Frontlines sucks Ultra megathread

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

I don't contribute much to chat unless nobody else is providing input, in which case I'll bung in a compass direction when the new S-rank has apparently been overlooked. But I will make the exception pre-match when people are complaining about premades. I agree it can be successful. Why? Because most solo players regard premades as a legal cheat, and are primed to do something about it.

One particularly encouraging approach, once the premade has been identified, is to suggest we lay off the opposing team without the premade. On a good day, that team notices and understands the plan. Smush the premade team to limit their points, then duke it out with each other for the win.

Ah... small pleasures.

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"Unga Bunga smash (Premade Grand company here)" is a personal favorite of mine with a team of defeatists. Even the rouletters join in on such a simple, evil plan. Decent enough commanders can probably outplay it, but it at least throws a wrench at their odds of winning when half or more of their team is bogged down, and kept under constant assault. Usually works best on Seal Rock. With Onsal Hakair its mostly just a sabotage play, doesn't make it any less enjoyable to me though.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

I don't contribute much to chat unless nobody else is providing input, in which case I'll bung in a compass direction when the new S-rank has apparently been overlooked. But I will make the exception pre-match when people are complaining about premades. I agree it can be successful. Why? Because most solo players regard premades as a legal cheat, and are primed to do something about it.

One particularly encouraging approach, once the premade has been identified, is to suggest we lay off the opposing team without the premade. On a good day, that team notices and understands the plan. Smush the premade team to limit their points, then duke it out with each other for the win.

Ah... small pleasures.

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There are definitely people who will complain about pre-mades. However extending this to a claim that "most" solo players regard this as "legal cheating" is not only basis but an oxymoron.

Pre-mades are allowed, you just admitted that it can be enjoyable to beat them, and I agree completely with that.

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Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

There are definitely people who will complain about pre-mades. However extending this to a claim that "most" solo players regard this as "legal cheating" is not only basis but an oxymoron.

Pre-mades are allowed, you just admitted that it can be enjoyable to beat them, and I agree completely with that.

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As in the past, you have fairly called me out on my hyperbole. Thank you. I suspect this happens because I tend to drop in here after the latest negative experience on FL.

What I was trying to express is that a lot of the defeatism and non-engagement by causal players is, IMO, being driven by the fact many such players regard mixed queues as unfair. I base this on chat in Aether FL matches. One can sometimes exploit this sense of injustice to rally the troops. And while it can indeed be fun, it seems a rather roundabout way of generating interesting matches when other structural solutions are available.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

What I was trying to express is that a lot of the defeatism and non-engagement by causal players is, IMO, being driven by the fact many such players regard mixed queues as unfair. I base this on chat in Aether FL matches. One can sometimes exploit this sense of injustice to rally the troops. And while it can indeed be fun, it seems a rather roundabout way of generating interesting matches when other structural solutions are available.

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While mixed queues may be unfair because premades may have a communication advantage, you also can't really argue that FL would be fair in any way if they did remove premades.

As long as there's no matchmaking rating, matches will never be fair. Instead of the team with the premade winning, it will be the team with 2-3 people that have less than 10k damage done and have more than 5 deaths that will lose.

If you remove the upper portion of contribution by removing premades, you'll end up with the lower end of contributors having that much bigger of an impact on the outcome of a match. Those people will feed, regardless of there being premades or not.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

While mixed queues may be unfair because premades may have a communication advantage, you also can't really argue that FL would be fair in any way if they did remove premades.

As long as there's no matchmaking rating, matches will never be fair. Instead of the team with the premade winning, it will be the team with 2-3 people that have less than 10k damage done and have more than 5 deaths that will lose.

If you remove the upper portion of contribution by removing premades, you'll end up with the lower end of contributors having that much bigger of an impact on the outcome of a match. Those people will feed, regardless of there being premades or not.

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You've made that point before and I don't agree with it. If there is a single premade in the match, you have a 71% chance of not being on that team. The distribution of weak players is random. While you will occasionally find that you have an unusually high proportion of people who don't care, that's a random process comparable to getting bad spawns.

Their presence has nothing like the impact a good premade can have.

You're correct that without a matchmaking algorithm that any individual match likely has a skill imbalance. Again this is simply a statistical deviation arising from the distribution of skill in the overall pool. It has nothing to do with "fairness." It may be, all other things being equal, a bookmaker would give you a 28% chance of winning a given match because of particularly weak team-mates. So what? Next time maybe it's 38%. It washes out. I would love it if everyone who queued into FL was trying, and a matchmaking algorithm is an interesting idea. But bad players isn't a fairness issue.

Besides I think this discussion is being driven by the quality of games and the health of the mode, not by win %. But if you want to take that route, the presence of premades guarantees that an average player who doesn't command has a long-term win-rate below 33.3%! The presence of weak players has no impact whatsoever on the long-term win %.

The bottom % of players already dictate how most matches go, regardless of if there is a premade on their team or not. Dead weight players are bad enough that even premade teams cannot carry them to a win.

The "Upper portion" of the community should not be SOLEY attributed to premades. I'd wager they aren't even top bracket players in most instances if they queued without the premade. The upper bracket of players are those who rank high ratings in one or several categories like DMG/Assists/Healing/Kills/Caps, and players who help to coordinate their team effectively. None of this is exclusive to premades. The aftermath of a world where we either removed them outright, or reduced premade parties down to 2 players would be fairer matches. Note the key word "Fairer" here. PvP will be unfair in some aspects by nature, its just a matter of it not being unfair to the point where it becomes impossible to overcome with skill. A great example of this is Seal rock. The map has obvious terrain advantages/disadvantages that have been known about for ages, yet the winrates for all teams are fairly even in my experience.

I don't disagree with implementing a MMR system of some kind, even if it were hidden. It could even be perfectly acceptable in such a system if premade teams were paired against 2 enemy teams with more skilled players. I just highly doubt that Square is willing to invest that much in the way of development resources into a mode they have shown no interest in providing regular content to.

I personally greatly disagree that premades cannot be beaten with skill, I've beaten many premades in a completely silent team before. The only reason premades have an advantage is that it requires both team to not feed the premade, this is why I think the players that don't try are the root problem, they're the ones who feed and enable the premade, without food, the premade is nothing. You said it yourself, the premades are likely not top tier players, so if you take away their food, what can they do?

I read earlier that some of you plan to try JP FL, you should give it a shot, maybe you'll see that premades aren't as big of an issue outside of Aether as you thought.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

I personally greatly disagree that premades cannot be beaten with skill, I've beaten many premades in a completely silent team before. The only reason premades have an advantage is that it requires both team to not feed the premade, this is why I think the players that don't try are the root problem, they're the ones who feed and enable the premade, without food, the premade is nothing. You said it yourself, the premades are likely not top tier players, so if you take away their food, what can they do?

I read earlier that some of you plan to try JP FL, you should give it a shot, maybe you'll see that premades aren't as big of an issue outside of Aether as you thought.

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In a higher-skilled pool, the impact of a typical premade will be less, sure. The problem is that NA is currently a low-skill pool, and it will remain that way if premades are allowed to continue feeding on the hapless and removing agency from players who might actually improve if they felt their contribution mattered.

There's also the issue of the frequency of premades from two different angles. It sounds like premades are more common on JP? So: 1. players have more opportunity to learn counters; 2. a given match may have multiple premades, completely changing the dynamic. From the videos I've watched of JP FL it seems pretty clear all teams have excellent commanders, further nullifying the power of premades. It looks like fun, but that's not where NA is at.

I'll obviously follow the progress of Olivia's training program of premades - with a mix of interest and horror - and if it works and improves games on Aether I will happily admit I was wrong about all this. But I'm pessimistic partly because I've played with these people. We're told that abusive scholar "event" was fun for the participants. Wonderful. I can imagine the squealing with delight as all your ASSIST announcements started pinging like popcorn. But that kind of contemptuous attitude for those with whom you share the field has me convinced you're going down completely the wrong path. I'm baffled that such people claim to care about the mode and that they wish to improve it, while being so completely oblivious to how their actions damage it.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

I personally greatly disagree that premades cannot be beaten with skill, I've beaten many premades in a completely silent team before. The only reason premades have an advantage is that it requires both team to not feed the premade, this is why I think the players that don't try are the root problem, they're the ones who feed and enable the premade, without food, the premade is nothing. You said it yourself, the premades are likely not top tier players, so if you take away their food, what can they do?

I read earlier that some of you plan to try JP FL, you should give it a shot, maybe you'll see that premades aren't as big of an issue outside of Aether as you thought.

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I've never suggested that a premade can't be beat with purely skill. Especially not against bad commanders. But how often is a silent team winning against a premade? I bet you its very rarely. If a team can beat a premade with no communication, or coordination I have to really question whether you're actually facing a premade at all, perhaps a team that just happens to have a lot of DRK players, or just a disorganized group of friends trying to imitate what they saw a premade doing.

Premades don't just win because they are "fed". If you focused on kills the entire match, you lose. Plenty of premades lose matches because they tunnel visioned on killing other players. It takes taking/holding nodes, minimizing losses, and maintaining battle high to win matches. Players that don't try are a symptom of a problem. The problem is Frontlines is not fun or enjoyable for the majority of players who participate in PvP content, either willingly, or unwillingly for rewards. The solution? Make Frontlines fun. That as I've described previously will take a MAJOR overhaul, which is likely not forthcoming since we've had more content removed from frontlines, than we have had added since 6.1.

My JP character will get to the point where its playable in frontlines. Once I stomach clearing ARR for the 18th time again to unlock jobs I personally prefer rolling as.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

In a higher-skilled pool, the impact of a typical premade will be less, sure. The problem is that NA is currently a low-skill pool, and it will remain that way if premades are allowed to continue feeding on the hapless and removing agency from players who might actually improve if they felt their contribution mattered.

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Obviously the problem in NA is more complex, I'm not saying it's simple to fix. I at least respect Olivia for trying to do something about it, but how do you even begin to raise the skill floor of a region that still occasionally has someone retort "Shut up, tryhard" to "Stop hitting yellow, they have 0 points"?

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Originally Posted by Archeron

It takes taking/holding nodes, minimizing losses, and maintaining battle high to win matches.

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And all this is made a lot easier when they're fed. You claimed that premade players are often not that good to be at the upper end of skill, so they're nothing without being fed kills, yes?

I honestly disagree that players who don't try are a symptom. I believe they're one of the roots of why FL can be unenjoyable. If everyone actually tried to win regardless of the situation, you'd always end up with less people feeding the premade because everyone would be trying to survive and not give out free points. If people give up the moment they see a premade, they'll play worse and give in to an endless cycle of feeding the premade, which demoralises the rest of the team.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

I honestly disagree that players who don't try are a symptom. I believe they're one of the roots of why FL can be unenjoyable. If everyone actually tried to win regardless of the situation, you'd always end up with less people feeding the premade because everyone would be trying to survive and not give out free points. If people give up the moment they see a premade, they'll play worse and give in to an endless cycle of feeding the premade, which demoralises the rest of the team.

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This is precisely what happens on Aether. If we're breaking down cause and effect, I guess you can attribute it to some mindset issue, but we have no way of changing that. So given that is off the table, you've come to the correct conclusion:

Presence Of Premade --> Casuals Give Up --> Demoralizes Team (--> Less Enjoyable Matches)

You see the thing we can actually change in this sequence?

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Originally Posted by Aravell

And all this is made a lot easier when they're fed. You claimed that premade players are often not that good to be at the upper end of skill, so they're nothing without being fed kills, yes?

I honestly disagree that players who don't try are a symptom. I believe they're one of the roots of why FL can be unenjoyable. If everyone actually tried to win regardless of the situation, you'd always end up with less people feeding the premade because everyone would be trying to survive and not give out free points. If people give up the moment they see a premade, they'll play worse and give in to an endless cycle of feeding the premade, which demoralises the rest of the team.

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You're assuming that players are just purposefully throwing themselves into a meat grinder to die. They're not.

I do say that premade players often aren't on the "Upper end" of the skill bracket, because they're not. It doesn't take a genius to take a Dark knight, press salted earth, and have 3 other members of your party follow up with CC and limit breaks to literally kill everyone who got pulled in. That's not being "fed" kills. If getting caught in Salted Earth counts as feeding, then getting killed by a Ninja LB, or Samurai LB also counts as feeding. Where do you draw the line?

People who don't try are a symptom of a broken system. If its not fun, why try? Especially when the end game results give you the same roulette reward regardless of first or third. They definetely have no incentive to requeue after the roulette bonus is gone unless they're farming achievements, or tomestones. Premade players do not understand the casual player mindset, (Perhaps even the solo player mindset as well) or they just don't care, and as a result they sit here bewildered as to why they're disliked, and pointed out as one of the major reasons why people don't enjoy frontlines.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

If everyone actually tried to win regardless of the situation, you'd always end up with less people feeding the premade because everyone would be trying to survive and not give out free points. If people give up the moment they see a premade, they'll play worse and give in to an endless cycle of feeding the premade, which demoralises the rest of the team.

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By your standards, what is trying? You say casuals "feed" premades, and they "give away free kills". It sounds like you just have no respect for these people who make up the majority of the frontlines population. It seems to me like you just don't understand the mindset of these players. You can't expect them to just "try to win" when they genuinely don't care about the end game results. They just want it to be over with, because frontlines is not fun. They're not queueing into it a second time, especially not when people run around accusing them of feeding the enemy team, not trying, and they have to face premades they don't know how to counter or deal with, and die repeatedly. Does that sound like a fun experience to you? Does that motivate you (as a casual player) to learn more about how to be a good frontlines player?

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Originally Posted by Archeron

By your standards, what is trying? You say casuals "feed" premades, and they "give away free kills". It sounds like you just have no respect for these people who make up the majority of the frontlines population. It seems to me like you just don't understand the mindset of these players. You can't expect them to just "try to win" when they genuinely don't care about the end game results. They just want it to be over with, because frontlines is not fun. They're not queueing into it a second time, especially not when people run around accusing them of feeding the enemy team, not trying, and they have to face premades they don't know how to counter or deal with, and die repeatedly. Does that sound like a fun experience to you? Does that motivate you (as a casual player) to learn more about how to be a good frontlines player?

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If someone genuinely wants to know how to counter something, they will ask for help or look up the multitude of guides online. They would not queue repeatedly in FL and die to the very same DRK pull strat and complain about it.

You paint the casual player as someone who "just wants to get it over with", that sounds like they don't even want to be there in the first place, so why exactly should I respect such a person?

I've been the person at the bottom of the leaderboards that died a whole bunch before, I practiced, I learned, I got better. I did not run into a meat grinder repeatedly while expecting a different result.

And yes, if someone dies to the very same DRK pull for the entire match, even though the DRK is marked (they usually are), then they are not trying their best, they are feeding.

They way you word things sometimes makes it look like you're trying to excuse the casual player from actually learning basic FL knowledge while blaming others for exploiting their inexperience.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

If someone genuinely wants to know how to counter something, they will ask for help or look up the multitude of guides online. They would not queue repeatedly in FL and die to the very same DRK pull strat and complain about it.

You paint the casual player as someone who "just wants to get it over with", that sounds like they don't even want to be there in the first place, so why exactly should I respect such a person?

I've been the person at the bottom of the leaderboards that died a whole bunch before, I practiced, I learned, I got better. I did not run into a meat grinder repeatedly while expecting a different result.

And yes, if someone dies to the very same DRK pull for the entire match, even though the DRK is marked (they usually are), then they are not trying their best, they are feeding.

They way you word things sometimes makes it look like you're trying to excuse the casual player from actually learning basic FL knowledge while blaming others for exploiting their inexperience.

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You ignored my question. Does the experience I described to you sound motivating for a casual player to dive deeper into PvP? Yes or no.

I don't excuse casual players who make it patently clear that they're genuinely not going to try. Those players deserve to be vote kicked out of the game.

But you have to ask "Why don't they want to try?". There are a lot of reasons that contribute to them adopting that attitude, and it needs to be combatted. If you don't address that, nothing will change. You will continue to queue with inexperienced players who don't want to learn. Those who may be open to learning, will be pushed away if the game mode sucks, and isn't fun for them, and the community is being toxic towards them.

A part of what pushes a lot of casuals away is when they're stomped repeatedly by premades, and they lose every single match they're queued into. Again, refer to "If the game mode isn't fun, why bother learning more?". They'll try to play, just not in the most effective manner to us experienced onlookers.

You also have no right to complain about these "non contributing" players who you belittle and call "feeders", if you're not willing to do anything to help them besides label them as useless and down play any contributions or efforts they're trying to put into the match. All this does is pushes people away from PvP. You learned on your own, great. Other people won't, either through lack of experience playing games with PvP in general, or they aren't naturally inclined. Ping them to retreat when Dark Knights are approaching. Announce that they need to stun Dark Knights as much as possible in a productive manner.

Will they listen? Sometimes. If you're rude about it, they absolutely WILL NOT listen to you.

If they aren't even reading Alliance chat, then take the L. It's better to try than to do nothing and then complain or be toxic towards them.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

If someone genuinely wants to know how to counter something, they will ask for help or look up the multitude of guides online. They would not queue repeatedly in FL and die to the very same DRK pull strat and complain about it.

You paint the casual player as someone who "just wants to get it over with", that sounds like they don't even want to be there in the first place, so why exactly should I respect such a person?

I've been the person at the bottom of the leaderboards that died a whole bunch before, I practiced, I learned, I got better. I did not run into a meat grinder repeatedly while expecting a different result.

And yes, if someone dies to the very same DRK pull for the entire match, even though the DRK is marked (they usually are), then they are not trying their best, they are feeding.

They way you word things sometimes makes it look like you're trying to excuse the casual player from actually learning basic FL knowledge while blaming others for exploiting their inexperience.

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Have you ever thought about how games and game modes grow? How new players become interested in a mode and want to get better? PvP games/modes are notorious for struggling with this, and it's invariably because of a self-appointed elite who are completely deaf to any criticisms that might diminish their "fun," and who can't see beyond "win at any cost."

How do you think poker continues to be played by tens of millions of people when 90% of them lose?

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Originally Posted by Archeron

You also have no right to complain about these "non contributing" players who you belittle and call "feeders", if you're not willing to do anything to help them besides label them as useless and down play any contributions or efforts they're trying to put into the match. All this does is pushes people away from PvP. You learned on your own, great. Other people won't, either through lack of experience playing games with PvP in general, or they aren't naturally inclined. Ping them to retreat when Dark Knights are approaching. Announce that they need to stun Dark Knights as much as possible in a productive manner.

Will they listen? Sometimes. If you're rude about it, they absolutely WILL NOT listen to you.

If they aren't even reading Alliance chat, then take the L. It's better to try than to do nothing and then complain or be toxic towards them.

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You seem to be making a mighty lot of assumptions about me.

I've helped my fair share of players get acclimated to every iteration of FL, in RW, in Feast and in CC. But sure, label me an unhelpful person who's just toxic for no reason.

You also seem to assume that I'm being toxic and calling these people feeders in chat. Thanks for making that assumption, but I don't, sorry to disappoint you.

I'm only pointing out that them existing in the alliance reduces your chances of beating a premade, that's an undeniable fact. It's also a fact that dying repeatedly to a DRK stack is actively reducing your points and increasing their damage, their contributions are basically negative, that is also a fact. Whether you want to agree that they're a feeder or not is irrelevant.

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Originally Posted by Archeron

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I don't know why you keep defending and excusing these lazy players. Man, I got into this game a year ago and PvP even less so in the grand scheme of things I consider myself a new player. What did I do? I asked questions towards the right people, joined some servers, read guides and the rest is history. Now I have every PvP reward I want.

You mentioned people not enjoying the experience and that is why they slack. I'm gonna be honest with you...I personally am not too big on MMO PvP, haha. It is definitely not my cup of tea and I much prefer other PvP and as we know, XIVs PvP is at the bottom of the barrel for MMO PvP. Despite this, I want what is best for the game mode regardless and I bring my best to my team and try my hardest because I'm on a team and they require me to do so. You mentioned overall the casual players finding the experience unfun and demotivating. You know what? I feel the same way when I'm on a team of slackers and people who don't care. This isn't a Frontline issue, it is a playerbase issue. People do this in roulettes, too. But no matter how much SE tries to make the PvP as casual as possible you cannot remove the desire to win and the competitive spirit from human nature. So, nah, no excuses...if you aren't here to give it your all, get out of my game and please get off of my team lmao. I completely understand why people group up with 3 others to pub stomp, it is the only way to have fun in this silly mode. You're disregarding other people who enjoy the mode and are trying. Me for example, I'm a solo queuer (mostly because I'm still new and haven't really bothered to make PvP friends yet) and these players we are going off about make me not enjoy the mode. Matter of fact, I'm most likely not playing this mode anymore until new rewards are released or until they do something with the mode.

http://imgur.com/a/30GQTtQ

http://https://imgur.com/a/30GQTtQ

Here is one of my last games going against a premade with a strong comp and using burst macros while I was not in a premade (sorry I don't know how to post images directly to my post). No need to show my teams' score. As you see I am at the top and none of them are near me. They all did way less damage than me and died a million times despite me being 1 of the 3 other melees on my team. While I saw the DRK burst coming from a mile away and avoided it. I even successfully killed some of them myself by counter bursting and my team still fed them BH after they respawned. Pointless, man. I'm sharing this to show that this is my experience pretty much every game unless I'm on a team of premades or good players which is rare. Nowadays I just queue to pad damage cause even times where I go on MNK to harass a premade (and successfully too) my team still feeds them and dies. As I said countless of times...premades are not the issue. This mode is a lost cause. Ranked CC is the only thing that has some kind of respect for effort and that is a mode on life support 99% of the time after the first week of the season.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

You seem to be making a mighty lot of assumptions about me.

I've helped my fair share of players get acclimated to every iteration of FL, in RW, in Feast and in CC. But sure, label me an unhelpful person who's just toxic for no reason.

You also seem to assume that I'm being toxic and calling these people feeders in chat. Thanks for making that assumption, but I don't, sorry to disappoint you.

I'm only pointing out that them existing in the alliance reduces your chances of beating a premade, that's an undeniable fact. It's also a fact that dying repeatedly to a DRK stack is actively reducing your points and increasing their damage, their contributions are basically negative, that is also a fact. Whether you want to agree that they're a feeder or not is irrelevant.

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Ignoring my question yet again. Excellent.

You give me plenty of ground to make assumptions when you're going around calling casual players "feeders" and labelling their contributions as useless, and accusing them of not trying. Now you turn around and try to paint yourself as a benevolent, helpful figure? Sorry, you've given me little reason to assume otherwise, especially when you openly admit to not respecting other people who don't play to your standards.

Nobody is even contesting that dead weight players are reducing your chances of fighting a premade. Again, if you want them to stop dying to Dark Knights that they either don't see coming, or don't know how to handle Call out their advance with a macro, or don't complain when they get killed repeatedly. You can't accuse them of not trying to contribute if they're actively running into combat, unlike the other dead weight players who'll just sit around the back lines casting zero spells, running away the second they take any damage at all, floating around doing literally nothing.

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Originally Posted by YouWereIndicted

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Its those lazy players, who will continue to be lazy because of the way Frontlines is. The game mode is massively flawed. It's not fun, and I'm against Everything that makes it bad to play. The only solution to fix frontlines is a major overhaul, and fresh new content, that we're likely never going to get at the end of the day.

I defend the casual players from toxic attitudes. I do not defend laziness. They are participating in the best way they know how, that is more than enough for me to be satisfied. Can they do better? Absolutely. I will always provide those players the advice, and guides they need to improve themselves. But at the same time, I understand why players do not put their maximum effort into learning all the intricacies of Frontlines. Especially the rouletters. You want them to GTFO, well they're the reason the Frontlines queue even pops in the first place. I hate to break it to you, but not everyone is going to join servers, or ask questions on content they don't enjoy. The community being apathetic, and failing to play with a higher skill level is a symptom of a greater problems within frontlines. This is why the community Has not changed since 6.1. It will remain the same going into 7.0.

Everyone seems to think that just "raising the communities skill level" is the solution.
Why hasn't the community gotten better since 6.1 then? It's been almost 2 years since they implemented the last major overhaul to PvP. Thats plenty of time for people to have learned, even if they only did roulettes once a week, every week since 6.1.
The answer? Frontlines has gotten significantly less enjoyable since then. Shatter being ruined, Borderland ruins being outright deleted, and jobs being given nonsensical buffs/nerfs, and problems left to fester for 6 months at a time. The game mode is not fun. People will not put effort into things they don't find fun. If you don't fix that, the community will continue not to care.

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Originally Posted by YouWereIndicted

I'm a solo queuer (mostly because I'm still new and haven't really bothered to make PvP friends yet) and these players we are going off about make me not enjoy the mode. Matter of fact, I'm most likely not playing this mode anymore until new rewards are released or until they do something with the mode.

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If you're on aether feel free to hit me up! Sounds like you already joined some groups, but the more the merrier!

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Originally Posted by Archeron

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Uh huh, you claim I'm toxic and that I'm now painting myself as some benevolent angel. Nothing you've said about me is true, but you don't care, you disagree with me, so you think it's fair to paint me as evil, I've seen your type before. You ask leading questions and then get smug when people refuse to answer, you paint people who disagree with you as evil and toxic to the casuals, you're not worth talking to, I bid you a good day.

I won't claim that I've read the whole thread. Here is my current view on FLs, especially having engaged into them a lot more during the current mogtome event:

I'll use the word premades liberally to describe premade groups consistently made with the attempt to win by using certain job combinations (around a DRK mostly likely) and coordination in order to stomp half an enemy team to dust. This doesn't include most of the light parties (or duos/trios) queuing up casually with friends playing their favorite non meta jobs, or just not synchronizing or using meta plays.


Personal experience

Yes, I have friends that got pissed by premades and decided to not bother much anymore. But most of them just don't care or even noticed. That's how clueless most of the pvp casuals in the intricacies of the mode are. They're queuing for their daily, and they have genuine fun with it, like most dailies. This is why I do believe the idea that it pushes away many people away from it is exaggerated. What tends to push away newcomers to the mode is the utter chaos and making sense of what's happening, and it's inherent to the mode on its own. The day they improve this new player experience to actually upgrade player retention beyond the daily roulette, perhaps the negative impact those premades are having on casuals would become more of a thing. Or perhaps i'm totally misreading the casual pvp base idk.

Fact of the matter is, that most people who like to complain and bring up moral arguments about how harmful everything is to the casual playerbase are actually self projecting, for the very reason they're good or at least decent, veteran pvp/FL players and they have enough clues on the dreadful impact premades can have. I've seen an explosion of more consistent premades grinding everything to dust notably on seal rock or shatter in the current event where you end up with 2 teams with close to 0 points and 1 with a victory.

I've been on both sides of it, the receiving end is at least somewhat funny in that I can use anti premade jobs like MNK to just kill them one by one (if the team is following, not always a given...), but this also forces me to play specific jobs in order to even enjoy the games in question. Am I gonna lose still? Oh yeah, definitely. But at least I can enjoy toying with their best players, that's the silver lining. Being on the side of the premade when you're not in the premade is the worst experience ever for a competent solo queuer for two main reasons: one, as a loose field commander, nobody needs me in that regard, and two, even if I try to participate by playing DNC, or any job helping the premade to secure their kitchen sinks, most of the time I arrive too late to matter, or my only purpose is relegated to clean up the 2 half dead enemies left. The premade already has everything it needs to operate their kitchen sink and vacuum all the opponents into dust. You as a solo queue player, is literally irrelevant, and it's the most boring thing ever.

My take on this: premades are actually harmful to the enjoyment of the mode for solo queue pvp vets, not for casuals. I'm not gonna say it doesn't grind the gears of casual dying like that, but it's just not the same for the aforementioned reasons.

Counterpoint: solo queue veterans could make their own premade groups, and I'm sure some aren't opposed to the idea (myself included), but it's like telling a CC player that they should drop all solo queue in CC and only partake into scrims or LPs. It's not practical for obvious reasons (and I also like playing solo because your premade friends aren't always there you know?).

Premades

On the matter of premades, I'm not going to fall for the low hanging fruit and blame them for all the woes in the world. They're playing with the tools they're given by SE in a pvp mode in order to secure victories. I don't know personally how they're even having fun with this because it reminds me strongly of the old 8 man full BH5 ninja premades seal clubbing during SB before the party size nerf, which was awful, where you had one group literally running around and clubbing to death casuals just hitting crystals in shatter for example, eventually leading to non premade teams just staying in their spawn and wait until it was over, and doing it again and again game after game until the premade got bored and stopped queuing (we're not rendered there yet fortunately, count your blessings). But if that's how they're having fun, then so be it.

I also do not want SE to ever remove the possibility to queue up as parties of friends, even if it would honestly probably half fix the problem by making a sizable sacrifice in social play.

Discrepency between casuals and tryhards

This leads me to the next point which is many premade players actually hoping for people to become better and learn the tools to deal with the meta, which, spoiler alert, is highly unlikely to ever happen and is at best, wishful thinking. Not only does it forces people to play specific jobs to adjust, but it also counts on the fact that casuals or even solo queue vets even want to play that meta in the first place (which is a completely different kind of game). The idea that every casual player will suddenly try and look for premade groups before queuing for their daily is frankly ludicrous. The idea that premade groups will spontaneously form up and be able to synchronize LB meta plays is ludicrous.

The problem is the mode

We can complain however we want about premades ruining games or solo queuers too lazy to find their own premades, the problem remains the mode and how it is designed and maintained. I'll die on that hill.

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Originally Posted by Archeron

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Ah. I see...so we do agree on most things we just have different expectations on the playerbase. Agree to disagree, then. Apologies if I came off as hostile, was not my intent. But I for one am a person where if I am doing group content I always give it my all, no matter what it is (hence why I mentioned competitive spirit, by no means was I saying FL is competitive haha) so my viewpoint will stay as it is. I believe everyone should take the time to learn and improve at anything they engage in especially if it involves other people. If I was able to do it as a newer player there is no excuse for others. Of course, I have a heavy PvP background, regardless of that fact.

But you are right, people will not improve and in turn it may or may not cause them to not have fun as a result. I cannot control other people though, only myself. That is their prerogative. This is unfortunately an issue in this game in all of the PvP modes. Yes, even Ranked sometimes regardless of elo. I've not much else to say on the matter or else it would sound like I'm venting my frustration, which is not the case. Trust me, I am very much used to the slackers in these game modes haha I just adapt to them and gg go next if needed. Hence why I included a screenshot of a game I had in my last post. But yes, toxicity gets us nowhere and not once have I acted so. Most of the time I am silent as a crypt. I can handle an L even if its from feeding teammates. I hope you can find some enjoyment in the mode still. As do I, even if it means I have to find likeminded PvPers and premade if I have to. Or change my mindset, whatever the case may be.

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Originally Posted by OliviaLugria

If you're on aether feel free to hit me up! Sounds like you already joined some groups, but the more the merrier!

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I am on Aether, it would be my pleasure to group up sometime and meet other likeminded PvPers. Guess I am eating my words of saying I won't be playing the mode anymore, haha. If you happen to run into a guy from Jenova with a funny costume and Adventure Plate...that is me :)

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Originally Posted by OliviaLugria

If you're on aether feel free to hit me up! Sounds like you already joined some groups, but the more the merrier!

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Inviting a bot runner to play with you? That's a big yikes, character name was Bgbhbhj Dfdvdfvdf(mysteriously gone with this mornings ban wave), so yeah, might want to check char names rather then account.

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Originally Posted by Valence

My take on this: premades are actually harmful to the enjoyment of the mode for solo queue pvp vets, not for casuals. I'm not gonna say it doesn't grind the gears of casual dying like that, but it's just not the same for the aforementioned reasons.

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This is entire post is great and I hope everyone interested in this topic reads it thoughtfully. Your point about vets projecting (claiming casuals were being driven off by premades) really hit home; I suspect I'm guilty of that. As you explain, solo vets have the worst experience when on the same team as the premade. It's akin to running an uninteresting dungeon for the 2000th time as a caster when all the trash mobs are cleaned up by ranged.

The commanders of premades have made it very clear they don't care that they create a miserable experience for solo vets. And thus skilled players leave the mode. The mode may be the root problem, but that problem is being deepened significantly by a tiny fraction of the player base.

Anyway, thanks Valence, your post is a beautifully clear description of the issues I've been bleating about. I can now quit posting on the topic. And probably quit FL.

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Originally Posted by Windfire

Inviting a bot runner to play with you? That's a big yikes, character name was Bgbhbhj Dfdvdfvdf(mysteriously gone with this mornings ban wave), so yeah, might want to check char names rather then account.

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Are those different? Sorry, I don't know much about the fourms, still pretty new.

Yup, if you look to the right of the character pic, it says the name of the character being used to post with (along with world & main job). For instance my forum tag is Windfire but my char name is Suri Obinata.

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Originally Posted by Windfire

Inviting a bot runner to play with you? That's a big yikes, character name was Bgbhbhj Dfdvdfvdf(mysteriously gone with this mornings ban wave), so yeah, might want to check char names rather then account.

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Bot runner...wat. I change my forum accounts due to privacy concerns LOL. Dealt with some strange folk on this game, it's just a measure. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I've played with Olivia before and I'm sure if they saw my main they would recognize me. That "Bgbhbhj Dfdvdfvdf" account is a filler account I use for my FC for housing. All of my accounts are on Jenova. o_O wat. Being accused of botting when I'm just a lowly sprout...there's a first time for everything I guess.

Aaaaaaanyway. I've said everything I've needed to be said about this topic, I shall take my leave now.

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Originally Posted by YouWereIndicted

Yeah, until they do something about bad players who don't care to improve or work as a unit this mode is screwed. A friend of mine is quite new and decided they wanted the Field Commander Coat. They had an optimistic view until they caught onto how Frontlines truly is. Despite being new they were always right up there with me in top 5 damage dealt on my team (which shows how easy doing the bare minimum is) and they also realized how many leechers are in the mode and refuse to fight which was frustrating to them. Nothing like seeing your team wipe to the same obvious burst countless of times without guarding, healing or repositioning then complaining about premades, lol. Yeah, they're the problem, surely. But this same team will ignore the first place team that is 20 points from winning and run to a useless node that will do nothing for us and leave all the players who are fighting with the other alliance(s) to die.

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Same thing happened to my friend who wanted to win and just get a Field Commander Coat, but they got so fed up with pvp and also drained from statics for savage/extreme, they felt the whole game wasn't worth playing. Their interest is just dead. As having unfun things does create what is known as a churn rate, the higher that is, the more you lose players.

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Premades are just people like me who got tired of dealing with anchor teammates and want to reliably fight without flipping a coin if your team is going to back you up or not. They aren't the problem...can we please stop talking about them already, lol.

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Maybe if certain pvp jobs get reworked to be more tolerable in the frontline environment.

Honestly, premades are awful, nothing is worse than seeing your entire alliance get pulled by a drk and melts infront of your eyes, it doesn't matter if you're a solo vet or a casual trying their best. So, you're forced to try to play something to TRY and counter the premade but you'll most likely fail because the odds are usually stacked against you. Ultimately, it's pointless really and not fun at all to try and spend the game shadowing one of the premade guys knowing your team is gonna get rolled anyway. It doesn't matter if you have 69 macros or not.

I used to love frontlines but now I only do it to get my series level to 25 and never touch it again, I don't even see any of the solo regulars I saw back in the time either and it really makes me sad. I don't know how SE managed to make frontline worse but they deserve a medal for their truly valiant efforts.

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Originally Posted by Rueby

I used to love frontlines but now I only do it to get my series level to 25 and never touch it again, I don't even see any of the solo regulars I saw back in the time either and it really makes me sad. I don't know how SE managed to make frontline worse but they deserve a medal for their truly valiant efforts.

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They did a big overhaul for their Feast replacement and barely thought how such an overhaul would effect large scale battles. They found out and proceeded to barely fix anything. If they put as much effort in their large scale pvp as their small scale, it would have made a world of difference.

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Originally Posted by Archeron

I don't disagree with implementing a MMR system of some kind, even if it were hidden. It could even be perfectly acceptable in such a system if premade teams were paired against 2 enemy teams with more skilled players. I just highly doubt that Square is willing to invest that much in the way of development resources into a mode they have shown no interest in providing regular content to.

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I think it would be funny, all the premades have to deal with their own equivalent of hell because of their MMR as the only other people up that high are just other premades.

Would certainly create a prisoner's island for them.

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Originally Posted by Rueby

Honestly, premades are awful, nothing is worse than seeing your entire alliance get pulled by a drk and melts infront of your eyes, it doesn't matter if you're a solo vet or a casual trying their best. So, you're forced to try to play something to TRY and counter the premade but you'll most likely fail because the odds are usually stacked against you. Ultimately, it's pointless really and not fun at all to try and spend the game shadowing one of the premade guys knowing your team is gonna get rolled anyway. It doesn't matter if you have 69 macros or not.

I used to love frontlines but now I only do it to get my series level to 25 and never touch it again, I don't even see any of the solo regulars I saw back in the time either and it really makes me sad. I don't know how SE managed to make frontline worse but they deserve a medal for their truly valiant efforts.

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Sweet summer child, I see you've never played in the first half of Stormblood pvp. The current state of FLs right now isn't great, but it's miles away from the pit of despair it used to be during certain times.

Not saying what they're doing with the mode is a good thing though, they were so happy about their new rework and shiny crystalline conflict (which I actually love, for once, and I'm a CC main and foremost) that they either "forgot" to adjust FLs in the wake, or just thought it would be fine until they "deal with it later". I mean I guess it's fine right? MMO players are a funny beast, they only play for rewards, and this obsession for it literally puts rewards so high on a pedestal above every other consideration that just having a daily roulette and a mogtome event full of goodies makes them queue for it anyway.

And to be frank, they could queue for something else to make mogtomes. If they queue for this, it's for a reason, and not necessarily that it's faster (Rival Wings actually is). So yes, I doubt casuals are having such a bad time with it than us who play it a lot more. Not only that, but the amount of games where I count an actual, serious premade at least where I play, is about a third of the time tops. Before the mog event it was way lower, and less sweaty.

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Originally Posted by Chasingstars

I think it would be funny, all the premades have to deal with their own equivalent of hell because of their MMR as the only other people up that high are just other premades.

Would certainly create a prisoner's island for them.

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Joke's on you, they already organize such events.

Just had another one of those games, where I stumbled into the team with a premade. Nothing ever fancy comp wise, and yet we rolled over everybody without any reaction, BH5 very fast, etc etc. It's a bit sad because while everybody (aka casuals) is happy, they get their victory, more mogtomes, and you have the premades congratulating each other and everybody for literally the most effortless games ever just makes me question why I keep bothering when I solo queue. It's a gamble really, sometimes you get into good games without that kind of crap, sometimes not and you waste 10 min of your time.

Before that there was a premade vs another premade. They kept essentially exchanging kitchen sinks with mass AoE kills. It's the game mode and balance that essentially boils down to that more than anything.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Just had another one of those games, where I stumbled into the team with a premade. Nothing ever fancy comp wise, and yet we rolled over everybody without any reaction, BH5 very fast, etc etc. It's a bit sad because while everybody (aka casuals) is happy, they get their victory, more mogtomes, and you have the premades congratulating each other and everybody for literally the most effortless games ever just makes me question why I keep bothering when I solo queue. It's a gamble really, sometimes you get into good games without that kind of crap, sometimes not and you waste 10 min of your time.

Before that there was a premade vs another premade. They kept essentially exchanging kitchen sinks with mass AoE kills. It's the game mode and balance that essentially boils down to that more than anything.

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Assuming certain jobs retain their fundamental identity, there are some that simply cannot be balanced for both solo and party queueing.

I mean PvP in this game in general is garbage. The main reason people are doing PvP is because of the carrot on offer from the crystal trophy points because I can tell you otherwise no one would want to do it other than to be that guy who gets to show off the fancy pvp armor.

Like I've said in endless posts elsewhere, Frontlines is like a school of fish with people mostly fishing each other out of the groups and running around without a clue of what they are doing, and while CC is a far cry better than what we had in shadowbringers, it's still mostly just unorganized mob play at a smaller scale with the limits of a clunky tab target system.

Also, going to put it here that there are people who also just go into pvp matches and sabotage the match by not participating. I've seen it in frontlines and in CC, but at least the guys who sabotage frontlines don't keep spamming the good job emote mocking everyone actually there to play.

The way I've seen it is FL sucks mainly because of a stale meta. I tried running along (solo) people who suspiciously look like pre-made teams and try to join in their kill combos; it is honestly not hard to pull it off once you figure out their timings, and imagine how easy it is using a mic. The skill and focus investment required to knock out pre-made kill teams as a mostly solo queue team is extremely high. The cost of counter-play vs. the play is completely out of whack in terms of balance where one side is dramatically easier (at least from my experiences spamming FL non stop solo for a week to get a feel for it). So when the most effective way to play is not really challenged much, you have an extremely stale meta. A stale meta just feeds a negative feedback loop of annoyance and player frustration. If the only way to play is to try to counter pre-made DRK kill teams, which you see almost every game, then something has to change to freshen things up again.

Talking about Dark Knights, they are honestly fine in a vacuum. When you bundle them together with all the other shenanigans like easy to pull off kill skills, network lag, bad tick rate, and so on it becomes a monster rather easily. So the "just stun the tank" argument doesn't work in my opinion.

The pvp system will get completely reworked again next expansion like always, so hopefully they make something that is balanced for every game mode.

Yea the balance could use some tweaking sure but i think the main issue causing fl to suck as it very much does right now is premades, not just parties of 4 queueing together but discord servers with pvpers queueing up at the same time in multiple parties of 4 trying to get as many of their parties into a match as possible, and then deciding amongst themselves who the winner of that match will be before it even starts. I have played WAY too many matches where one team just attacks one other specific team regardless of their score or objectives or anything for the entire match handing an easy win to the "chosen" team. That's not pvp, that's a group of jerks wasting peoples time to farm easy wins while having zero actual skill at pvp whatsoever. I think a few things that might help with this are 1. separate frontline matches into casual and ranked. 2. remove the ability to queue in parties AT ALL from casual matches, you either queue alone or not at all. 3. make ranked matches REQUIRE full premade parties, that way everyone knows what they're getting into, let the people who want to work together outside of the game to coordinate and strategize do it to their hearts content AGAINST EACH OTHER instead of against unsuspecting groups of random people queueing to just complete their daily roulette or try to work on getting their seal rock coat.

I don't have a problem with the idea of people wanting to play frontlines together with outside methods of communication that allow for better strategy and shot calling and whatnot that's great the problem is you can't throw those groups up against randoms who don't know what's going on and don't have that same ability to coordinate with each other. Find a way to keep them separate and punish groups who abuse the system to waste the time of random people who might enjoy pvp but get turned off by it because of their toxic cheating behaviours.

Not gonna lie, the effort required to pull off premade kitchen sinks is abysmally low. The effort required to shut them down is thrice higher, and the easiest solution of them all is not to kill their BH5 (that's suboptimal and requires skill), but to make sure each alliance fields at least one SGE that knows what they're doing with Mesotes.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Not gonna lie, the effort required to pull off premade kitchen sinks is abysmally low.

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You should probably make one then. The easiest solution to stopping a premade is having your own to dive them when they attack your team anyways.

Successfully counter dive once or twice and they'll have to slow down, try to target the other team or wait for you to engage something else.