Frontlines: There should not be ANY rewards for 2nd or 3rd place

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Originally Posted by Ardeth

Honestly, I'd like the game mode more if you removed the crowd control and removed a team. 3 doesn't work. It hasn't worked. All 3 teams do is make two teams fight for 2nd place. It's absolutely moronic.

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Can't speak for NA, but I can say that people tend to hard focus the 1st team on EU most of the time, bare a few dented occasions. To be clear, not everything runs perfectly smooth, and it often occurs that groups of players just jump on what's closest to them, either objectives pulling them to the wrong team or just the wrong team being there itself, but generally people will call it out in chat and you'll have a gradual refocus. Generally in my experience, being in the leading team from the start tends to be a bad omen because you'll eventually get crushed between the 2 other teams coming for yours, until you're left behind licking your wounds while another team wins the game.

Without a trinity system, there would be a lot less checks in place to allow the losing teams to catch up. That is of course, if the players actually understand the mode, as I said, I can't speak for NA even if I played on there before ShB (don't know how it is now).

The reason I personally love frontlines is the 1vs1vs1 nature of it. It's more chaotic, and more fun that way. 3vs absolutely works if all teams have at least minimal experience and understanding of scores. It becomes more about strategic thinking of who to engage and when and how to control most of the map and how to get score. Majority of the time you should always be going for 1st place, with notable exceptions like super stacked teams sitting in close 2nd place.

Unfortunately the game doesn't teach that enough, and FF14 players look down on pvp content as "lesser". Which doesn't help.

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Originally Posted by Divinemights

At this point, i think a better option is to add a requirement to Series Reward (Gear/Mount).
The requirement would be something like 200 wins
Right now it is too easy for leechers to leech the series reward by just AFK

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You mentioned this once before in this thread, and it actually resonates with my current thoughts on the potential solution to this "problem".

I think that 200 wins might be a bit of a high requirement, maybe 100-150? I don't know, but it needs to be GOOD enough to be worth pursuing.

Overall though additional gear/mount rewards for winning, on top of existing exp/tome structure would be a huge incentive to focus on winning, as well as making sure leechers/lethargic players are purged by the community.

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Originally Posted by TofuLove

You mentioned this once before in this thread, and it actually resonates with my current thoughts on the potential solution to this "problem".

I think that 200 wins might be a bit of a high requirement, maybe 100-150? I don't know, but it needs to be GOOD enough to be worth pursuing.

Overall though additional gear/mount rewards for winning, on top of existing exp/tome structure would be a huge incentive to focus on winning, as well as making sure leechers/lethargic players are purged by the community.

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It sounds like it should be, but it doesn't work in practice.

The more/better rewards you offer, the more people who don't like PvP turn up and hide behind rocks. And as the force multiplier of premades increases as the meta settles, this problem becomes more pronounced.

At the point of proposing a requirement of victories for series rewards, I personally wouldn't really go beyond 50, if it is tied exclusively to, say, "Emerge Victorious in x number of matches in PvP" to obtain a certain series rank, but then all you really accomplish is making pre-made more normalized, which in and of itself is not a problem, but this will in turn only exacerbate issues on losing teams..

People in Frontline get so upset, so easily, when all games are practically inconsequential as is... You still get tomes, you still get EXP, you still get Series rewards, you still get Wolf marks... When you strip all these away, simply because the other team was better, then it's a lot more consequential, which will just make the game-mode a lot more toxic.. When it's a 24v24v24 mode, the amount of weight any single individual has is minimal in the grand scheme of things, especially if the alliance collectively just isn't coordinating, or playing well at all.

Edit: and to be honest, most people that don't care / do nothing, will continue to do so, and a lot of those players probably don't care about the series reward mount in the first place, versus easy source of exp/tomes.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

It sounds like it should be, but it doesn't work in practice.

The more/better rewards you offer, the more people who don't like PvP turn up and hide behind rocks. And as the force multiplier of premades increases as the meta settles, this problem becomes more pronounced.

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There seems to be a confusion
We are not adding new reward, I am proposing change how existing season reward (mount/outfit only) being hand out
It is simply apply a condition to obtain the series reward (150 wins for example)

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Originally Posted by Divinemights

There seems to be a confusion
We are not adding new reward, I am proposing change how existing season reward (mount/outfit only) being hand out
It is simply apply a condition to obtain the series reward (150 wins for example)

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Yeah, that's even better. The current series reward system is just bringing people into the game who don't want to be in the game because of glam/mount fomo...

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

It sounds like it should be, but it doesn't work in practice.

The more/better rewards you offer, the more people who don't like PvP turn up and hide behind rocks. And as the force multiplier of premades increases as the meta settles, this problem becomes more pronounced.

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My hope is that by incentivising the winning condition, the reporting and kick function would be further utilised by the community. At the moment it doesn't matter if you win or lose - the rewards are basically the same, if you don't care for achievements - so nobody cares to kick/report, aside from few uncaped heroes.

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Originally Posted by TofuLove

My hope is that by incentivising the winning condition, the reporting and kick function would be further utilised by the community. At the moment it doesn't matter if you win or lose - the rewards are basically the same, if you don't care for achievements - so nobody cares to kick/report, aside from few uncaped heroes.

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I am 100% behind anything that encourages more people to report and vote kick (although as mentioned elsewhere, this is done far more effectively if the GMs take the lead and/or incorporate better auto-kick).

I'd suggest the issue is that the people who genuinely care about the mode and try their hardest in matches are the least likely to care about any rewards that could possible be offered, simply because their volume ensures that they will achieve any realistic win total anyway. If you instead based rewards on individual win%, the existence of premades immediately becomes completely untenable.

Since the general consensus especially among lower skilled and more casual players seems to be that individual performance doesn't matter and you'll get an even 33/33/33 ratio (I've read it on those very forums too), even if thinking this is completely unhinged or uninformed, I do wonder if it would just make your "leechers" not bother and continue afk-ing in FL all the same by justifying their decision with this kind of rationale.
Furthermore, they could also be very aware of their lack of skills and could very much think that whether or not they do actually participate changes nothing in the final result, and that they'll be happy to let the competent players carry them.

You can call me jaded I guess but I don't think your solutions are actual solutions. Just live with them, and report if they bother you. The real solution is GMs that actually do their jobs.

I think in this thread we discussed a lot of potential solutions to the problem, and various effects/counter effects on how to improve the game quality. I actually think we arrived at a number of good ideas, that shouldn't affect queue times and could elevate the quality of matches. There has been a lot of thought in a lot of people's messages, and it actually made me think about game aspects I haven't thought about before, which is illuminating. I didn't think there would be 17 pages of people responding (some agreeing, some disagreeing (that's fine)), and on occasions I re-read it from the start.

Forum is not an easy format to use to sort of maintain a mental map of the thinking around this topic as there a lot of ideas and some of them need to be weighed against each other and balanced in order to arrive at a "perfect solution". Does perfect solution exist? Maybe not, but I think if SE wanted to solve this "problem" they could try some suggestions in this thread, and weigh them up internally to see what could work.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Since the general consensus especially among lower skilled and more casual players seems to be that individual performance doesn't matter and you'll get an even 33/33/33 ratio (I've read it on those very forums too), even if thinking this is completely unhinged or uninformed, I do wonder if it would just make your "leechers" not bother and continue afk-ing in FL all the same by justifying their decision with this kind of rationale.
Furthermore, they could also be very aware of their lack of skills and could very much think that whether or not they do actually participate changes nothing in the final result, and that they'll be happy to let the competent players carry them.

You can call me jaded I guess but I don't think your solutions are actual solutions. Just live with them, and report if they bother you. The real solution is GMs that actually do their jobs.

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When there is a condition applied to Series reward, I can ensure you people's tolerance on AFKs will drastically lower.
Afker/leecher will quickly get votekick because everyone want to win.

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Originally Posted by Kaurhz

At the point of proposing a requirement of victories for series rewards, I personally wouldn't really go beyond 50, if it is tied exclusively to, say, "Emerge Victorious in x number of matches in PvP" to obtain a certain series rank, but then all you really accomplish is making pre-made more normalized, which in and of itself is not a problem, but this will in turn only exacerbate issues on losing teams..

People in Frontline get so upset, so easily, when all games are practically inconsequential as is... You still get tomes, you still get EXP, you still get Series rewards, you still get Wolf marks... When you strip all these away, simply because the other team was better, then it's a lot more consequential, which will just make the game-mode a lot more toxic.. When it's a 24v24v24 mode, the amount of weight any single individual has is minimal in the grand scheme of things, especially if the alliance collectively just isn't coordinating, or playing well at all.

Edit: and to be honest, most people that don't care / do nothing, will continue to do so, and a lot of those players probably don't care about the series reward mount in the first place, versus easy source of exp/tomes.

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Speaking for Chaos, we have very little number of AFK and idling players.

Most of the time AFK/idling contribute little to nothing to out come of the FL.

Most of the time we win because we have good players who lead and other players to follow. And we lose because other team play more cooperative than us.

Setting a minimum thrust hold for getting rewards are setting rule for non-existing issue and punishing people for bad luck, at least for EU.

In my current session I have about 27% win. That’s just purely luck my team just don’t play well enough against other 2 in more than 2/3 of the time. Even if my team have top contribution among the alliance, there are only so much we could do.

I do enjoy FL, like I love WvW in GW2, but if my ability to take the rewards depends on luck. Then I can certainly tell many of us who causally join FL would just drop the gamemode. I am quite sure we are already receiving less session exp and wolf mark being last team.

Addressing AFK issue needed to be focusing on the AFK player alone, collective punishment never end well

My ratio is currently at 38% with over 1600 games, and peaked at some point last expansion at 41%. I play exclusively solo (or partied with a friend doing their daily which is like playing solo).
Anyway, my point was actually that I do think removing rewards for 3rd and 2nd place is only going to compound the problem and prove to be a total disaster.

I vote for chocobo racing bonus like thing into PVP!!
Every alliance gets the flat same exp reward or no reward at all. Then RNG pics one for the fat bonus exp!

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Originally Posted by Valence

My ratio is currently at 38% with over 1600 games, and peaked at some point last expansion at 41%. I play exclusively solo (or partied with a friend doing their daily which is like playing solo).
Anyway, my point was actually that I do think removing rewards for 3rd and 2nd place is only going to compound the problem and prove to be a total disaster.

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Agreed, although for slightly different reasons to some of the previous comments. I just don't think team rewards influence how people play, nor people's willingness to report and/or vote kick. Making it winner-take-all is more likely IMO to see increasingly lopsided, premade-dominated matches, and the freeloaders will simply hope they hit the lucky 1 in 3 at team assignment.

You see this in the mogtome event. If you're prepared to spend 15+ minutes to get either 3 or 5 tomes, then it presumably matters to you to try and get the 5. And yet matches during the event see even more lethargy.

Yeah I wasn't considering the possibility of throwing, motivated by the min-maxer rational that getting 3 tomes in ten minutes is preferable to getting 5 in 18.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

Making it winner-take-all is more likely IMO to see increasingly lopsided, premade-dominated matches, and the freeloaders will simply hope they hit the lucky 1 in 3 at team assignment.

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I think we can all agree that participation rewards should only be given to those participating. If people are afk at spawn for majority of the game - they should not get a free pass.

Prior to starting this thread my thinking on the subject escalated because I also see players who are not AFK, but those who are actively throwing, hence the premise of this thread.
What do they do? Suicide into enemy team, push wrong team on purpose to lose faster. Should they be rewarded?

I think overall in this thread we agreed that it would be damaging to remove the rewards to 2nd or 3rd completely, and hence i agree that it would be too hardcore/toxic/cruel/unfun to remove the rewards completely. What have we discussed as alternatives?

We discussed offering additional rewards for 1st place, readjusting rewards to make 2nd and 3rd less worth it (analogy of lowering mogtomes from 3 to 2 if you lose, or increasing 1st place to 6). Can't remember if there were other suggestions.

I think it's a balance that SE needs to strike, having enough people to take Frontline more seriously, and still appeal to the casual roulette queuer. At the moment the mode is super casual. Which can lead to completely garbage games. How much you adjust that scale towards hardcore and still keep it fun is tricky, but would be rewarding to the state of pvp in a long run.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

I just don't think team rewards influence how people play, nor people's willingness to report and/or vote kick.

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I completely disagree. This is why there are meta premades - because there are team rewards for winning (achievements). A premade is just a roulette player who wants to win enough to get a team together.

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Originally Posted by TofuLove

I completely disagree. This is why there are premades - because there are team rewards for winning. A premade is just a roulette player who wants to win enough to get a team together.

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You think? Okay, we have a very different take on that then.

I've broken down the different types of premades before. Currently, I'd suggest premades with the primary objective of winning are in a minority. It's why young Ms. Lugria stands out in a mottled field of padders and mediocrity.

The primary reward is the roulette XP. People aren't forming premades to get the small boost from winning. They play once a day riding the 33%.

The rest of the rewards are crap.

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Originally Posted by Mawlzy

You think? Okay, we have a very different take on that then.

I've broken down the different types of premades before. Currently, I'd suggest premades with the primary objective of winning are in a minority. It's why young Ms. Lugria stands out in a mottled field of padders and mediocrity.

The primary reward is the roulette XP. People aren't forming premades to get the small boost from winning. They play once a day riding the 33%.

The rest of the rewards are crap.

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There might be some regional differences. There are padder premades on EU (more on Chaos than Light interestingly), but not nearly as many as there are in NA from my experience.

I rarely play to pad and most padders are just bored because they already have achievements, and once you have those there is no reason to try to win.

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Originally Posted by TofuLove

There might be some regional differences. There are padder premades on EU (more on Chaos than Light interestingly), but not nearly as many as there are in NA from my experience.

I rarely play to pad and most padders are just bored because they already have achievements, and once you have those there is no reason to try to win.

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Hmmm... I guess I just don't relate to this idea of playing FL to get achievements.

Like the Copied Factory, sure. I needed those boots.

PvP in any game I play to win because that is the objective. If I was bored with a game mode, or didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't play it. Which is why I don't play Shatter or Borderlands.

The remaining meta premades I know on NA are far past the point of achievements - I don't think the rewards motivate their behavior. It is true that achievement hunting has generated meta premades in the past on NA though.

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Originally Posted by PGuin

The remaining meta premades I know on NA are far past the point of achievements - I don't think the rewards motivate their behavior. It is true that achievement hunting has generated meta premades in the past on NA though.

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I recall X.J. was passionate about getting an achievement on an alt (!?) and ran a meta-stack during the DRK darkness that was effective. Didn't realize it was widespread.

But yeah, agreed, the current batch I would think have other priorities.

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Originally Posted by Aidorouge

Considering we've had some premade supporters elsewhere outright admit they want to "ruin" the mode for non-premades and drive them out of the queues, I can guess the motivation for a few of them at least.

There's also the fact that just because some people got all their kill and win achievements, doesn't mean they want anyone else to have theirs, and what better way to do that then by taking command and purposefully driving their own team to lose, and kicking anyone else that tries to countermand?

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While that behavior is deplorable, throwing games is the worst way to deny other people their achievements, since a premade that always loses means that the other 68 people in a match have a slightly higher chance of winning.

I've been playing games before my sub runs out, and can't help but revive this old thread.

After mogtomes, SE released the new battlepass (series rewards), with new time limited rewards. Additionally they released new glam that you can get from the vendor.
I can't help but notice that there are currently a lot of players, that just want to play for this time limited glamour from the battlepass and have no interest in PVP.
It makes me wish there was no battlepass - it only reduces quality of games.

Coming off a different pvp game, I can't help but compare how SE gives out reward for minimal performance. I had a few games yesterday where people just flat out said "lets aim for second place".

Devs, please reduce the rewards for participation so that throwing games is unfavourable.
Also - timegated events only bring disinterested players into the mode.

I don't disagree in principle but I'm also afraid this would drive a bigger wedge between casuals and organized teams into a "find yourself a premade or suck it up" kind of deal.

I think timegated nature of battlepass brings out the worst in roulette players. It rarely works in actual pvp games, and it sure doesn't work for FFXIV where typical player sees pvp as a chore. Similar thing happens in other pvp games I play, but it's usually limited to like a weekend, and rewards are balanced differently.

I personally would like to see pvp series made permanent and expanded, so that every patch the pvp series level gets higher and higher, so that you could always catch up on the rewards and it doesn't feel forced to bring people into the mode.
Think of it as a separate pvp level.

PvP was better before it got exp reward.
You could be sure the people queueing just wanted to play PvP and win games for achievements etc. Downside was that games were not as frequent, but I was fine with it. Now it is the opposite.

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Originally Posted by TofuLove

I think timegated nature of battlepass brings out the worst in roulette players. It rarely works in actual pvp games, and it sure doesn't work for FFXIV where typical player sees pvp as a chore. Similar thing happens in other pvp games I play, but it's usually limited to like a weekend, and rewards are balanced differently.

I personally would like to see pvp series made permanent and expanded, so that every patch the pvp series level gets higher and higher, so that you could always catch up on the rewards and it doesn't feel forced to bring people into the mode.
Think of it as a separate pvp level.

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Probably yeah, as long as it offers enough content but with a balance where someone starting up doesn't have to spend years grinding it up when there is years to catch up with. Having diminishing costs for older series instead of just putting them out of reach would probably be a healthier approach I think.

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Originally Posted by PGuin

The remaining meta premades I know on NA are far past the point of achievements - I don't think the rewards motivate their behavior. It is true that achievement hunting has generated meta premades in the past on NA though.

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This is for the players that don't care to win, not for those already dedicated beyond that. It's frustrating as a solo q goer to try to play to win and the rest, don't even follow up or fight.

Frontline queues were long before they started waving the exp carrot for players. In my opinion frontline is there to pull players in and let them experience PvP with them hopefully moving on to ranked etc. Doing anything to hamper that just hurts PvP in the long term.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Probably yeah, as long as it offers enough content but with a balance where someone starting up doesn't have to spend years grinding it up when there is years to catch up with. Having diminishing costs for older series instead of just putting them out of reach would probably be a healthier approach I think.

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I think that's a good idea.
Other games i play have similar mechanic and it works quite well, also creates some differentiation between pvp and pve.

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Originally Posted by Masekase_Hurricane

Frontline queues were long before they started waving the exp carrot for players. In my opinion frontline is there to pull players in and let them experience PvP with them hopefully moving on to ranked etc. Doing anything to hamper that just hurts PvP in the long term.

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we've discussed this in lengths within 20 pages of the thread. it's already hurting pvp in long term because it's seen as free exp for no participation - it needs some balancing and addressing the lethargic players.
if pvp is not fun enough to be played for the sake of it, maybe that needs to be reviewed.

if you think it's the daily exp queuer's that are throwing matches, you are wrong, it's the discord premades that throw matches, they decide who should win the match based on how many of their buddies are in the match, so your solution is the worst possible thing to fix it

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Originally Posted by Wanderer42

if you think it's the daily exp queuer's that are throwing matches, you are wrong, it's the discord premades that throw matches, they decide who should win the match based on how many of their buddies are in the match, so your solution is the worst possible thing to fix it

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I actually don't know if you are trolling or not. What?
I've been on many pvp discords. Nobody makes premades to throw matches.
But for the tea and gossip, feel free to DM me the urls of servers or send screenshots that confirm this - I would LOVE to know.

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Originally Posted by TofuLove

I actually don't know if you are trolling or not. What?
I've been on many pvp discords. Nobody makes premades to throw matches.
But for the tea and gossip, feel free to DM me the urls of servers or send screenshots that confirm this - I would LOVE to know.

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Three of there post are about premades throwing matchs.

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Originally Posted by Wanderer42

if you think it's the daily exp queuer's that are throwing matches, you are wrong, it's the discord premades that throw matches, they decide who should win the match based on how many of their buddies are in the match, so your solution is the worst possible thing to fix it

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Now you have peaked my interest.

Normally, it is the casual objective hunters that throw matches from time to time whether it be farming big ice while they're 50 points from winning or letting themselves drop from 1st to last trying to bully the opposing team from the highest rated objective at the time. Premades usually win most of their matches. So I'm curious as to when they decided to start throwing matches, because that definitely doesn't sound like them...I'll be waiting miss.

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Originally Posted by Masekase_Hurricane

Frontline queues were long before they started waving the exp carrot for players. In my opinion frontline is there to pull players in and let them experience PvP with them hopefully moving on to ranked etc. Doing anything to hamper that just hurts PvP in the long term.

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I cannot speak for your datacenter, but they were never slow on Aether. They maybe took longer when we still queued only for our Grand Company (please bring it back) and then immediately quickened when they introduced forced freelancer. While there's probably a correlation on EXP, I just don't see it as enough to make or break the queue.


On a complete sidebar, I completely forgot about this mechanic. I saw it on wiki when I was looking for patch dates. Man we really are out here throwing extra rewards on losing aren't we?

In the event that your affiliated team previously ranked third, PvP EXP, Series EXP, and Wolf Marks earned will be increased by 10% for each subsequent third-place ranking, up to a maximum of 50%. This bonus will carry over to the next match upon ranking second, and be reset entirely upon ranking first.

https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/w...ine#cite_ref-4

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Originally Posted by Atreus

On a complete sidebar, I completely forgot about this mechanic. I saw it on wiki when I was looking for patch dates. Man we really are out here throwing extra rewards on losing aren't we?

In the event that your affiliated team previously ranked third, PvP EXP, Series EXP, and Wolf Marks earned will be increased by 10% for each subsequent third-place ranking, up to a maximum of 50%. This bonus will carry over to the next match upon ranking second, and be reset entirely upon ranking first.

https://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/w...ine#cite_ref-4

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Did not know this, and that's wild to me.
In other games I play, usually it's winning streak that gets rewarded, not the losing streak...

Honestly this game's reward structure is just baffling. Though I can't imagine most people queueing for more than one game anyway and are done once they are done with roulette.

I don't really think Frontline would be improved by making the mode even more punishing for people who are new to PVP or a waste of time for the people who aren't new to PVP but either aren't good enough or don't have the connections to have a sizable influence over the match. Why would I want to queue for a mode if there's a decent chance I will not be getting any consolation for my time, especially in a game where the only bit of your time that isn't rewarded by the game is time you spend chatting or doing social activities? How would a new player feel encouraged to keep attempting to learn the game mode when a sizable amount of their time is going to have nothing to show for it while they try learning?

I think your suggestion would improve individual match quality, sure, but only because the only people interested in playing Frontline are players with an invested enjoyment of the game mode who are fine with getting nothing on a loss. Which is definitely not a lot of people. Even more competitive games still give players some amount of consolation on their losses.

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Originally Posted by LuxLC

I think your suggestion would improve individual match quality, sure, but only because the only people interested in playing Frontline are players with an invested enjoyment of the game mode who are fine with getting nothing on a loss. Which is definitely not a lot of people. Even more competitive games still give players some amount of consolation on their losses.

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Sure, FFi14 s a theme park MMO but Frontline isn’t the spinning coffee cup ride in the kiddie kingdom section.
It’s a players versus players.
It’s one of the few spaces in the game built for players who enjoy the thrill of PvP
Yes, Frontline is “casual” in the sense that it’s more accessible than Ranked Crystalline Conflict, but it still carries structure, strategy, and stakes.
You queue up with 71 other players to fight for first place, not just to stroll around and collect tomestones.
The mode should operates on a risk versus reward system.

So why are the players who treat Frontline like an actual PvP match being penalized, while those who contribute little to nothing still walk away with rewards?
The system is currently tilted toward passive play.
It enables and encourages people to join just to leech rewards, rather than actually play the mode.
That not only undermines the integrity of the game, it actively punishes those who put in effort and it burns out the PvP community that wants to engage meaningfully.

Frontline thrives when players are invested. When people play for the win. When they work together, make calls, take risks, and adapt to the flow of battle. It doesn’t have to be toxic to be competitive — it just has to matter. Right now, the mode is in danger of becoming hollow because the reward structure ignores performance and team play.