My first impressions on Seal Rock

I only have around 8-10 games played in Seal Rock but I believe it suffers from a few issues:

1. It's way too much RNG - Random starting locations and random node spawns is just too much randomness. RNG too heavily affects the outcome of games. A well coordinated team can obviously overcome unfavorable node spawns, but that's hard to come by because...
2. The RNG creates chaos - extra hard to coordinate anyone - When a match starts everyone runs around like chickens with their heads cut off. Very rarely does anyone in my party stay together. In the other modes everyone at least has a location go to when it starts. And then when a node spawns near players they just attack or defend those nodes - they don't group like they should.
3. Lack of coordination leaves specific roles in the dust - As a melee, I have a tough job in large scale PvP. If I don't have healing support, it's very hard to perform my role. I try my best to move strategically to help my team get and hold nodes and proactively move to sparse areas right before a new node spawns to try to be there first but I've found that I basically just have to follow wherever my healer(s) randomly decide to go if I want to have any combat impact.

I'm sure as everyone gets more experience a "meta" will start to form and things will streamline a bit but because of the RNG involved here, I think it will take a lot longer for that to happen than it did for Secure/Slaughter, and even then everything has to adapt to wherever things happen to spawn at.

I like random in games because it provides uniqueness to each game, and it can highlight your ability to strategize and adapt. It extends the life of fun too because it doesn't become boring as quickly. But the benefits of the randomness are counteracted by the all the issues I noted above when it comes to overall fun of the mode.

I know these are just early impressions - I hated slaughter as a DRG and it took many games for me to learn how to be successful there and then it became more enjoyable. I'm just worried about how many games that'll be for Seal Rock.

1. The RNG aspect of the game is fine. It makes games interesting. No two games are alike because the games never spawn the same way and because you always start out in different sections of the map. Sure, the RNG can be a little annoying when all of the nodes spawn on one side of the map, but chances are if that happens for one GC, the other two GC are going to come in and stop them from obtaining a huge lead. It works itself out eventually, and even if you get bad games, you get good games that work in your favor, as well.

2. There has always been chaos in Frontlines, this doesn't pertain specifically to Seize. You've always had people running off and doing their own thing whether or not it would actually be beneficial to their team, whether that was in Secure when people would join the wrong alliance and head for the wrong area to capture (or just plain go wherever) or Slaughter, which in of itself was a complete mess with so many people running around in such a small area. Seize can be a little chaotic, but this is nothing new, and it's much more orderly than slaughter ever was.

3. It's up to you to try to arrange some sort of coordination for your alliance so that they know what to do and where they should be going, because sitting around silently and not saying a word is not going to help anyone. While I will agree that the mode is more favorable to Ranged DPS and Casters, ask for help from your healers, but don't become overbearing on them. Work a plan out together and move forward from there, but don't be like, "Hey you, healer. Yeah you. You follow me, got it?"

As for a meta, it's hard developing one for Seize because everything IS so random. Ideally people will start heading for specific locations in the beginning to try and maximize their range potential, but it's not like secure where it was the same A goes left, B goes middle, C goes right every game. It's different.

Seize is all about what you try to make out of it. It can be a little chaotic, and it can be a little annoying, but it's how you respond and react to those specific situations that changes the outcome of the game. Plenty of people will tell you that the RNG can be overcome with relative ease, and that the node spawns aren't that big a deal if you work together. However, if you sit around and sulk about how all of the new nodes are across the map, yeah, you're going to have a bad time.

SE only gives us 72 zergfest (since the ques for wolfs den are unreal) which overall are pointless. Yes you can lose to rng with out going in without a premade. As the guy above said ranged is greater than all since melee is better in smaller settings where the ranged cannot just fall back into their zerg of death. Also melee need to basically be a shield for ranged against other melee to be much of any good, I mean I think the only zergfest people like in an mmo is the castle siege in GW2 which has some pve stuff in it and they make it so that one zerg has time to show up to the other. Wow has never had a good zergfest (even my nestalga googles cannot save Alteric). MMO pvp tends to do best in very team focused small scale like wolf den (they need to find a way to fix ques plz :P) or like 8/16V8/16 not sure how three teams would do from the current zergfest (which it might be just the zergfest) three team game mode it kinda sucks for pvp.

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Originally Posted by TheWaywardWind

1. The RNG aspect of the game is fine. It makes games interesting. No two games are alike because the games never spawn the same way and because you always start out in different sections of the map. Sure, the RNG can be a little annoying when all of the nodes spawn on one side of the map, but chances are if that happens for one GC, the other two GC are going to come in and stop them from obtaining a huge lead. It works itself out eventually, and even if you get bad games, you get good games that work in your favor, as well.

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Fair points here.

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Originally Posted by TheWaywardWind

2. There has always been chaos in Frontlines, this doesn't pertain specifically to Seize. You've always had people running off and doing their own thing whether or not it would actually be beneficial to their team, whether that was in Secure when people would join the wrong alliance and head for the wrong area to capture (or just plain go wherever) or Slaughter, which in of itself was a complete mess with so many people running around in such a small area. Seize can be a little chaotic, but this is nothing new, and it's much more orderly than slaughter ever was.

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I completely disagree that seize is more orderly than slaughter. Even as a melee I found great ways to contribute in Slaughter and I always knew where to go, and my entire alliance was almost always with me even with completely randoms in queue. In seize everyone just runs where ever they want. I believe that the best success will be gained by each party of 8 sticking together where ever they need to go, but right now no one listens and does their own thing. In slaughter it was easy - go to the middle. In secure it was an understood meta that solidified quickly, and was easy to pick up by new players. In seize, there's no direction, and no leader, and if someone tries to be a leader, since it's random internetz you'll typically get trolled on or told to shut up. And it's precisely the RNGness of seize why a "meta" like "A goes left, B goes middle, C goes right" will never develop, and any semblance of a meta that might develop will be variable and not as easy to understand or spread to newer players. It's not the lack of order in the map mechanics that bugs me per se, it's the lack of order between the random 24 teammates. The other maps' gameplay helped guide players into where they should be in a way that naturally corralled players into stick with their 8 person party. Seize does not do this.

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Originally Posted by TheWaywardWind

3. It's up to you to try to arrange some sort of coordination for your alliance so that they know what to do and where they should be going, because sitting around silently and not saying a word is not going to help anyone. While I will agree that the mode is more favorable to Ranged DPS and Casters, ask for help from your healers, but don't become overbearing on them. Work a plan out together and move forward from there, but don't be like, "Hey you, healer. Yeah you. You follow me, got it?"

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I'll keep trying to tell my teammates to stick together but right now it falls on deaf ears. Like I said in Secure or Slaughter, chances were good that at any moment I am in close quarters with my healer(s). In seize, unless I make a point to follow them, my HP pool is entirely my job to maintain. Not very good in the only PvP map that actually punishes your team's score directly for dying, which means your teams' progress towards winning is lessened when you die. That makes healing and staying alive more important in Seize than it is for Secure/Slaughter (ie. if you die in Seize, BOTH opposing team's scores changed relative to yours, whereas if you die in Secure/Slaughter only the opposing team who scored the kill will have their score changed relative to yours). So in the map that makes it more important than ever to travel in a tight team to keep each other alive, the mechanics and RNG nature make everyone spread and thin and vulnerable.

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Originally Posted by TheWaywardWind

As for a meta, it's hard developing one for Seize because everything IS so random. Ideally people will start heading for specific locations in the beginning to try and maximize their range potential, but it's not like secure where it was the same A goes left, B goes middle, C goes right every game. It's different.

Seize is all about what you try to make out of it. It can be a little chaotic, and it can be a little annoying, but it's how you respond and react to those specific situations that changes the outcome of the game. Plenty of people will tell you that the RNG can be overcome with relative ease, and that the node spawns aren't that big a deal if you work together. However, if you sit around and sulk about how all of the new nodes are across the map, yeah, you're going to have a bad time.

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Let's not discount though that nodes are much easier to defend once capped than they are to take. So if we assume an average of equal cooperation among the 3 teams, a "lucky spawn" for one particular team immediately gives them an advantage because 1) They will cap it first and get some initial points out of it and 2) The opposition has to send MORE offense than you have there for defense and basically wipe out all defenders before they can take the node AND they have to cap it TWICE to start getting points out of it. RNG is RNG as you mentioned in your first post and there will be games where RNG is the deciding factor in your loss just like it will be the deciding factor in some of your wins, but sometimes you can "respond and react to those specific situations" in the best way possible but you'll still come up behind because of the RNG factor. That will never stop being annoying.

Like I said I like random, it's healthy for games. I guess my complaint isn't so much with Seize as it is with my 23 random teammates who behave randomly on a random map that are about as easy to herd as cats. It makes my contribution feel like next to nothing. I really think they should stick to 8v8v8 for Frontlines, or maybe 12v12v12 (three light parties of 4). I was always happier when a secure/slaughter queue popped as an 8v8v8.

I kinda agree. I enjoy the RNG of it all. It keeps things interesting. I would hate if you could just know how things were going to work out all the time. So what if its a bit unfair. It's fun.

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Originally Posted by Geryth

I completely disagree that seize is more orderly than slaughter. Even as a melee I found great ways to contribute in Slaughter and I always knew where to go, and my entire alliance was almost always with me even with completely randoms in queue. In seize everyone just runs where ever they want. I believe that the best success will be gained by each party of 8 sticking together where ever they need to go, but right now no one listens and does their own thing. In slaughter it was easy - go to the middle. In secure it was an understood meta that solidified quickly, and was easy to pick up by new players.

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Just because it was easy to go to the middle and gather people up in one area doesn't mean it was any less chaotic. In fact, it made it far, far more chaotic than the other modes. You're trying to tell me 72 people bunched up in an area the size of the Wolve's Den battlefield with people spamming limit breaks left and right, casting CC, spells, etc., is somehow 'less chaotic' than Seize is, which actually encourages people to make more use of the area given to them? Absolutely not. Slaughter is, and always has been, the most chaotic PvP mode that was released. There was nothing 'orderly' about bum rushing one section of an otherwise large map and letting everyone's computer have a seizure due to the amount of chaos going on. Just because you could find some niche things to do in that mode didn't make it "orderly."

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Originally Posted by Geryth

In seize, there's no direction, and no leader, and if someone tries to be a leader, since it's random internetz you'll typically get trolled on or told to shut up. And it's precisely the RNGness of seize why a "meta" like "A goes left, B goes middle, C goes right" will never develop, and any semblance of a meta that might develop will be variable and not as easy to understand or spread to newer players. It's not the lack of order in the map mechanics that bugs me per se, it's the lack of order between the random 24 teammates. The other maps' gameplay helped guide players into where they should be in a way that naturally corralled players into stick with their 8 person party. Seize does not do this.

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The more you talk about it, the more you strike me as someone more new to Frontlines, as this has always been the case. There has never been any direction since secure, and even then, it was the minimalistic A goes left, B middle, etc, as I stated before. People are always going to get upset if you take the lead. This has always been the case and again, does not specifically pertain to Seize.

And slaughter never 'corralled people to stick with their party'. You joined the middle in the 10 minute humpfest and spammed attacks until your team won. Just because you were all forced to play in the same area does not mean you were doing so cohesively, whatsoever.

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Originally Posted by Geryth

I'll keep trying to tell my teammates to stick together but right now it falls on deaf ears. Like I said in Secure or Slaughter, chances were good that at any moment I am in close quarters with my healer(s). In seize, unless I make a point to follow them, my HP pool is entirely my job to maintain. Not very good in the only PvP map that actually punishes your team's score directly for dying, which means your teams' progress towards winning is lessened when you die. That makes healing and staying alive more important in Seize than it is for Secure/Slaughter (ie. if you die in Seize, BOTH opposing team's scores changed relative to yours, whereas if you die in Secure/Slaughter only the opposing team who scored the kill will have their score changed relative to yours). So in the map that makes it more important than ever to travel in a tight team to keep each other alive, the mechanics and RNG nature make everyone spread and thin and vulnerable.

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So play a healer. God knows we don't need more lolmelee running around anyway. While I agree it's annoying for melee DPS, more healers are almost a good thing. And guess what? You also gain as points through killing people as well, so it evens itself out.

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Originally Posted by Geryth

Let's not discount though that nodes are much easier to defend once capped than they are to take. So if we assume an average of equal cooperation among the 3 teams, a "lucky spawn" for one particular team immediately gives them an advantage because 1) They will cap it first and get some initial points out of it and 2) The opposition has to send MORE offense than you have there for defense and basically wipe out all defenders before they can take the node AND they have to cap it TWICE to start getting points out of it. RNG is RNG as you mentioned in your first post and there will be games where RNG is the deciding factor in your loss just like it will be the deciding factor in some of your wins, but sometimes you can "respond and react to those specific situations" in the best way possible but you'll still come up behind because of the RNG factor. That will never stop being annoying.

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While it can be annoying, this is what encourages different strategy making. In my alliance, I always have the most occupations out of anyone else on my team, because as a healer, I can move forward once our old nodes are almost dry and cap new ones. If someone is stopping you from stealing it, kill them more quickly. Not much else to it.

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Originally Posted by Geryth

Like I said I like random, it's healthy for games. I guess my complaint isn't so much with Seize as it is with my 23 random teammates who behave randomly on a random map that are about as easy to herd as cats. It makes my contribution feel like next to nothing. I really think they should stick to 8v8v8 for Frontlines, or maybe 12v12v12 (three light parties of 4). I was always happier when a secure/slaughter queue popped as an 8v8v8.

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That's reasonable, and actually seems like your main complaint. However, most of your disappointments with Seize have been there for a long as Frontlines have been around.

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Originally Posted by TheWaywardWind

Just because it was easy to go to the middle and gather people up in one area doesn't mean it was any less chaotic. . .snip

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We're talking about different kinds of chaos. A 72 man cluster **** is obviously chaotic in a pure visual sense. But the goal? Where to go? How to interact with your teammates? All of that was very orderly and understood. Kill enemies, kill nodes, job done. You knew where to be and what to do. That was my point and that's why Slaughter is more orderly than Seize.

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Originally Posted by TheWaywardWind

The more you talk about it, the more you strike me as someone more new to Frontlines, as this has always been the case.

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I have over 200 frontlines - not sure exactly how many but I am rank 38 so enough to know the ropes pretty well. Sure it's always hard to get someone to listen to you, but you're ignoring my whole point here - Seize makes these issues worse and works as detriment to the fun. Because of the way Secure/Slaughter worked, I was almost always with my 8 man party. In Seize I'm almost never with my 8 man party unless I make a point to follow someone and even still, I'm mostly only with the person I'm following. If you're going to work as a cohesive unit it needs a leader, and know how that works with internet anonymity. And that's more important in this mode because you lose points for dying as I mentioned.

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Originally Posted by TheWaywardWind

So play a healer. God knows we don't need more lolmelee running around anyway. While I agree it's annoying for melee DPS, more healers are almost a good thing. And guess what? You also gain as points through killing people as well, so it evens itself out.

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I'd love to if I had the time. I chose DPS because when I started this game my cousin (who got me in) already plays WHM, and my wife wanted to tank (my traditional role in MMOs). So that left me with DPS as my main for FFXIV. As a full time employee and a father, I don't have the extra time to level other jobs. Also, points gained/lost for killing/dying evens out on the grand scale (a zero sum mechanic, if you will - almost anyway since you can't go below zero points it's not truly zero sum and then there's extra points for kills against battle high), but that's precisely why it's more import not to die because not only are you giving points to another team for dying but you're losing points. In Secure/Slaughter a death simply means +1 for your opponent. In Seize a death means +1 for them and -1 for you. It's literally twice as bad (strictly point-wise not counting any strategic deaths like suiciding to delay objectives etc) to die in Seize than it is for the other modes. Healing and staying alive is more important, hands down. That's why it irks me that I'm never with my party and if i want heals I'm at the mercy of personal-body-guarding whatever healer is in my party of wherever he wants to go, rather than having a clear goal where we mutually go together naturally (like in Secure/Slaughter).

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Originally Posted by TheWaywardWind

That's reasonable, and actually seems like your main complaint. However, most of your disappointments with Seize have been there for a long as Frontlines have been around.

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Yes, but I'll reiterate - those issues are not as pronounced or as influential in the game's "fun" as they are in Seize.

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Originally Posted by Geryth

We're talking about different kinds of chaos. A 72 man cluster **** is obviously chaotic in a pure visual sense. But the goal? Where to go? How to interact with your teammates? All of that was very orderly and understood. Kill enemies, kill nodes, job done. You knew where to be and what to do. That was my point and that's why Slaughter is more orderly than Seize.

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But it's not, and it wasn't in just the 'pure visual' sense, either. It looked awful and it played awfully/chaotically as well. Just because you 'knew where to go' doesn't mean you played like you were in a 24 man team, as I already stated. Grouping people together does not automatically mean people play cohesively. Besides, I could say the same thing about Seize. Kill enemies, capture nodes, job done. You eventually know where to be and what to do. Just because you were surrounded by your teammates still, does not in any sense, make Slaughter 'orderly' by the largest stretch of the imagination whatsoever.

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Originally Posted by Geryth

I have over 200 frontlines - not sure exactly how many but I am rank 38 so enough to know the ropes pretty well. Sure it's always hard to get someone to listen to you, but you're ignoring my whole point here - Seize makes these issues worse and works as detriment to the fun. Because of the way Secure/Slaughter worked, I was almost always with my 8 man party. In Seize I'm almost never with my 8 man party unless I make a point to follow someone and even still, I'm mostly only with the person I'm following. If you're going to work as a cohesive unit it needs a leader, and know how that works with internet anonymity. And that's more important in this mode because you lose points for dying as I mentioned.

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You talk about getting more people to listen to you and then you dial it back and talk about how you're never surrounded by your party - pick one or the other. I stated again, Secure and Slaughter both had similar problems. Sure, you were far more likely to be around your team, but if that's your main complaint - stick with it, as I said. Stating "people don't listen to you" has no reflection or bearing on the mode itself whatsoever. That's a Frontline and player thing. It doesn't specifically apply to Seize.

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Originally Posted by Geryth

I'd love to if I had the time. I chose DPS because when I started this game my cousin (who got me in) already plays WHM, and my wife wanted to tank (my traditional role in MMOs). So that left me with DPS as my main for FFXIV. As a full time employee and a father, I don't have the extra time to level other jobs. Also, points gained/lost for killing/dying evens out on the grand scale (a zero sum mechanic, if you will - almost anyway since you can't go below zero points it's not truly zero sum and then there's extra points for kills against battle high), but that's precisely why it's more import not to die because not only are you giving points to another team for dying but you're losing points. In Secure/Slaughter a death simply means +1 for your opponent. In Seize a death means +1 for them and -1 for you. It's literally twice as bad (strictly point-wise not counting any strategic deaths like suiciding to delay objectives etc) to die in Seize than it is for the other modes. Healing and staying alive is more important, hands down. That's why it irks me that I'm never with my party and if i want heals I'm at the mercy of personal-body-guarding whatever healer is in my party of wherever he wants to go, rather than having a clear goal where we mutually go together naturally (like in Secure/Slaughter).

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So your problem isn't with how the mode works itself - it's that you aren't surrounded by your party at all times? I'm not sure what you're getting at here; that because your teammates don't listen to you or follow you to where you want to go, the game mode is inherently flawed? There's nothing wrong with losing points for dying. Yes, it's annoying, and yes, it can be straining on your team if people decide they want to lone wolf, but for the most part it encourages people to work together, because dying now actually has a much greater impact. If your complaints are that it forces you to follow your healers - be more smart about wandering off by yourself and make calls to your team. If they don't listen to you, that isn't a problem with the game mode, it's a problem with your team. I really don't know what else to tell you.

I enjoy points 2 and 3 for one reason. It gives possibility to people who want to organize their teammates. There are a few Adders that try and give out commands to others, the only problem is that 30% of players don't listen to them.. but it still improves our fights a lot.

It's another zergfest map which is worse than their first one (yeah it's better than slaughter, but that's not really something to applaud), it succeeds in consistently encouraging people to zerg and do stupid stuff.

Unfairness based on dice rolls , which was clearly designed (like 100% obvious) as a way to keep the whining from specific gc overpowering others down and as a way of "balancing" win rates between gcs, instead of just removing the silly gc restrictions, has no place in PvP. It's just a bad addition.

And yeah blabla you can beat the rng, sure, but most people don't play with groups and in a lot of datacenters random people don't even care about tactics or strategies that aren't smack-in-your-face obvious.

Arguing that if you either have a good premade, a good alliance (somehow) or somehow miraculously organize a bunch of headless chickens that insult you for trying to tell them not to do silly stuff and for trying to advise them, who seemingly just want to throw themselves to their deaths or chase people into their gc zerg only to be pummeled into the ground, you get to beat the bad dice roll isn't really a valid point.

If the mode design balance is built on the premise that for there to be equality of chances to different teams when one has the upper hand by getting better rng the other then has to be necessarily better (skill-wise) then it is no real balance, ie Equally skilled teams need to have equal opportunities or the balance is broken.

To SE, if someone in the dev/community team actually bothers to come here and read this forum and respond to us for a change:
Stop doing experimental PvP stuff when your team has no experience (you said so yourselves), start with what works for other games ( you did this for every other part of the game design, apply it to pvp too already..) simple modes, smaller scale modes and listen to our feedback when you release this things. To most people the reaction to this map could be summed as :"Yeah , meh, it's okay, not completely horrible, at least it's better than slaughter...". Is this really what you want?

the 3v3v3 just doesnt work. In theory yeah the teams would balance each other because 1 is winning the other two go against them, but it doesn't. The randomness is good not in thats its fair, but it changes the point of engagements, makes things more interesting butg hte pvp is poor anyways so it doesnt matter.