lowest amount of points gains a battle high depending on the point difference between themselves and the second highest team. so if they were 0-100 point difference, no battle high. 101-200 would get Battle High I, 201-300 would gain a Battle High II and so on.

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I don't think this makes sense.

Its normal on maps to have several hundred point deficits, and still make a comeback. Besides with Battle high being nerfed, if they're still getting pounded into submission maybe they just don't deserve to win the map. I generally don't favor giving losing teams a crutch to lean on for being stomped. They should have to earn their battle high like everyone else, and if they can't defeat a team of players with BH V (Lets say Battle high both cuts potency of recuperate, and increases damage taken by 8% per stack.) They perhaps don't deserve to win.

In a hypothetical future where Battle High gets nerfed, and lets say they don't even touch RNG node spawns, this would give teams more than enough chance to make a comeback from third place. If they decide to 2v1 and spawn camp the previous first place team, it'll just mean they accrue battle high, and will be easier to kill. But I feel like thats not even an issue that can be solved, ganging up on one team is going to happen by virtue of it being a 1v1v1 mode.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

Okay. I guess my approach to gaming is I only play modes that I enjoy playing. I can't imagine any of the FL rewards are sufficiently compelling to "force" someone to engage. But I completely agree FL would be way better if the whining rump was removed.

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You can't be solipsistic when looking at games. People react to different incentives.

At this point they need to just give us individual objectives. Let us actually carry if we want.

I mean let's face it, people premade frequently so they can carry themselves, it's why most premades are active. I'm in two of the more active pvp discords(one isn't even focused around pvp), and both groups of players literally admit to doing so. You don't even know the people you're premading with most of the time, you just know that you're bettering your odds because you'll be with them and not someone who is afk, either literally or just afk in the head.

There's certain crowds that are willing to do whatever they can to tilt the odds in their favor, and the best thing you can do is ensure everyone has the tools at their disposal to be that productive.

Also, woooooooooooow @ new shatter. You really made an entire pve only map.

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Originally Posted by lolnotacat

You can't be solipsistic when looking at games. People react to different incentives.

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I try not to be that thing you said under any circumstances.

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Originally Posted by NekoMataMata

At this point they need to just give us individual objectives. Let us actually carry if we want.

I mean let's face it, people premade frequently so they can carry themselves, it's why most premades are active. I'm in two of the more active pvp discords(one isn't even focused around pvp), and both groups of players literally admit to doing so. You don't even know the people you're premading with most of the time, you just know that you're bettering your odds because you'll be with them and not someone who is afk, either literally or just afk in the head.

There's certain crowds that are willing to do whatever they can to tilt the odds in their favor, and the best thing you can do is ensure everyone has the tools at their disposal to be that productive.

Also, woooooooooooow @ new shatter. You really made an entire pve only map.

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For those of us who regard premades as anathema to the spirit of the mode, we're hardly likely to attempt to address the problem by becoming the problem.

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Originally Posted by NekoMataMata

At this point they need to just give us individual objectives. Let us actually carry if we want.

I mean let's face it, people premade frequently so they can carry themselves, it's why most premades are active. I'm in two of the more active pvp discords(one isn't even focused around pvp), and both groups of players literally admit to doing so. You don't even know the people you're premading with most of the time, you just know that you're bettering your odds because you'll be with them and not someone who is afk, either literally or just afk in the head.

There's certain crowds that are willing to do whatever they can to tilt the odds in their favor, and the best thing you can do is ensure everyone has the tools at their disposal to be that productive.

Also, woooooooooooow @ new shatter. You really made an entire pve only map.

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Equating people that may want to queue with literally no more than a couple of friends, and those people who want to queue with , as you point out- a few people who are extremely unlikely to AFK, are going to coordinate, and who want to win the match" is one thing, which I can understand. It's not even "carrying yourself"- it's someone who is typically (reasonably) competent grouped with other competent people.

Certain crowds who will do whatever they can to tilt the odds in their favour" on the other hand, is quite another thing to me , which frequently leads to behaviour that is- if not against someone's moral code- formalized in a TOS and I don't equate the two at all.

The newest change to Shatter.
https://i.imgur.com/UVGkER5.png

Quicker matches do not personally make me enjoy it anymore than I already did.

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Originally Posted by Bonoki

Quicker matches do not personally make me enjoy it anymore than I already did.

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Definitely, but the more they drag on, the worse it is. The recent changes made it slower than ever. Now it's probably on par with before.

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Originally Posted by Archeron

Battle High needs to be adjusted so that vulnerability is added with each stack of Battle High.

Theres literally no excuse they have to NOT have implemented that in 6.1. That goes for a lot of things for Front lines. It just proves that the developers don't play the modes they make, or play test them at all.

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Sounds more like you don't play FL. BH should not be adjusted at all, it rewards people who actually PvP in a PvP map (who knew?!). If you really hate BH that much, get better and learn to prioritize killing people with BH5 > 4 > 3 > 2. If they have premades? Play a ranged job til you get better at noticing their DRKs/RPRs/DRGs/DNCs. Once you're more aware of what's going on in that cluster shizzle called FL, then you can move on to tank or maybe even melee/dnc.

Think it's worth noting that the two changes to Shatter made in 6.57 were both requested on these forums and SE implemented them rapidly. Some evidence that our voices matter.

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Originally Posted by Nubrication

Sounds more like you don't play FL. BH should not be adjusted at all, it rewards people who actually PvP in a PvP map (who knew?!). If you really hate BH that much, get better and learn to prioritize killing people with BH5 > 4 > 3 > 2. If they have premades? Play a ranged job til you get better at noticing their DRKs/RPRs/DRGs/DNCs. Once you're more aware of what's going on in that cluster shizzle called FL, then you can move on to tank or maybe even melee/dnc.

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Having played FL since before shatter was implemented, I think that BH does need adjustments.

There was always an element of risk back then, having BH5 meant you're permanently marked on the map and you have to rely on your healers to get you through fights because you die just as fast as everyone else. But now that everyone has Recuperate, the healing boost part has become unbalanced, you now deal more damage at BH5 and are also much harder to kill than everyone else because you heal 7500 more than normal, that's all the benefits and none of the downside, some adjustments do need to be made to keep it somewhat balanced.

A reward for engaging in PvP is fine. But it shouldn't put you so far ahead that the regular player has a much harder time killing you. A damage boost is your reward, you shouldn't have more survivability as well.

but facing premade zerg rushers vs pug groups who run away from pvp is still a ongoing issue
few days later edit in shatter and onsal hakair can folks afraid of actual pvp not queue seriously lowscore third is pathetic

I don't know if it's just the general mental climate people live under but I've often had groups (two today in fact) who want to play to lose. Zero desire to fight and either no desire to communicate or just some snarky passive aggressiveness. It makes FL a slog but when you get a team that's actually engaged FL is a lot more fun.

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Originally Posted by OjiiM

I don't know if it's just the general mental climate people live under but I've often had groups (two today in fact) who want to play to lose. Zero desire to fight and either no desire to communicate or just some snarky passive aggressiveness. It makes FL a slog but when you get a team that's actually engaged FL is a lot more fun.

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Yes, it makes it especially tiring when you're trying to go for the 300 wins achievements. Such a damn slog.

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Originally Posted by OjiiM

I don't know if it's just the general mental climate people live under but I've often had groups (two today in fact) who want to play to lose. Zero desire to fight and either no desire to communicate or just some snarky passive aggressiveness. It makes FL a slog but when you get a team that's actually engaged FL is a lot more fun.

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It tends to happen on Aether when well-known premades are running a session and players realize they're not on the team with that premade. Thus they assume they are going to lose and prefer to do so quickly. I've even seen players repeatedly suicide into the zerg. While I personally don't understand this extreme form of defeatism, it is definitely there and a problem. The only solution I've found is to quit for the day when the premades descend.

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Originally Posted by Nubrication

Sounds more like you don't play FL. BH should not be adjusted at all, it rewards people who actually PvP in a PvP map (who knew?!). If you really hate BH that much, get better and learn to prioritize killing people with BH5 > 4 > 3 > 2. If they have premades? Play a ranged job til you get better at noticing their DRKs/RPRs/DRGs/DNCs. Once you're more aware of what's going on in that cluster shizzle called FL, then you can move on to tank or maybe even melee/dnc.

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It sounds like you yourself have no idea how to play Frontlines, or you're just a troll. Either way, I don't care, I'm not asking for your advice. I make that recommendation as a player who regularily attains BH V, and keeps it throughout the match with little challenge.

Changing BH to make players more vulnerable doesn't discourage people from PvP. It discourages steamrolling, and makes teams have more of a fighting chance to make a comeback. If you can't see that, or simply just want to disregard anything I have to say, circus is that way bub.

aye premades vs pugs/cowards who feed them points is what i notice in shatter and onsal hakair
would be a shame if these 2 groups of players couldnt queue frontlines at all(or in the premades case their own instances)
and no this is not sarcasm

You're not going to be able to fix player behavior. You can nuke premades from frontlines entirely, and you'll still have those same people that will avoid fighting. You'll have the same people that'll ping objectives and tell other to let them fight. There's no getting rid of them.

Having battle high is fair. As someone mentioned before, take away the healing advantages that battle high gives. Taking away battle high entirely is just going to reinforce doing objectives only.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

There was always an element of risk back then, having BH5 meant you're permanently marked on the map and you have to rely on your healers to get you through fights because you die just as fast as everyone else. But now that everyone has Recuperate, the healing boost part has become unbalanced, you now deal more damage at BH5 and are also much harder to kill than everyone else because you heal 7500 more than normal, that's all the benefits and none of the downside, some adjustments do need to be made to keep it somewhat balanced.

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Yes, giving DPS and Tanks access to instant healer level healing was probably a bad idea when it came to Frontlines. Added that some classes have better killing potential (including LB) while having innate damage resistance... I don't see how anyone can consider BH remotely balanced.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

There was always an element of risk back then, having BH5 meant you're permanently marked on the map and you have to rely on your healers to get you through fights because you die just as fast as everyone else. But now that everyone has Recuperate, the healing boost part has become unbalanced, you now deal more damage at BH5 and are also much harder to kill than everyone else because you heal 7500 more than normal, that's all the benefits and none of the downside, some adjustments do need to be made to keep it somewhat balanced.

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Yes, exactly - you HAD to rely on your healers. Now you can't. Not because you're (not you literally) bad, but because they're (healers) toolkit no longer allows it. You're forgetting that PVP changed drastically compared to before. Survival is more on the individual now; while winning still requires teamwork. So it only makes sense that healing still gets a boost from BH. And the damage you deal with BH5 only brings it slightly above normal, you're forgetting that everyone takes less damage, and some jobs do less dmg in FL.

As for the map pinging. That also makes sense because anyone can get BH5 now. The game mode changed so obviously your toolkit is going to change with it to make it more manageable. The fact that you can get BH5 with just assists is saying something. Battle Fever took like 6-8 kills? I forgot.

TLDR: Game mode has changed -> survival is more self-reliant -> recuperate bonus is needed.

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Originally Posted by Archeron

It sounds like you yourself have no idea how to play Frontlines, or you're just a troll. Either way, I don't care, I'm not asking for your advice. I make that recommendation as a player who regularily attains BH V, and keeps it throughout the match with little challenge.

Changing BH to make players more vulnerable doesn't discourage people from PvP. It discourages steamrolling, and makes teams have more of a fighting chance to make a comeback. If you can't see that, or simply just want to disregard anything I have to say, circus is that way bub.

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Yeah, you get BH5 playing what, NIN? LOL. BTW, your circus was great, I loved your clown costume. Bub.

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Originally Posted by Nubrication

TLDR: Game mode has changed -> survival is more self-reliant -> recuperate bonus is needed.

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It's actually because survival is more on the individual that I think the healing boost from BH is unbalanced. You had to rely on others to survive fights back then, so the healing boost was justified to make that easier. But now you rely only on yourself to survive, the healing boost is unnecessary because you don't have to work with a healer anymore, it all depends on your own play.

Also, if you remember Battle Fever, then you must also remember how hard it was to get (only kills counted, no assists) and how easy it was to lose it (you lost all of it on death, doesn't just halve it like now). You could very easily just lose it all if you got caught by a Cometeor and 2 Bravers back then, unless you had a pocket SCH.

The game mode has changed and so a rebalancing does seem in order. What I think is fair is that if BH remains this easy to stack, they need to nerf the benefits of it, or they could revert to only being able to stack it on kills and losing it all on death to justify the strength of BH in the current FL.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

It's actually because survival is more on the individual that I think the healing boost from BH is unbalanced. You had to rely on others to survive fights back then, so the healing boost was justified to make that easier. But now you rely only on yourself to survive, the healing boost is unnecessary because you don't have to work with a healer anymore, it all depends on your own play.

Also, if you remember Battle Fever, then you must also remember how hard it was to get (only kills counted, no assists) and how easy it was to lose it (you lost all of it on death, doesn't just halve it like now). You could very easily just lose it all if you got caught by a Cometeor and 2 Bravers back then, unless you had a pocket SCH.

The game mode has changed and so a rebalancing does seem in order. What I think is fair is that if BH remains this easy to stack, they need to nerf the benefits of it, or they could revert to only being able to stack it on kills and losing it all on death to justify the strength of BH in the current FL.

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I imagine jobs that splatter the field with low-damage AoEs and DOTs would have an issue with that.

I havn't flung myself belly-first into Frontline since the most recent update that altered data points; i wonder how that affected frontline(?)

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Originally Posted by Neoyoshi

I havn't flung myself belly-first into Frontline since the most recent update that altered data points; i wonder how that affected frontline(?)

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Not a whole lot. It's still basically like schools of fish flocking around one another to make it hard for the predator to pick one of the guppies out and eat them. And in general while the PvP changes going into endwalker are good, what they need is literal NPCs and a gambit system to get this thing working. PvP is basically going to die out anyway since it either grows stale too quickly (Crystaline Conflict) or is an RNG mini-game with Frontlines that most people forget to do anyway. I went all the way to rank 25 twice to get the special armor coffers from the last two that had them and I am barely rank 7 on this one from sheer burnout.

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Originally Posted by Neoyoshi

I havn't flung myself belly-first into Frontline since the most recent update that altered data points; i wonder how that affected frontline(?)

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If your question pertains to popularity- I have yet to see a FL queue exceed 5 minutes, frequently less. So some people may explicitly not queue for Shatter, however I haven't really seen a difference.

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Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

If your question pertains to popularity- I have yet to see a FL queue exceed 5 minutes, frequently less. So some people may explicitly not queue for Shatter, however I haven't really seen a difference.

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We might not get a clearer picture until after the Mogtome event. But agree, given the complaints about FL (including from me), the queue times suggest it's popular. Whether that popularity is driven mostly by XP and rewards is harder to determine.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

It's actually because survival is more on the individual that I think the healing boost from BH is unbalanced. You had to rely on others to survive fights back then, so the healing boost was justified to make that easier. But now you rely only on yourself to survive, the healing boost is unnecessary because you don't have to work with a healer anymore, it all depends on your own play.

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4x15000 heals = 60000 HP. That's literally nothing when 7+ people are trying to bash your brains in. I'm not even counting the BH that they (the 7+ players) might have or their crowd control. You seem to be overestimating the power of recuperate. The real reason why it seems OP is because players don't crowd control correctly. Stun your BH5 target who is at full HP? Chances are he's going to get away, unless you got a whole alliance on him.

I think it IS balanced simply because you can't rely on your healers anymore, so the only way to heal yourself really, is to rely on yourself. A melee in a really good premade back then was impossible to kill. Like literally. I'm talking about 20+ kills and 0 deaths, which was insane back then. The only way to stop a good premade was to make a counter full party premade of PvP players. Now, even premade melees can easily die. BH5 players are easier to kill then BF players BECAUSE anyone can get BH now. So ANYONE can do more dmg, more heals. So that's why I think recuperate should heal more per BH. Also, because of all the AOEs now, it's definitely needed. You remember the fiasco early on of Onsal/New Pvp Mode? Where everyone was WHM/SMN and alliances got wiped before they could even get into melee/mid range. Then they swapped to all SCH (simply imagine 8 buffed SCH debuffs and you have an unbuffed recuperate at BH5, how exactly do you think that's gonna work out?). Then the PLD HG cheese. And now finally we have the DRK/DRG/(AST) meta. Shoot, when Secure first came out, everybody was WHM holy spamming lmao.

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Also, if you remember Battle Fever, then you must also remember how hard it was to get (only kills counted, no assists) and how easy it was to lose it (you lost all of it on death, doesn't just halve it like now). You could very easily just lose it all if you got caught by a Cometeor and 2 Bravers back then, unless you had a pocket SCH.

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Can't relate, I got BF like 95% of my games, with or without the premades I used to run with.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

We might not get a clearer picture until after the Mogtome event. But agree, given the complaints about FL (including from me), the queue times suggest it's popular. Whether that popularity is driven mostly by XP and rewards is harder to determine.

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If you look at Rival Wings outside of mogtome, that is what I would expect Frontlines to look like if it wasn't added to Duty Roulette.