Frontlines: How is this fair?

http://s29.postimg.org/w051yzar7/fair.jpg

This was a 72 player match. 56+ people accepted. We wind up with 9 people (the screenshot shows 8, because someone left).

You know, if the GC restriction was removed, the system could balance the teams.

Also, the spots did not get filled up.

I would rather have one match out of 19476439922 end up like the one in the screenshot rather than deal with people clicking withdraw over and over for half an hour. GC restriction is what it is, it's tied to the story, but maybe the next map won't have any restrictions like that.

I am so sorry this was our premade and we accidentally clicked withdraw due to "A" Bishop.

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Originally Posted by DefendPopPunk

GC restriction is what it is, it's tied to the story.

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It's the most ridiculous reason I've ever heard, too. Seriously, who came up with this idea?

When this happened once our group was farmed within (!!) our own Base... they killed us the instant we spawned...
SE, please add some protection in the homebase!

Just laugh, sigh, and move on.
No need for pitchforks and riots everytime there's a fluke like this.

If it happens constantly, yeah, then something's wrong. You seem to have just been dealt a hilariously crappy hand.
Sorry, bud.

Get em next time.

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Originally Posted by TheRogueX

It's the most ridiculous reason I've ever heard, too. Seriously, who came up with this idea?

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Yeah it did come off a bit contrived but like I said, hopefully next time they decide against any story related restrictions.

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Originally Posted by Yukiko

When this happened once our group was farmed within (!!) our own Base... they killed us the instant we spawned...
SE, please add some protection in the homebase!

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Since respawn happens in a place where you can't walk up to, if that really happened, you should have reported the others for cheating.

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Originally Posted by TheRogueX

It's the most ridiculous reason I've ever heard, too. Seriously, who came up with this idea?

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The people your paying every month did.

If you don't like it stop paying them . I think it's great to fight the other gc. It goes with the story and makes sense. No one if forcing you to play frontlines.

That's a rare situation right there. BOTH other parties would have had to withdraw altogether for that to happen as if your group had been 8 or 16 it would have been a 24 or 48 person match. They should probably look at this I think since the DF may not be able to refill parties that never existed in the first place.

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Originally Posted by NinjaTaru72

The people your paying every month did.

If you don't like it stop paying them . I think it's great to fight the other gc. It goes with the story and makes sense. No one if forcing you to play frontlines.

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well you can keep story by making it depend on free company aligment, this way FC members could play together without being forced to have vanity they dont want (minions, bardings, gear, housing etc).

There's issues there in terms of your PvP rank etc. What if you change FCs to one that doesn't match your current alignment? Suddenly you're starting your horse achievement all over etc. because you wanted a new FC.

Orrr... allow the option to pick which you fight for.

Friends of mine that run Frontlines regularly say it's been weird lately. They're only seeing 48 once they get in... if they get in at all.

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Originally Posted by Snorgrind

well you can keep story by making it depend on free company aligment, this way FC members could play together without being forced to have vanity they dont want (minions, bardings, gear, housing etc).

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The hell are you talking about? All you have to do is swap and you can play with friends. You don't have to do anything with the GC. Ever.

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Originally Posted by Fayto

The hell are you talking about? All you have to do is swap and you can play with friends. You don't have to do anything with the GC. Ever.

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when i switch from maelstorm to twin adder i will not be able to use maelstorm chocobo barding, all the weapons and armor and gc leader minion will swap to whin-e-sena, thats what im talking about. So yes i can swap to play with friends but will look like treehugger. If it was atleast without that 15 day cooldown so i could swap just for frontlines then i could accept it.

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Originally Posted by Nekodar

Since respawn happens in a place where you can't walk up to, if that really happened, you should have reported the others for cheating.

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They don't need to be able to walk up into your base. There's only one way out of the base so all they would have to do is wait right outside and pick people off as they come out. That doesn't leave you with very many options:

a) Keep running outside and dying the moment you come into view
b) Wait around in your base and hope they leave
c) Wait around in your base for enough of you to respawn so you can break through
d) Call reinforcements in from the rest of the battlefield

If the campers are halfway diligent every option results in you more or less forfeiting the match because you have to waste precious manpower dealing with them. Fortunately, it's a relatively rare tactic in my experience.

Going back on topic, I've also lost my fair share of matches because a 72-player game started and my team ended up with less than two full parties long enough to fall too far behind to even think of recovering.

What is more unfair is the alliance brewing between Maelstrom and Flames. 4 out of the 5 matches I played last night had us being double teamed, with both of the accused attacking us but not each other.

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Originally Posted by KenzieLynch

What is more unfair is the alliance brewing between Maelstrom and Flames. 4 out of the 5 matches I played last night had us being double teamed, with both of the accused attacking us but not each other.

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I call that smart strategy. It's hard to do that when you can't even communicate between two GCs. Seems unfair for the GC focused, but it's smart.

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Originally Posted by whoopeeragon

I call that smart strategy. It's hard to do that when you can't even communicate between two GCs. Seems unfair for the GC focused, but it's smart.

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It's not really that smart at all. It's pretty simple in concept, the issue is that it's unfair and a little disappointing that the community resorts to this.

It's also not that 'hard to do', because it just becomes an 'understanding' between the two GC's when word of mouth spreads.

It happens occasionally. Other day we had nine people missing and they didn't fill the alliance until around ten minutes in. Have to take it or leave it I'm afraid, but there are things you can do. Stealth and capture flags, raid and retreat, have everyone roam in a large group etc. It's a thousand times better than "A party member has withdrawn" over and over, ad infintum.

I like the GC segregation. Whilst I'm not a role-player, I am strongly patriotic and have no interest in representing anything other than the Twin Adders. To those who don't care so much, you can change around. It comes with setbacks, but so too does choosing a specific GC different to your friends. Pros and cons either way.

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Originally Posted by Snorgrind

well you can keep story by making it depend on free company aligment, this way FC members could play together without being forced to have vanity they dont want (minions, bardings, gear, housing etc).

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Not everyone in an FC is with the same GC (nor wants to be), so with your suggestion you'd be forcing some people to have "vanity" they don't want. Why should my choice be overruled by the FC founder's by default?

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Originally Posted by whoopeeragon

I call that smart strategy. It's hard to do that when you can't even communicate between two GCs. Seems unfair for the GC focused, but it's smart.

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No, that's just what happen when your team is bad and no one try to think of a solution( we never managed to take markets in 10 mn but let's keep going maybe we will take it ! ).

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Originally Posted by TheRogueX

It's the most ridiculous reason I've ever heard, too. Seriously, who came up with this idea?

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Lol, WoW did. It was just a stronger divide between the factions so it worked better, but it's the same thing.

For the Horde!

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Originally Posted by Lithera

That's a rare situation right there. BOTH other parties would have had to withdraw altogether for that to happen as if your group had been 8 or 16 it would have been a 24 or 48 person match. They should probably look at this I think since the DF may not be able to refill parties that never existed in the first place.

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Just curious, but has anyone ever taken part in one of these phantom "24 or 48" person matches, because I'm slowly becoming convinced that they don't exist. What I see as part of the Immortal Flames is always along the lines of OP screenshot. Queue for Frontlines, see 62/72 people queue before entering and all 10 people missing from the match are from the Flames.

I appreciate the fact that SE addressed the queue problem with 71/72 and then a back out happening, but this "24 or 48" people shit is a farce and I have never seen it happen. If one team out of 3 is missing damn near 30% of their alliance then the match should scale down and kick the last extra people from the other full GC's to enter the queue out of that specific match and combine them into the next one. It is clearly not working correctly, and provides for an experience that isn't fun at all.

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Originally Posted by Snorgrind

when i switch from maelstorm to twin adder i will not be able to use maelstorm chocobo barding, all the weapons and armor and gc leader minion will swap to whin-e-sena, thats what im talking about. So yes i can swap to play with friends but will look like treehugger. If it was atleast without that 15 day cooldown so i could swap just for frontlines then i could accept it.

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That's kind of the point. You can't be a Maelstrom in Twin Adder clothing. You accept a GC and all that comes along with it. I like that they are segregated. Maybe work on recruiting your friends to join your GC? Or bite the bullet and become an Adder yourself. I just dislike the notion that you would be able to get everything you want because you don't like the stipulations with your current GC. You make a choice and you get the pros and cons that come with it. You can't have everything.

I mean I'm a SCH and could argue that I should get PLD moves and DRG artifact armor "because I want it and my friends are PLDs and DRGs" but that makes no sense. If I want PLD moves, I become a PLD. If I want DRG artifact armor, I become a DRG. If I want to play frontlines with my Adder friends, I become an Adder. Or, I just deal with the fact that I don't get everything.

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Originally Posted by JayCommon

Just curious, but has anyone ever taken part in one of these phantom "24 or 48" person matches, because I'm slowly becoming convinced that they don't exist.

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I've been in three 48-person matches. So, yes they do exist. Generally if I queue before 1 am, it's a 72-person match. It's like between 1 and 5 am PDT that I ever get matches with less than 72.

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Originally Posted by LadyVal

I've been in three 48-person matches. So, yes they do exist. Generally if I queue before 1 am, it's a 72-person match. It's like between 1 and 5 am PDT that I ever get matches with less than 72.

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So then Frontlines matchmaking is blatantly broken. There is no good excuse for allowing one GC to enter a 72 player match when their 24 player alliance has 10-14 players and the others are full. Queue-in-progress happens but it takes awhile in the match for a gap that large to be filled. More often than not, when the players that get matched up into such lopsided BS that as soon as Duty Commences, half of the people on the team leave anyway. This needs to be addressed, what's the point of having lower match options if they don't get utilized in situations that keeps the balance fair?


OP: You should really post this in the PvP section of the forums also, if you haven't.

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Originally Posted by KenzieLynch

What is more unfair is the alliance brewing between Maelstrom and Flames. 4 out of the 5 matches I played last night had us being double teamed, with both of the accused attacking us but not each other.

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Sounds like someone didn't have a strong B. Noticed this the other night, whole adder alliance was whining about it. I took charge and we mopped the floor with maelstrom and flames collectively. 9 front line losses out of 10 are the result of poor leadership and coordination.

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Originally Posted by Tiggy

Lol, WoW did. It was just a stronger divide between the factions so it worked better, but it's the same thing.

For the Horde!

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Ugh WoW... large-scape PvP honestly hasn't been done right since Dark Age of Camelot. Lineage II was pretty good pre-2006, too.

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Originally Posted by GilbertLapine

Sounds like someone didn't have a strong B. Noticed this the other night, whole adder alliance was whining about it. I took charge and we mopped the floor with maelstrom and flames collectively. 9 front line losses out of 10 are the result of poor leadership and coordination.

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Talk about missing the point. The issue is that sort of behaviour shouldn't be happening in the first place.

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Originally Posted by KenzieLynch

Talk about missing the point. The issue is that sort of behaviour shouldn't be happening in the first place.

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Do you have any proof that the two other GC agreed on attacking the 3rd one ?
Or was you team just bad ?

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Originally Posted by whoopeeragon

I call that smart strategy. It's hard to do that when you can't even communicate between two GCs. Seems unfair for the GC focused, but it's smart.

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Um, yes, Teamspeak or such is not used, sure... :rolleyes:

Next time SE should put the red+black jacket in all GCs to avoid everyone going Maelstrom for it hahahahah

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Originally Posted by lokinmodar

Next time SE should put the red+black jacket in all GCs to avoid everyone going Maelstrom for it hahahahah

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nope.
/10chars

I don't get why the queue has no minimum threshold for taking people in. More than 10 missing by the time the commence timer is up? Cancel it and search again for more; not let potentially one group go in severely handicapped.

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Originally Posted by Yukiko

Um, yes, Teamspeak or such is not used, sure... :rolleyes:

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Coordinating 2 premades of separate GCs into the same queue for the purposes of sabotaging another GC is effectively pointless when you could instead make 2 premades of the same GC and stomp everyone.

Not that I would know anything about this.

This is not a rare situation. I have had it happen a LOT of times to me. What I WISH they would do is hold everyone in the starting zone until the entire match fills. As people hit accept, zone them in as now, but then do not open the gates until all teams are filled. That way everyone gets a fair start. If it does not fill after, say, 10 minutes, then kick everyone out and start over. Or something like that. Maybe they can add things to do while you wait, but I would rather wait an extra 5-10 minutes at the beginning of a match for a fair chance for the rest of the 20-30 minutes of playing, instead of getting roflstomped and unorganized as people fill up from one full alliance.

I just got into a full alliance match with a single party. One. Party. Needless to say we lost.
1) Matches should replenish members while inside the starting gate.
2) Matches should not be able to start until each alliance at least has the same number of parties.
2a) Or, an echo-like buff scaled to the number of missing people should be applied to the team(s) down members that decreases as more people entered in order to balance the discrepency.

The problem is another issue of the people 'wanting' something that doesn't make sense. People didn't like having to wait 'forever' for full alliances to form before starting a round of Frontlines. So Square listened to what people 'wanted' and set it so Frontlines starts with a reduced minimum of players. Remember that it's counting all players in this minimum, not players per side. So we get the situation in the opening post. Just like people 'wanted'.