Forced to spawn camp at the end of each match in Fields of Glory

I have been playing Frontlines ever since the first one came out, back when regen would stack and cleric stance was usable. I was looking forward to Fields when it was announced cos I like large scale PVP. After playing it for about 2 weeks, I came to realize that every match, the GC with the highest points gets spawn camped to oblivion by the other 2 GCs which always results to that GC not winning the match. It becomes a battle between the other 2 and whoever can kill or covertly cap the camp of the other GC wins the match.

Let me compare how spawn camping is useful in other Frontline maps:

• Secure/Slaughter - spawn camping happens from time to time but mostly done by NIN. Not really a game changer since all the GCs have to kill the nodes in the middle and other 3 places between the spawn camps.
• Sieze - spawn camping happens but only to push back the team with the highest points. GCs still need to priorities capping and defending towers.
• Fields - Once all the nodes are exhausted, the team with the highest points will get spawn camped. Probably the only way to possibly win the match is not to get the highest points before that cos the GC with the highest points has no way to fight back against 48 people trying to kill them.

To sum it up, all matches lead to spawn camping and it's not fun. All the effort done before the endgame gets thrown out the window and it boils down to owning the 1 GC at the final 3 minutes of the game.


PS: Also an obligatory "Please remove the GC restriction for Frontlines cos it might actually fix the queue problems"

3way pvp was always a terrible idea no matter how well your alliance performs your almost certain to get ganked by the 3rd placed team, ofcourse there are ways to avoid this but goodluck controlling 23 other ppl.luckily it doesnt happen too often in 24 man games.

I actually envy that players on your datacenter are so rational. On Aether most matches are "team a engages team b, team c cleans up nodes, team a+b still fighting while team c takes win" xP

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Originally Posted by Bigceto

3way pvp was always a terrible idea no matter how well your alliance performs your almost certain to get ganked by the 3rd placed team, ofcourse there are ways to avoid this but goodluck controlling 23 other ppl.luckily it doesnt happen too often in 24 man games.

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Personally I'm OK with 3 way pvp as you have to temporarily work with the other GC to push back the other GC. Not sure how the situation is in other DCs but from time to time there is someone who leads the team using Alliance chat.

In other FL maps, getting push backed by 2 GCs isn't game changing. In Fields, it's a different story.

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Originally Posted by Enlial

I actually envy that players on your datacenter are so rational. On Aether most matches are "team a engages team b, team c cleans up nodes, team a+b still fighting while team c takes win" xP

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It happens on Elemental too but from time to time, someone leads the GC.

My suggestions to limit spawn camping are the following:

• Give players who just respawned a temporary immunity buff similar to Secure/Slaughter. This allows GCs not to be completely overwhelmed by the 2 other GCs spawn camping then.
• Add pathways accessible only by the GC the player is in to escape the spawn camp.
• Make nodes appear until the last minute.

I don't necessarily see a problem with this. If you're the team in the lead, you have to hold out for the last little bit against the two other GCs and prove that your GC is actually good at PVP, and not just the luckiest when it comes to being on top of RNG crystals.

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Originally Posted by Enlial

I actually envy that players on your datacenter are so rational. On Aether most matches are "team a engages team b, team c cleans up nodes, team a+b still fighting while team c takes win" xP

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Yeah I'd kill for such coordination. But instead, we get players that just wanna tunnel into one objective, ignoring the match itself.

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Originally Posted by Beckett

I don't necessarily see a problem with this. If you're the team in the lead, you have to hold out for the last little bit against the two other GCs and prove that your GC is actually good at PVP, and not just the luckiest when it comes to being on top of RNG crystals.

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This, and if it never works, just sneak to the other OPs and let the 2 other GCs fight for yours. Wait... That would require communication and teamwork lol. nvm...

I have to agree with Enlial and Canadane...on Aether we tend to just bang our heads against another GC so we can fight for second.

Topically to this, I had a 72 Shatter match today where we lead hard at the beginning but got double-team spawn camped into 3rd place right at the end by a truce between the opposing two GCs.

We had someone else taking leader duties the whole match (directions in /alliance chat, callouts, etc), so I was reluctant to impose my own directions. But after a strong start it totally broke down at the end: the leader called us all back to spawn, and then... seemed to just kind of give up and stop saying anything or even moving until the match ended.

The other 23 players (including me) basically just stood around our spawn point paralyzed, watching the opposing GCs sit on our control point and stare us down, until the match expired.

I wanted to do more, but I'm still fairly inexperienced and also not used to 72 pops (I play at odd hours and usually get 24s). I didn't want to risk instructing my team to do something hopeless and just lead them into a slaughter (been there and done that a few times now).

What is a better response to the situation of being spawncamped in a 72-player Frontlines when the rest of your team seems dazed and panicked and needs a plan?

I am not sure there is a better response. Focus and try to reposition. You can't make it to the other spawn if you have already been pushed back. Nothing like a train of 1 player at a time trying to make a run for it.

I have always wondered if you had enough of a lead you could just wait till the other 2 start killing each other and then push. Nothing like dps to lose focus and try to get that other ninja that's almost dead.

Yup, I was totally in that match with you. We had a good lead then it went down hill fast at the end at our base.

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Originally Posted by crazedtoo

I have to agree with Enlial and Canadane...on Aether we tend to just bang our heads against another GC so we can fight for second.

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From my experience (Primal Adders), if you actually call shots that make sense a good portion of the alliance will listen. Sure you won't get everyone, but it's usually enough to do something. It just takes someone willing to do it. If there's nobody on your team calling shots, give it a try. Just keep it simple: give a warning when crystals are about to spawn, link the position when a big crystal spawns, point out when it is a good time to steal an outpost, remind people of which company is in the lead that they should be focusing on, but don't fret about every small crystal and know when it's time to go in or to stay away (don't get flanked!). Bad calls will happen and people might get angry about them. Don't give up, but make sure to learn from your mistakes and avoid making them again.

Of course, you'll get the odd game where people won't listen and just want to fight a specific company over and over even though they're in last position, but those make a small minority. Sometimes it won't even matter what shots you call because the difference in firepower is just too big. But those times you win and you know your calls made a difference are much more satisfying.

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

What is a better response to the situation of being spawncamped in a 72-player Frontlines when the rest of your team seems dazed and panicked and needs a plan?

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Honestly, the only answer to that is to be prepared. You know it's coming, you have to make your move before it happens. Send a few people to capture their outposts before you have lost your own.

If both of the other companies are stupid, they will come through the middle, so try to hold them in the choke point in front of your outpost instead of falling back to it right away: they might end up weakening themselves before getting to you and any time you save gives you more points. If they're smart, one of them will come from the side. In that case try to defend your outpost as long as you can and make sure people stand inside the circle as much as possible to prevent capture. Your healers are going to dictate how long of a stand you can make. The worst thing you can do is dying. If you're getting overwhelmed, fall back and let them have your outpost. They'll usually start fighting each other and you'll be able to sweep back in and get some kills, and sometimes that's all you need to get the last few points you were missing.

Now, if you're simply getting crushed in a fight and can't get out of your spawn, well I'm sorry, you probably didn't deserve to win in the first place. It might have been luck with the spawns or the other companies just ignoring you for too long. It is a PvP match after all, so it only makes sense that some fighting would settle the winner.

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Originally Posted by Thekk

Now, if you're simply getting crushed in a fight and can't get out of your spawn, well I'm sorry, you probably didn't deserve to win in the first place.

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That's really rude, but on the other hand, I kind of can't argue when I think about that match, since I found myself wondering multiple times why we were in 1st place given our behavior.

ie, We fled from every skirmish, no one focused targets or healers, in engagements everyone spread out like a cloud of gnats instead of staying tight around the healers, we didn't seize enemy outposts while they were bickering in midfield, we were bullied off any Large Ice we didn't reach early... etc.

Maybe spawn camping is just nature's way of telling a team they need to step it up.

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

That's really rude, but on the other hand, I kind of can't argue when I think about that match, since I found myself wondering multiple times why we were in 1st place given our behavior.

ie, We fled from every skirmish, no one focused targets or healers, in engagements everyone spread out like a cloud of gnats instead of staying tight around the healers, we didn't seize enemy outposts while they were bickering in midfield, we were bullied off any Large Ice we didn't reach early... etc.

Maybe spawn camping is just nature's way of telling a team they need to step it up.

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I know my point of view might sound harsh for some people, and I'm sorry if my phrasing sounded offensive to you, that was not my intention.

It just feels that since it's PvP, fighting should at least play a part on the output rather than who can put the most dps on crystals then just run away the best. If you actually have a upper hand in fights during the match, your lead will be bigger and the other companies won't even have the time to mount an assault because you'll already have nearly won by the last crystal. Basically, points from the crystals and outposts by themselves won't be enough to win, you'll have to fight at some point and it's either going to be during the match or at the end if you run away from it. It's a matter of choosing the right ones, and waiting for the end rarely is the good option.

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Originally Posted by Thekk

I know my point of view might sound harsh for some people, and I'm sorry if my phrasing sounded offensive to you, that was not my intention.

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Sorry, no, you're fine and I appreciate the blunt advice. I meant it more like "Ouch, that bruised my ego, but you make a good point". The tone probably didn't translate into text properly.

I admit I feel frustrated by my own sense of failure to the team when I can't dig it out of a mess like that, or even think of anything to suggest in /alliance. I'm more comfortable in 24s; in 72, as 1/24th of a dysfunctional blob it can feel difficult to really practice or learn effectively.

But yeah, at first I was like "Why did the mean people box us into spawn, how do we fix it?" And then you made me reflect on it, and it was more like: "Hm, maybe they boxed us into spawn because we deserved it" — in the sense of having a flimsy battlefield presence already during the match. It was probably a smart tactical call on the side of the other teams.

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Originally Posted by Thekk

Honestly, the only answer to that is to be prepared. You know it's coming, you have to make your move before it happens. Send a few people to capture their outposts before you have lost your own.

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This happened to me yesterday. Our team was in a pretty solid first after all the crystals were down, so of course both the other teams came to our camp. Someone did eventually say that we should go cap Adder's point, but by that time it was too late. If we had reacted immediately, we could have capped Adder's camp, then when Mael and Adder inevitably started fighting each other, we could have come in for a pincer.

I'm betting that the end-of-match spawn camping will get easier to handle over time, as people learn these tactics. There are three exits out of all of the spawns, which means you always have options.

A bit of napkin maths:

• The map has 4 big crystals (300 points each) and 18 small crystals (70 points each) for a total of 2460 points, or an average of 820 per team.
• Outposts give 2 points every 3 seconds (or 40 per minute). The last crystal spawns with 8 to 10 minutes left and usually gets destroyed within 2 minutes. 14 minutes of uninterrupted control of an outpost will net you 560 points.

That means that you would potentially have 1380 points if you got your fair share of crystals and didn't fight at all. That leaves you with 420 points to get somewhere else.

There are 3 options for that:

1. Getting more points than the other companies from crystals. However, given their spread around the map, it is highly unlikely you'll reach 1000.
2. Control enemy outposts. You could get one or two hundred points for holding them for a couple minutes while other companies are fighting for the furthest big crystal. However, you could lose your own as easily over the course of the match.
3. Kills. You get 10 points per kill and lose 5 per death. If your team is average and you kill as much as you die, that will net you 5 points per kill. At that ratio, 84 kills would be enough, but the winning company almost always has more kills than deaths and in turn needs less than that. You would actually need to die twice as much to break even.

With that in mind, we can draw the following conclusions

• It is very unlikely you will reach a high enough amount of points strictly from the PvE objectives. As such, I feel people underestimate how important the PvP aspect actually is.
• If you sit on the side while no crystals are active and watch the other 2 companies fight to a stalemate, they are actually getting more points than you are.

The morale of the story is you're not going to win without a fight, so avoiding it is pointless. However, you have to pick the right moments. There is plenty of time to do between big crystals since they spawn every 4 minutes and usually get destroyed within 2. You don't need to send your whole team for small crystals, so the rest of it should pull its weight. Just don't get into a fight with one company while letting the other get a big crystal for free. Tunnel vision is bad.

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Originally Posted by Enlial

I actually envy that players on your datacenter are so rational. On Aether most matches are "team a engages team b, team c cleans up nodes, team a+b still fighting while team c takes win" xP

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It doesn't help that there's people on Maelstrom saying this at the beginning of the match

http://puu.sh/pJGlZ.jpg

And let me say that that is not a one-time thing. These individuals have said this over...and over and over and over.

They don't care about winning. They literally play because they have a hate-boner for Flames. They have no objective except to make sure Flames don't win first lol.

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Originally Posted by Thekk

A bit of napkin maths:

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That is great thank you, I've been trying to find these numbers and it matches up with my own experience (that teams which hit all the Ice pops on the nose, but play passively between Ice, tend to settle into 2nd place just shy of victory).

Some questions:

• Are you sure it's +10 for a kill? We were debating in /alliance in a couple different matches whether it's -5/+5 (net 10 advantage for the killing team) or actually +10/-5 (net 15 advantage for the killing team).
• Does Large Ice activate at fixed points (ie, 19:00) or is it random, but with 4 minutes always separating it after that?
• Do you know the timers on small Ice pops? Some players seem to be able to call out impending Ice in /alliance so we can all gather back together and get ready.

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

• Are you sure it's +10 for a kill? We were debating in /alliance in a couple different matches whether it's -5/+5 (net 10 advantage for the killing team) or actually +10/-5 (net 15 advantage for the killing team).

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kuma_aus posted a few screenshots that support +10/-5 here: The Fields of Glory (Shatter)

Here's one of them
http://i.imgur.com/L3ZYkvl.jpg

Kills add up to 900 and deaths to -465 (1.93). In another kills add up to 1260 and deaths to -620 (2.03). So it isn't exactly 2:1, but close enough. I suspect other factors such as battle high also have to be considered.

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Originally Posted by Eorzean_username

• Does Large Ice activate at fixed points (ie, 19:00) or is it random, but with 4 minutes always separating it after that?
• Do you know the timers on small Ice pops? Some players seem to be able to call out impending Ice in /alliance so we can all gather back together and get ready.

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Timing on crystals is definitely random, but within a limited set of possibilities. The most common one by far is big crystals spawning at 19:00, 16:00, 12:00 and 8:00 with small crystals every 2 minutes.

Other possibilities are all the small crystals spawning right at the start, then big coming in way later, but I would have to check what the exact timings are. Also, if the last 2 big crystals spawn at the same time, that usually happens around the 10:00 mark.

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Originally Posted by Thekk

...Now, if you're simply getting crushed in a fight and can't get out of your spawn, well I'm sorry, you probably didn't deserve to win in the first place...

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The issue is with 2 GCs pushing you, it's more likely that someone in your GC gets killed than killing someone from the other GCs. With the enemies capping your base, it's very difficult to regroup with the people who have died. There's no immunity buff so enemies can still kill people who are on the spawn platform. Also when one of team overtakes your GC, they run away and it's difficult to catch up with a scattered team.

I do like the choke points in Fields. I've seen it used many times. My biggest gripe is in the 20 minutes match, the only thing that matters is the final (7?) minutes and that the nodes phase feels like a warm-up. Also the spawn camping. Your team has to be very coordinated to avoid getting killed.

By the way, it's entirely possible to win during the ice nodes phase. Here's a screenshot of a win 13 mins into the match.
http://i.imgur.com/expnHG4.png

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Originally Posted by DeliriumTrigger

The issue is with 2 GCs pushing you, it's more likely that someone in your GC gets killed than killing someone from the other GCs. With the enemies capping your base, it's very difficult to regroup with the people who have died. There's no immunity buff so enemies can still kill people who are on the spawn platform. Also when one of team overtakes your GC, they run away and it's difficult to catch up with a scattered team.

I do like the choke points in Fields. I've seen it used many times. My biggest gripe is in the 20 minutes match, the only thing that matters is the final (7?) minutes and that the nodes phase feels like a warm-up. Also the spawn camping. Your team has to be very coordinated to avoid getting killed.

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I agree that it's a problem that matches have 2 phases with completely different dynamics. The crystal phase has a big focus on who can dish out the most damage and the fighting takes a secondary level. The final phase has a big focus on actual PvP.

You can have a wildly unbalanced team in the first phase with no tanks and minimal healing and do very well because you end up getting a lot of points from crystals. That won't fly in the second phase where you'll really want that vit bonus and a good amount of healing. When it comes to keeping that last outpost long enough you could even switch to half tanks, half healers, sit everyone in the outpost while rotating LBs and keep it under control long enough without anyone dying if you wanted.

The thing is, you can switch jobs in Shatter to adapt to the situation, but I don't ever see anyone do it.

You mention that it takes coordination to survive such a situation and it is true. It also takes some amount of coordination from the other teams to not just end up clashing into each other, especially once you have been driven out of your outpost, so that's not a one sided thing. Premades might be a problem at this level however, and devs have mentioned they are looking into it.

The objective of the change to the 1600 points limit is to minimize the second phase. I don't think it's the right way to tackle the problem however. As people have pointed out, that phase is usually where most of the actual PvP happens and removing it without changing anything else will simply make the focus on PvE even bigger. Currently, the point spread is roughly 45% crystals, 30% outposts and 25% kills. There is simply not enough emphasis on kills if we're going to call this PvP. It feels that simply changing it to +10 points per kill (be it +20/-10 or +15/-5) would go a long way to make games shorter and reduce the chance it goes beyond the crystals if people are actually fighting.

Also, in the 70+ shatters I've played so far, I have yet to reach the 20 minutes limit. How often does that even happen? I mean if you consider the numbers (let's go with the averages since it's very likely that if if goes that long, scores are very close) :

• 820 for crystals
• Let's say 720 points out of 800 from Outposts if each of them went uncontrolled for 2 minutes (only neutral matters here because they generate points whoever controls them)
• Each team would then need 260 more points, or the equivalent of 52 kills and deaths which is 2,6 per minute over 20 minutes. That doesn't seems like a lot, were the teams just waiting for the whole match?

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Originally Posted by DeliriumTrigger

By the way, it's entirely possible to win during the ice nodes phase. Here's a screenshot of a win 13 mins into the match.

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If anything, that screenshot proves my point. I'd love to see the score breakdown on that match, but if I had to guess, it would be something like:

• 800 points from crystals (there are still multiple small up on the map from what we can see)
• 600 points from outposts (that might be generous as that would imply 2 minutes of controlling enemy outposts without losing your own)
• That leaves a +400 kill differential, which would imply that the Flames fought as much as they could early on to avoid a late fight.

I honestly like the final spawncamping xD
Both as chased than as chaser, even because if there isn't a huge gap, you will never face ALL the 3 alliances in the same spot there is always someone spread somewhere or someone hitting the "wrong" GC.

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Originally Posted by Thekk

Timing on crystals is definitely random, but within a limited set of possibilities. The most common one by far is big crystals spawning at 19:00, 16:00, 12:00 and 8:00 with small crystals every 2 minutes.

Other possibilities are all the small crystals spawning right at the start, then big coming in way later, but I would have to check what the exact timings are. Also, if the last 2 big crystals spawn at the same time, that usually happens around the 10:00 mark.

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Did more Shatter and had the other patterns again so here are the timings I've seen:

• Large crystals at 19:00, 16:00, 12:00 and 8:00, small crystals every 2 minutes
• Large crystals at 19:00, 15:00 and 10:00 (one of the last 2 being a double spawn), small crystals every 2 minutes
• All the small crystals at the beginning, large crystals at 14:00, 12:00, 10:00 and 8:00

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Originally Posted by Thekk

If anything, that screenshot proves my point. I'd love to see the score breakdown on that match, but if I had to guess, it would be something like:

• 800 points from crystals (there are still multiple small up on the map from what we can see)
• 600 points from outposts (that might be generous as that would imply 2 minutes of controlling enemy outposts without losing your own)
• That leaves a +400 kill differential, which would imply that the Flames fought as much as they could early on to avoid a late fight.

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I can't quite give you that, but I can give you one where Maelstrom was ~20 points short of a win when the last crystal fell and then, well, pvp happened...

http://i.imgur.com/uHH6IgA.png

That's a pretty extreme example where each team focused on different points. Maelstrom clearly went for the crystals while ignoring everything else, while the Adders went for outposts and kills. Flames were the most balanced.

I'd say Maelstrom only have themselves to blame for that lost. Holding outposts 30 extra seconds over the duration of the match or actually fighting before they're forced to would have been more than enough to get those 20 points. Ignoring 2/3rd of the point sources is a poor strategy. You could make the same point about Adders where completely ignoring the main objective of the map shouldn't be rewarded with the win. However this is somewhat typical, the winner will usually have the highest score in at least 2 categories. How far behind were the Adders when the last large crystal went down?

Yeah, Maelstrom has no one there to blame but themselves there. They should of pulled back towards their base then circled around to Adder's while everyone else raced for their point, but they tried to defend, got overwhelmed and payed the price. Hindsight.

Adder honestly wasn't tying to avoid the crystals. Just where we were in relation to when and where the nodes spawned was just awful luck (and some poor choices) and then we got zoned out by whoever got there first. Things like no nodes on our side of the map for the first 2 spawns or on the other side of the map while we were taking a base etc.

How far behind at the last big crystal, I couldn't tell you off the top of my head, but Adder was down a good 800-900 points when that last crystal fell it's probably why we got ignored until it was too late. Everyone pushed in on Maelstrom, we capped, IF ignored us and went for their own win off kills, Maelstrom pushed back out into IF and IF retreated via the top while Adder left a token force, cut across the center, capped IF's base and killed/cut off their rezers.

Edit:For stupid word count.

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Originally Posted by Thekk

Did more Shatter and had the other patterns again so here are the timings I've seen:

• Large crystals at 19:00, 16:00, 12:00 and 8:00, small crystals every 2 minutes
• Large crystals at 19:00, 15:00 and 10:00 (2x), small crystals every 2 minutes
• All the small crystals at the beginning, large crystals at 14:00, 12:00, 10:00 and 8:00

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Small precision, it seems you can get 2 large crystals at the 15:00 mark too in the 19/15/10 pattern.