Forced to spawn camp at the end of each match in Fields of Glory

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Enlial

I actually envy that players on your datacenter are so rational. On Aether most matches are "team a engages team b, team c cleans up nodes, team a+b still fighting while team c takes win" xP

---

It doesn't help that there's people on Maelstrom saying this at the beginning of the match

http://puu.sh/pJGlZ.jpg

And let me say that that is not a one-time thing. These individuals have said this over...and over and over and over.

They don't care about winning. They literally play because they have a hate-boner for Flames. They have no objective except to make sure Flames don't win first lol.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Thekk

A bit of napkin maths:

---

That is great thank you, I've been trying to find these numbers and it matches up with my own experience (that teams which hit all the Ice pops on the nose, but play passively between Ice, tend to settle into 2nd place just shy of victory).

Some questions:

• Are you sure it's +10 for a kill? We were debating in /alliance in a couple different matches whether it's -5/+5 (net 10 advantage for the killing team) or actually +10/-5 (net 15 advantage for the killing team).
• Does Large Ice activate at fixed points (ie, 19:00) or is it random, but with 4 minutes always separating it after that?
• Do you know the timers on small Ice pops? Some players seem to be able to call out impending Ice in /alliance so we can all gather back together and get ready.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

• Are you sure it's +10 for a kill? We were debating in /alliance in a couple different matches whether it's -5/+5 (net 10 advantage for the killing team) or actually +10/-5 (net 15 advantage for the killing team).

---

kuma_aus posted a few screenshots that support +10/-5 here: The Fields of Glory (Shatter)

Here's one of them
http://i.imgur.com/L3ZYkvl.jpg

Kills add up to 900 and deaths to -465 (1.93). In another kills add up to 1260 and deaths to -620 (2.03). So it isn't exactly 2:1, but close enough. I suspect other factors such as battle high also have to be considered.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

• Does Large Ice activate at fixed points (ie, 19:00) or is it random, but with 4 minutes always separating it after that?
• Do you know the timers on small Ice pops? Some players seem to be able to call out impending Ice in /alliance so we can all gather back together and get ready.

---

Timing on crystals is definitely random, but within a limited set of possibilities. The most common one by far is big crystals spawning at 19:00, 16:00, 12:00 and 8:00 with small crystals every 2 minutes.

Other possibilities are all the small crystals spawning right at the start, then big coming in way later, but I would have to check what the exact timings are. Also, if the last 2 big crystals spawn at the same time, that usually happens around the 10:00 mark.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Thekk

...Now, if you're simply getting crushed in a fight and can't get out of your spawn, well I'm sorry, you probably didn't deserve to win in the first place...

---

The issue is with 2 GCs pushing you, it's more likely that someone in your GC gets killed than killing someone from the other GCs. With the enemies capping your base, it's very difficult to regroup with the people who have died. There's no immunity buff so enemies can still kill people who are on the spawn platform. Also when one of team overtakes your GC, they run away and it's difficult to catch up with a scattered team.

I do like the choke points in Fields. I've seen it used many times. My biggest gripe is in the 20 minutes match, the only thing that matters is the final (7?) minutes and that the nodes phase feels like a warm-up. Also the spawn camping. Your team has to be very coordinated to avoid getting killed.

By the way, it's entirely possible to win during the ice nodes phase. Here's a screenshot of a win 13 mins into the match.
http://i.imgur.com/expnHG4.png

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DeliriumTrigger

The issue is with 2 GCs pushing you, it's more likely that someone in your GC gets killed than killing someone from the other GCs. With the enemies capping your base, it's very difficult to regroup with the people who have died. There's no immunity buff so enemies can still kill people who are on the spawn platform. Also when one of team overtakes your GC, they run away and it's difficult to catch up with a scattered team.

I do like the choke points in Fields. I've seen it used many times. My biggest gripe is in the 20 minutes match, the only thing that matters is the final (7?) minutes and that the nodes phase feels like a warm-up. Also the spawn camping. Your team has to be very coordinated to avoid getting killed.

---

I agree that it's a problem that matches have 2 phases with completely different dynamics. The crystal phase has a big focus on who can dish out the most damage and the fighting takes a secondary level. The final phase has a big focus on actual PvP.

You can have a wildly unbalanced team in the first phase with no tanks and minimal healing and do very well because you end up getting a lot of points from crystals. That won't fly in the second phase where you'll really want that vit bonus and a good amount of healing. When it comes to keeping that last outpost long enough you could even switch to half tanks, half healers, sit everyone in the outpost while rotating LBs and keep it under control long enough without anyone dying if you wanted.

The thing is, you can switch jobs in Shatter to adapt to the situation, but I don't ever see anyone do it.

You mention that it takes coordination to survive such a situation and it is true. It also takes some amount of coordination from the other teams to not just end up clashing into each other, especially once you have been driven out of your outpost, so that's not a one sided thing. Premades might be a problem at this level however, and devs have mentioned they are looking into it.

The objective of the change to the 1600 points limit is to minimize the second phase. I don't think it's the right way to tackle the problem however. As people have pointed out, that phase is usually where most of the actual PvP happens and removing it without changing anything else will simply make the focus on PvE even bigger. Currently, the point spread is roughly 45% crystals, 30% outposts and 25% kills. There is simply not enough emphasis on kills if we're going to call this PvP. It feels that simply changing it to +10 points per kill (be it +20/-10 or +15/-5) would go a long way to make games shorter and reduce the chance it goes beyond the crystals if people are actually fighting.

Also, in the 70+ shatters I've played so far, I have yet to reach the 20 minutes limit. How often does that even happen? I mean if you consider the numbers (let's go with the averages since it's very likely that if if goes that long, scores are very close) :

• 820 for crystals
• Let's say 720 points out of 800 from Outposts if each of them went uncontrolled for 2 minutes (only neutral matters here because they generate points whoever controls them)
• Each team would then need 260 more points, or the equivalent of 52 kills and deaths which is 2,6 per minute over 20 minutes. That doesn't seems like a lot, were the teams just waiting for the whole match?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by DeliriumTrigger

By the way, it's entirely possible to win during the ice nodes phase. Here's a screenshot of a win 13 mins into the match.

---

If anything, that screenshot proves my point. I'd love to see the score breakdown on that match, but if I had to guess, it would be something like:

• 800 points from crystals (there are still multiple small up on the map from what we can see)
• 600 points from outposts (that might be generous as that would imply 2 minutes of controlling enemy outposts without losing your own)
• That leaves a +400 kill differential, which would imply that the Flames fought as much as they could early on to avoid a late fight.

I honestly like the final spawncamping xD
Both as chased than as chaser, even because if there isn't a huge gap, you will never face ALL the 3 alliances in the same spot there is always someone spread somewhere or someone hitting the "wrong" GC.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Thekk

Timing on crystals is definitely random, but within a limited set of possibilities. The most common one by far is big crystals spawning at 19:00, 16:00, 12:00 and 8:00 with small crystals every 2 minutes.

Other possibilities are all the small crystals spawning right at the start, then big coming in way later, but I would have to check what the exact timings are. Also, if the last 2 big crystals spawn at the same time, that usually happens around the 10:00 mark.

---

Did more Shatter and had the other patterns again so here are the timings I've seen:

• Large crystals at 19:00, 16:00, 12:00 and 8:00, small crystals every 2 minutes
• Large crystals at 19:00, 15:00 and 10:00 (one of the last 2 being a double spawn), small crystals every 2 minutes
• All the small crystals at the beginning, large crystals at 14:00, 12:00, 10:00 and 8:00

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Thekk

If anything, that screenshot proves my point. I'd love to see the score breakdown on that match, but if I had to guess, it would be something like:

• 800 points from crystals (there are still multiple small up on the map from what we can see)
• 600 points from outposts (that might be generous as that would imply 2 minutes of controlling enemy outposts without losing your own)
• That leaves a +400 kill differential, which would imply that the Flames fought as much as they could early on to avoid a late fight.

---

I can't quite give you that, but I can give you one where Maelstrom was ~20 points short of a win when the last crystal fell and then, well, pvp happened...

http://i.imgur.com/uHH6IgA.png

That's a pretty extreme example where each team focused on different points. Maelstrom clearly went for the crystals while ignoring everything else, while the Adders went for outposts and kills. Flames were the most balanced.

I'd say Maelstrom only have themselves to blame for that lost. Holding outposts 30 extra seconds over the duration of the match or actually fighting before they're forced to would have been more than enough to get those 20 points. Ignoring 2/3rd of the point sources is a poor strategy. You could make the same point about Adders where completely ignoring the main objective of the map shouldn't be rewarded with the win. However this is somewhat typical, the winner will usually have the highest score in at least 2 categories. How far behind were the Adders when the last large crystal went down?