Feedback on Frontline balance – tanks are too oppressive

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Originally Posted by Valence

Casuals will always pick ranged because they can't play melees.

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This is not entirely true. Casuals prefer ranged combat because they don't feel any impact in their actions when they on melee jobs, including tanks.

Unlike any ranged jobs, where in relative safety you constantly deal damage, gain points and assists, in close combat it takes MUCH more effort to do this.
The risks are higher, the reward is also higher, but only if there is a teamwork. And the last factor has little to do with individual skills.

The tanks aren't tanky enough to really stand in the front line consistently, but they also don't do enough damage or control for the impact of multiple tanks to be really noticeable to a casual team. Same situation with healers who can safe u in short fight from burst, but they cant do stable heal or purify from enemy cc.

This jobs like most other melee professions, are easy to get frustrated with and much harder to learn to play.

Moreover, the meta of endless sprint and mounts has an negative effect on the movement of teams and fights. I have repeatedly encountered situations when I confidently run into the back of the enemy team, seeing that my allies will support me... And at the last moment I turn around, and two seconds later there is empty field.
This pretty quickly taught me to check my back to be sure that I was followed to the end, if at any time, even at the best moment for a fight, you need to make sure that your initiative is supported.

In short, playing a tank, in particular a warrior or a dark knight, alone, brings a dubious gaming experience that quickly demotivates, ofc if u are not big job fan.

In the end this path leads most players to long-range AoE spam, which works more reliably and reliably. Summoner`s bahamut always will do good damage, new role action do good damage, astrologian rotation and white mage do good damage, also u can just spam range skills as nin and do 1kk dmg per match, etc.

Overall, it's looking more and more like a moba game genre meta, where fights happen very quickly within a few seconds and teamwork is more important than individual player skills. But, this is quite far from the usual PvP in MMO, where you, as a typial assasin, for example, purposefully go behind the enemy and attack the support, disabling it, thereby pushing your team to victory.

It's not bad, and it's not good, but it's a very niche thing. That's why casual PvP in FF14 will never be a really popular.

Anyway, if i want to play MOBA i probably will back to this games, and didnt not continue to try weird hybride of this with MMO and bad netcode.

You're essentially proving my point: casual can't play melees well?

Frontlines before Endwalker was basically just the Ranged show where ranged jobs had superior mobility, CC, Damage, ect and melees were just stun food.

I don't really think going back to that is a good idea.

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Originally Posted by Valence

You're essentially proving my point: casual can't play melees well?

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My post was not so much about the skill issue problem, it's more about the combat and role structure.

If you can't be a tank in a tank position or a healer in a healer position, what's the point of playing that role? Casuals will always choose what makes them happy. The game does not reward the player in any way for a particular position or role, regardless of skill. Or rather, on paper, the advantage of several tanks in a single team should bring obvious advantages to the alliance where they are. But in practice, each individual player has so many defensive abilities and self-healing that whether you are a three-times experienced tank or a melee player, most likely you will not do anything and will not change the situation, and the value of these same healers and tanks is falling.

The game needs to learn how to motivate people to do something that will lead them to victory. For example, in the new BF6 I am a casual, but the game rewards me in every way for choosing an engineer and providing repairs and cover for vehicles. I'm consistently in the top 5-10 in points on my team, sometimes without making a shot in a shooter, lol.

What does FL have to offer if I prefer a tank or a healer or melee? Uh, pretty much nothing? Your team was made up of sheep running around the map mindlessly, here's your 3rd place, thanks for picking us. Yes, you can still grind for some stupid achievements like kill enemies or capture points, but it's a drop in the ocean and doesn't bring any satisfaction from the process itself.

Returning to the topic of the first post, tanks are fine. Any four-man premades on any role will make a lot impact on the map. If their team also includes tanks with healers, then this impact will simply be even stronger.

Who would have thought that if you gave most jobs the huge AoE potential with very short cd and built a meta around synchronizing these nukes, players would start playing exactly like this...

we just need 8 man premades back and all is fixed

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Originally Posted by IceEyes

I have repeatedly encountered situations when I confidently run into the back of the enemy team, seeing that my allies will support me... And at the last moment I turn around, and two seconds later there is empty field.

This pretty quickly taught me to check my back to be sure that I was followed to the end, if at any time, even at the best moment for a fight, you need to make sure that your initiative is supported.

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Oh my gosh, this is such a common occurrence for me as tank. I ask myself, am I dumb? Am I just going in when I shouldn't be? I'm a paladin, I use my LB, and I feel like that could give confidence to my allies to push with me... nothing. I'm alone. Ok never mind. I just need to improve on this. I have this awful habit of wanting to save any stragglers, but I'm starting to leave them be.

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Originally Posted by theunhappypotato

we just need 8 man premades back and all is fixed

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For solo players, that would make it rough. You either get on the team with the 8 person premade and win, or you don't and you lose. The match itself would become meaningless to even play out at that point. Just give me the W or the L, depending on whether or not the 8 man premade is on my team or not, then let me requeue again as fast as possible.

Full Party stacks were really unhealthy for the game. If you want to play with friends, it's healthier for the scene that, if you have more than four, you queue up together and deal with the possibility you end up on separate teams. I wish the game had a system that could somehow distribute people by expected capabilities, but we don't have that.

Right now I have about a 40% first place win rate in mostly solo queue, which means I alone, checked against 71 people (factoring in ability to both fight with me or against me), increase the likelihood a team gets first place by roughly 20%. There are people way better than me who have higher solo queue WR. Now imagine how much more significant that is if you have people in your party you know well or on voice with. Even just light parties are a huge risk for this reason, because while it's completely fair if an individually strong player ends up on a team and dominates, because the smaller your queue stack, the more likelihood there will be other people on other teams to keep you in check. That said, the larger the stack you allow, the less randomness there is in the matchmaking, and more likely you will just get a concentration of ability in one team that the others can't match.

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Originally Posted by IceEyes

My post was not so much about the skill issue problem, it's more about the combat and role structure.

If you can't be a tank in a tank position or a healer in a healer position, what's the point of playing that role? Casuals will always choose what makes them happy. The game does not reward the player in any way for a particular position or role, regardless of skill. Or rather, on paper, the advantage of several tanks in a single team should bring obvious advantages to the alliance where they are. But in practice, each individual player has so many defensive abilities and self-healing that whether you are a three-times experienced tank or a melee player, most likely you will not do anything and will not change the situation, and the value of these same healers and tanks is falling.

The game needs to learn how to motivate people to do something that will lead them to victory. For example, in the new BF6 I am a casual, but the game rewards me in every way for choosing an engineer and providing repairs and cover for vehicles. I'm consistently in the top 5-10 in points on my team, sometimes without making a shot in a shooter, lol.

What does FL have to offer if I prefer a tank or a healer or melee? Uh, pretty much nothing? Your team was made up of sheep running around the map mindlessly, here's your 3rd place, thanks for picking us. Yes, you can still grind for some stupid achievements like kill enemies or capture points, but it's a drop in the ocean and doesn't bring any satisfaction from the process itself.

Returning to the topic of the first post, tanks are fine. Any four-man premades on any role will make a lot impact on the map. If their team also includes tanks with healers, then this impact will simply be even stronger.

Who would have thought that if you gave most jobs the huge AoE potential with very short cd and built a meta around synchronizing these nukes, players would start playing exactly like this...

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I'm not defending the current design in FL and I do think it's a nightmare to balance. But I staunchly believe that melees are still either powerful in the hands of people that know how to use them (like ranged), and borderline OP in the case of tanks for the way they enable meta strats and comps. The fact that a lot of effort and extra consideration is required to play them properly for casual is certainly something that should be taken into consideration (and that's what SE has always done by making them more potent than ranged as a result), if just because having such discrepancies in the skill floor between roles isn't healthy.

I do strongly disagree however on the affect I can have as a tank even as a solo player on a whole team fight, it's absolutely bonkers. When you put multiple of those into organized groups that play together well off each other, it's a nightmare when you see them running toward your team because you know all the casuals will just crumble and melt in 2sec. They get overrun and die. The effect tanks have in FL is similar to CC but cranked to over 9000 as they do make room for their team to follow and disrupt the enemy, where it becomes about who can pump their damage and buttons freely and who is busy trying to just survive by guarding/recup/running. Add to the mix a lot of additives like Rampage, Diabrosis, and whatnot. Add salted earth, even stuff like Inner Release, other combos...

Even out of organized groups, I can go in as a tank and literally negate 90% of the enemy's damage by soaking it up with rampart and going away without even breaking a single recup, while the enemy team literally crumbles because there is nobody doing that on the other side. I can't have that much of an effect with any other role in the FL game, not by a thousand. You'll tell me that's because of casual skill and skilled players would know how to deal with me (or just go around me), and sure to an extent, but that's again the whole point: how do you design around a casual population that doesn't understand how to properly utilize their classes?

I really do think a lot of people aren't aware of what one can do with a tank played properly in FL.

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Originally Posted by jesseleewelch

For solo players, that would make it rough. You either get on the team with the 8 person premade and win, or you don't and you lose. The match itself would become meaningless to even play out at that point. Just give me the W or the L, depending on whether or not the 8 man premade is on my team or not, then let me requeue again as fast as possible.

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So no different than it is now, let's be real.