Please consider adding a new frontline mode for premades

Please consider adding a new frontline mode where you can do battle with 16 npcs.
This will solve many potential problems with the current que system.

I propose a format where a team of eight does battle with 16 npcs. You could even make it so half of a given team will keep hitting ice as they get slaughtered and the other have kite around to make it a more realistic gameplay experience. Maybe have a few nin hide around bases too, teams of 5 pld, have the opposing npcs fight each other, ect...
Also you should make this format count towards mounts and hand of mercy titles, so it wont be a waste of time for those interested. Maybe even have a leader board where top amounts of kills are shown or post highlights of a large amount of kills to showcase top players.

I feel this will fix some current issues:

a. Currently premades have priority play status among the que list. This allows the people qued in the same gc the ability to play in a timely matter. The premades will have insta pop with the exact same gameplay experience, so it wont affect them at all.
b. This also helps grow the community. Casuals that try pvp wont quit when they are immediately slaughtered or farmed at their spawn point. Typically these people complain about ffxiv pvp and blast how much it sucks all over the place weakening future interest.

A lot of players arent interested in games where your teamed with weak players or when random people dont follow your every <se.1> command but for those that dont mind it they can que in the classic format, for long chaotic games.

Anyways, for your consideration.
/endsalt

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Originally Posted by awesomega

Please consider adding a new frontline mode where you can do battle with 16 npcs.
This will solve many potential problems with the current que system.

I propose a format where a team of eight does battle with 16 npcs. You could even make it so half of a given team will keep hitting ice as they get slaughtered and the other have kite around to make it a more realistic gameplay experience. Maybe have a few nin hide around bases too, teams of 5 pld, have the opposing npcs fight each other, ect...
Also you should make this format count towards mounts and hand of mercy titles, so it wont be a waste of time for those interested. Maybe even have a leader board where top amounts of kills are shown or post highlights of a large amount of kills to showcase top players.

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So basically smth like bots? No just no even a bigger "NO" cause you want achievements etc. counting in there

Im pretty sure op is being sarcastic.

I hope?

It's not really going to help anything. If premades really wanted to play with real people in the queue that we have now, they'd still all queue solo or whatever at the same time and still get in the same party. The only benefit that I can foresee over the current system by removing the ability to eight stack in FL is that solo players in the same GC as the premades will have a chance at getting a queue pop.

I don't like premades as much as the rest of solo players (win rate dropped 6% overall since Seal Rock, about 75% 3rd places in the last few weeks, rip Adders) but there's not much you can do to stop all the skilled PvPers going to one GC and stomping the other teams.

On top of what else has been mentioned...

The problem to me is also developer neglect and mishandling paired with resulting community. No queue times so you can't get much time to practice or get matches without premades, if they're queuing you're gonna get paired against them. There's just no one else left at this point. No community so you can't make your own for good sport or to lessen the impact of pure randoms vs organized, experienced premade.

Battle High/Fever is an extremely broken mechanic. Ultimately all it is, is a snowball effect where the strong become stronger. Removing it would go a long way towards preventing organized premades from absolutely dominating matches (I'm sure they'd still win usually, because, well, they should lol).

But its also a very fun mechanic and I wouldnt enjoy frontlines nearly so much if it were removed.

Shout out to the bulmung gilga no life premades

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Originally Posted by Rilasha

[...] but there's not much you can do to stop all the skilled PvPers going to one GC and stomping the other teams.

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Well, removing GC queuing, which is a more than common suggestion to help with queue times already, would already help quite a bit, no? You can then freely distribute the people among the factions based on their winrates. Disallow premades of more than 2-3 people as well and you already cut down the effect by a lot.

Or, go the way of solving the issue as community and encourage people to boycott FL whenever a coordinated premade comes around. With a bigger playerbase, that's not really an option, but since it's so small, that can be very effective - just gotta make sure the message is clear. If the premade doesn't realize the boycott is because of them, they are unlikely to change their behaviour.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

Well, removing GC queuing, which is a more than common suggestion to help with queue times already, would already help quite a bit, no? You can then freely distribute the people among the factions based on their winrates. Disallow premades of more than 2-3 people as well and you already cut down the effect by a lot.

Or, go the way of solving the issue as community and encourage people to boycott FL whenever a coordinated premade comes around. With a bigger playerbase, that's not really an option, but since it's so small, that can be very effective - just gotta make sure the message is clear. If the premade doesn't realize the boycott is because of them, they are unlikely to change their behaviour.

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It's not an option in the current community, either. If you don't want to play when the Balmung and Gilgamesh activity surges, you likely won't be playing at all. Played them this weekend when I queued for the first time in ~2 months with an FC mate and at least our waits were under an hour.

With player characters being so unable to coordinate themselves, I can only imagine the chaos that would ensue when NPCs would be introduced.
I wouldn't want this at all. At least players can be somewhat reasoned with.

Hmm... am i only solo player that likes to go against premades as those are only times enemy actually gives decent challenge? PvP would be boring if there wasnt any premades running tbh. So i must say no to this topic as it would ruin my fun.

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Originally Posted by Synestra

Hmm... am i only solo player that likes to go against premades as those are only times enemy actually gives decent challenge? PvP would be boring if there wasnt any premades running tbh. So i must say no to this topic as it would ruin my fun.

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It wasn't a major issue when the community was more populated, imo, as there were premades on all GCs. Just some not as active as others. Sometimes you'd fight a great premade, sometimes an okay one, and sometimes no premade. Sometimes 3-4 people and sometimes a whole alliance. Sometimes you queued in with one.

Some of these instances could be quite fun. Every Frontlines match lately I've faced the same premade.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

Well, removing GC queuing, which is a more than common suggestion to help with queue times already, would already help quite a bit, no? You can then freely distribute the people among the factions based on their winrates. Disallow premades of more than 2-3 people as well and you already cut down the effect by a lot.

Or, go the way of solving the issue as community and encourage people to boycott FL whenever a coordinated premade comes around. With a bigger playerbase, that's not really an option, but since it's so small, that can be very effective - just gotta make sure the message is clear. If the premade doesn't realize the boycott is because of them, they are unlikely to change their behaviour.

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So it all comes down to abolishing GC restrictions... which is what everyone wants but SE won't give us...

The boycott reminds me of "If I can't have it, you can't either" and then FL will be a barren wasteland in the short term. They'd stop for a bit, no one would get a queue since the FL queue hardly any people. They'd come back, slaughter one game if they even get one and then the cycle repeats.

At least I can play JP Frontlines during that time... Not many people have the option like I do.

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Originally Posted by Synestra

Hmm... am i only solo player that likes to go against premades as those are only times enemy actually gives decent challenge? PvP would be boring if there wasnt any premades running tbh. So i must say no to this topic as it would ruin my fun.

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It's not fun at all when that premade is coordinated enough to team wipe you in 30 seconds. Rinse and repeat about 5 times since they go to the other team after they wipe you and come back to wipe you again.

Adding on, it was better before we lost so many players. We used to have enough players with some basic knowledge, even quite a few good players who didn't premade, to at least have fun picking off some stragglers. Now you're not only facing premades, you're facing premades with players who have no concept of things like LOS or not fighting 1v8 until death. Most of the names I saw regularly even a few months ago are all gone.

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Originally Posted by FunkYeahDragons

If you don't want to play when the Balmung and Gilgamesh activity surges, you likely won't be playing at all.

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To be honest: If the premade stomps enough for me to even notice it's a premade (I don't look at names), the game isn't fun and I rather do something else - and consequently do just that. Personally, I feel that if the games are shit, I am no worse off not playing them.

Plus, that is exactly why the mechanism works in the first place. Boycott and strikes in general do not work if things remain functional during the period. If you boycott unethically produced products, that only works if there's a harsh cut in the companies profit margins caused by it - if the product remains profitable, they won't change their behavior. Same applies if you and your co-workers strike against abusive work conditions. The company won't care one bit if business is not considerably affected. It's an action made to forcefully induce change by exerting the power you have due to the interdependency of the parties. And that only works if you actually have power.

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Originally Posted by Zojha

To be honest: If the premade stomps enough for me to even notice it's a premade (I don't look at names), the game isn't fun and I rather do something else - and consequently do just that. Personally, I feel that if the games are shit, I am no worse off not playing them.

Plus, that is exactly why the mechanism works in the first place. Boycott and strikes in general do not work if things remain functional during the period. If you boycott unethically produced products, that only works if there's a harsh cut in the companies profit margins caused by it - if the product remains profitable, they won't change their behavior. Same applies if you and your co-workers strike against abusive work conditions. The company won't care one bit if business is not considerably affected. It's an action made to forcefully induce change by exerting the power you have due to the interdependency of the parties. And that only works if you actually have power.

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Interdependency: assuming the PVP community cares much about itself, which it doesn't.

At worst, big groups of 8+ people can get 8v8 queues without much difficulty or just do 4v4s. And this isn't something that should need to be boycotted outside of particularly disruptive tactics. Half the fun of any game is playing it with other people, ideally there's just either matchmaking or a big enough crowd with enough organized players that you rarely see a full premade stomping on a group of all-randoms.

No reason for players to punish themselves or each other when very little of this is our fault. It's annoying as hell to lose to the same premade over and over, but it's not their fault there's no competition and not enough of a population to get games without them in a mode that was designed to be a free for all. Anyone with friends in PVP wants to play with them, and no one likes losing--even if people are hive-minded about GCs, that's to be expected in PVP.

Would it be nice if people would be more nurturing to their own community, and try not to crash events with big premades that other people don't like? Sure. What would be nicer is developers who understand that people aren't going to be this way, and understand how to make a PVP community thrive, anyway, so that it doesn't have to come to stupid discussions like boycotting a dying area of the game because good players like to play together.

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Originally Posted by FunkYeahDragons

Interdependency: assuming the PVP community cares much about itself, which it doesn't.

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The interdependency exists either way, simply because matches don't start without enough people on all sides, so one side is always dependent on the others. But you are right, the PvP community does not seem to care much about itself and then likes to fault others for the consequences of it.

I also agree that a developer solution would be far, far preferable. But how is SE supposed to make a self-cannibalizing PvP community thrive...? Especially when the gameplay doesn't seem to compel people to put up with it either. It's something I've been saying for a long while, a great many problems could be solved if we simply had more bodies, but HOW? The only idea people have is to keep throwing rewards at it, only to then complain that people trade wins and stop queuing as soon as they get what they wanted.

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Originally Posted by Rilasha

It's not fun at all when that premade is coordinated enough to team wipe you in 30 seconds. Rinse and repeat about 5 times since they go to the other team after they wipe you and come back to wipe you again.

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This only happens if you let both of their healers freecast or your team just focuses other healer while other is not CC'd or pressured at all, this happens way too many times and it makes them look like immortal when its actually your teams fault. PuG's can play at same level as premades but you wont see this happening durning primetime for obivious reasons, from midnight up to early morning is the timeframe you will see this happening, not everynight ofc but it still happens now and then.

PS: Most enjoyable thing in pvp is to troll/annoy and generally being pain in the arse as much as possibe for premades is the reason why i even que for pvp nowdays :P